Sixteen #3
“That’s— I’m—I’m here, aren’t I? There’s nothing proper about this.”
“I suppose so. And,” feeling magnanimous, stepping close to run his palm over Estiene’s hair, “you also did this.”
Estiene shuddered. Jehan said, low on purpose: “It really is whorish, you know.”
“Fuck off.” It was a whisper, breathy, not angry. Barely there beneath the rain.
And even softer: “It looks like someone’s fucked you and is keeping you ready to be fucked again.”
“Fuck off, Jehan.” But Estiene’s face was lifting, agonised, and Jehan kissed him.
It was a long and incoherent bite of a kiss. He wanted to make it a punishment, a reminder of what Estiene was denying himself.
And Estiene returned it, as he’d returned hundreds of Jehan’s kisses over the years. Estiene, standing in the flood of the rain, took hold of Jehan’s neck and opened his beautiful, ungentle mouth to be made a ruin of.
Jehan crushed Estiene’s body to his. The fabric of his robe was already sodden; Mathé’s blood, they would never be dry again.
Jehan spiralled rapidly wild with need. Estiene made the sound against his mouth that meant he wanted something—that, more often than not, meant he was moments away from sliding to the floor and diving onto Jehan’s cock.
Jehan had never, in his short but enjoyably fuck-filled life, met anyone who sucked cock like Estiene Marcelle.
The kiss broke for breath. Estiene looked brutalised, and Jehan had always wanted to fight the world for that look.
He would do anything for this man’s attention, shit, it was so fucking pathetic.
But right now they were suspended in midnight with the rain thundering down, cold and overwhelming, and nobody could see them or hear them.
And this time Estiene wasn’t pushing him away.
Jehan felt untethered. He wrung the ends of Estiene’s sopping black hair between two fingers, as Estiene had been doing all week. Laughter was trying to find its way back into his voice, and that was more dangerous than anything.
“You can’t not know how it looks to other people. Why did you do it?”
“It wasn’t for anyone else. It was for me.” Estiene buried his face in Jehan’s neck. His nose was cold. “I did know what Mamie and Papa would say about it, but fuck, I just wanted . . .”
Silence. They breathed together and the laughter began to leave Jehan. It was obvious, when he thought about it.
“You wanted a way to rebel now that you weren’t using me for that anymore.”
His bitterness slid between them and pulled them apart.
Estiene blinked several times and then swiped a wet sleeve over his eyes. He looked drowned.
“You really thought I—”
“You know it’s true.”
A silence. More rain. They should have been walking toward campus at the very least, but neither of them moved.
Estiene said, flat and awful, “You think I was using you?”
Jehan had no idea anymore if he was burning up or freezing cold, but his toes were very wet and so was his hair, and he hated it.
He’d never been the kind of person to talk about how he felt.
He was all heartache and annoyance from the memory of Estiene a month ago, pinched and stiff, saying I can’t do this anymore, I have to think of the future.
From being only good enough to be touched behind closed doors and under the rain: only in the dark.
He was harsh and hurt and too tired to hide it.
“You never told anyone about me.”
“Don’t try and pretend you wanted me to.” Estiene’s hand ghosted at Jehan’s shoulder and then dropped. He said, softly, “You were the one adventure I was allowed to have.”
“Right.” Fuck this, fuck all of it. “A bit of a thrill to fill your Academie days? Good enough for a fuck whenever you wanted it, and easy to put away for serious things when the time came.”
Estiene looked almost bewildered for a second, as if the storm’s lightning had returned and painted it onto his face. Then he took two steps back, and now he was farther into the light, farther away.
“I suppose I’m learning all sorts of things about you tonight.” Another swipe of his sleeve; another blurred, bewildered look. “I really didn’t think you had it in you to be so fucking cruel.”
And he turned on his heel and stormed off, in more or less the right direction.
Jehan’s head ached. He took a deep, damp breath and then followed Estiene’s rain-blurred shape. Someone had to make sure the shining future of the Hospital made it back home without being mugged by someone who couldn’t recognise a grey robe in the dark.
The fear of what Blavot might have heard fell into weary step with Jehan’s wrung-out disappointment, with his cold and soaked exhaustion, with the frustrated ache of his body, still longing to unpeel Estiene from his wet clothes in front of a raging fire and fuck him until he begged.
Tonight was just another anomaly in a week full of anomalies. Someone like Estiene was not going to be part of Jehan’s future—whatever endangered shape that future was, now—and vice versa. Estiene had made that clear, over and over again.
Jehan was on his own.