21. Chris #3
The duke spoke quickly, words clipped and final, but Chris didn’t listen, too intent on holding Isaiah’s trembling hand as tightly as he could.
Finally, the couple were escorted out. Isaiah stood proud and tall until the moment their backs were no longer visible as the security team moved them out through the old servants’ entrance of the estate, then he crumbled.
His shoulders shook and his breath came in gasps as the adrenaline left his body.
Chris didn’t say anything. He just guided him, gently but without room for argument, steering them away from the crowd, down a corridor hung with oil portraits and into blessed quiet.
The library door closed behind them with a soft, final click.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Isaiah exhaled, long and unsteady. “Fuck,” he said.
Chris leaned back against a shelf, heart still racing. “You okay?”
Isaiah laughed weakly. “Define okay.”
“They don’t get to ruin this. Or you.”
“I don’t understand what I did, why I’m not enough for them.” Isaiah looked at him then, really looked. “You didn’t have to do that. Stay with me.”
“I wanted to.”
They held each other’s gaze for a beat, then sunk to the floor, legs stretched out in front of them on the gleaming wood.
“Was that the first time you’ve seen them since?” Chris asked.
“Since they told me there was no place for me in the family? That I wasn’t welcome?
Yeah, first time.” Isaiah let his head thud against the books behind him.
“Fuck.” He chuckled, the sound echoing incongruous with the heavy atmosphere.
“You know, when I first met up with Carl I nearly had a heart attack, thinking he looked so much like my dad. But he doesn’t, does he. ”
Chris shrugged. “Same hair.”
Isaiah laughed. “Yeah but different, like, face, maybe.”
“Aura,” Chris replied sagely. “Being a shit person eventually shows on the outside too.”
“Steady on, Socrates.”
Chris smiled. “Okay, maybe I’ll leave the philosophy to you, then.”
“Nah, you’ve got the right instinct.” Isaiah bumped his shoulder. “I don’t want them to have any power over me. I didn’t think they did, not anymore…but…maybe they always will.” He huffed and ran a hand through his hair. “Back there, before…well, that. You were struggling.”
Chris blinked at the change of subject, but let Isaiah lead. “You noticed?”
“Of course.” He paused. “You are allowed to take up space, you know. Even when people whisper.”
Chris met his eyes. “I’m so tired of being a narrative.”
Isaiah’s voice softened. “You’re not one to me. Not anymore.”
It felt like a confession. Silence stretched between them, heavy and intimate.
It felt safe. Safe in a way Chris hadn’t felt with anyone since the day he’d said yes to a career filled with uncertainty, where testing his limits was a daily activity.
So safe the words fell out before he could stop them. “There was this bridge.”
“Chris,” Isaiah whispered. But Chris didn’t stop.
“It wasn’t even a ten-minute walk from the cafe, the one where I lost my shit at Elliot and Jackson and Carl for no fucking reason other than my complete inability to accept that maybe my actions had consequences.
” He paused, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“It was a nice bridge. Pretty. The kind tourists take photos on.”
Isaiah shifted beside him. Chris leaned into it, as though the touch would ground him, keep him tethered in this moment, not back there, staring out as the wind whipped at his face.
“I sat on the ledge for hours, staring at the water below. I didn’t think I was going to jump.”
“No?” Isaiah asked.
“I didn’t plan to; I wasn’t looking for it. I know that, but sometimes I’m not sure...maybe I would have.”
“But you didn’t.”
Chris swallowed. “My dad found me, pulled me back.”
“Have you talked to anyone about it?”
“No, I…I told my dad I wasn’t going to do anything. And maybe I told myself that as well. Maybe I started to believe it was true.”
Isaiah held him close, tracing small circles on his shoulder, and Chris felt everything he’d been holding back drain from his body.
“My dad, he hasn’t been the same since, and he hasn’t said a word about it.
Not to me, not to my mum. But I did that to him, and he’s been there for me so much, I—fuck, sorry.
I can’t believe I’m sitting here telling you how fucking great my dad is after what you just went through. ”
“Chris, that isn’t what you’re doing.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Isaiah smiled. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? A couple of broken boys sitting on a library floor treating it like a confessional.”
“I don’t think you’re broken.” Chris let his head rest on Isaiah’s. “And I’ve never felt less broken than when I’m with you.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The world seemed to still around them. Then Chris felt Isaiah shift, creating a small space between them.
“This place…” Isaiah said, glancing around. “God. Look at it.”
Chris took the change of tone for what it was—something Isaiah needed, something they both needed.
They stood and he let Isaiah lead him deeper into the stacks, following wherever he wanted to go.
He let his gaze drift over the floor-to-ceiling shelves and the worn and gilded spines, inhaling the smell of old paper and polish.
“You like it,” he said. “Must remind you of Oxford.”
“A bit, but it’s like…” Isaiah’s mouth curved. “Damn. You have no idea.”
“Books get you hot?” Chris teased, letting the feelings inside him settle into something warmer.
Isaiah stepped closer. “Ideas get me hot. Arguments. Marginalia. A well-constructed premise.”
Chris swallowed. “Sounds dangerous.”
Isaiah smiled. “If we stay in here much longer, I’m going to do something wildly inappropriate among the complete works of Kant.”
Chris laughed, breathless. “Pretty sure he’d hate that, so I can see how it might appeal.”
Isaiah stepped closer, close enough that Chris could feel the warmth of him, the pull unmistakable. “He hated joy in general, but I don’t. I want it, I want to feel everything good in the world.”
“Isaiah—”
“Chris,” Isaiah said gently as he ran a finger over Chris’s belt. “Tell me to stop.”
Chris smirked. “Stop,” he said, reaching to trail a hand slowly down the buttons of Isaiah’s shirt. “Let me.”
He stroked Isaiah gently over his trousers before slowly, teasingly popping the button and sliding down the zipper, he snaked a hand inside to grip him over the silky jock he was wearing and leaned in to kiss him as his own cock strained against his fly.
Footsteps echoed on the floor and they both froze.
“We should move,” Chris whispered.
He led Isaiah quickly and quietly through the stacks, weaving around until they reached the thankfully open door and stumbled into the corridor.
They didn’t speak until they’d found their way back to the guest wing and stumbled into Chris’s room with its green walls and green curtains in a fit of hysterical giggles.
When they’d caught their breath, Chris looked into Isaiah’s eyes. “May I?” he asked.
Isaiah nodded, and Chris gently took his jacket off his shoulders and hung it over the back of a tall green velvet armchair. He gripped his chin, tilting it up and pecking his lips. “Let me take you apart, Isaiah Owens.”
“Anytime you want,” Isaiah breathed, kissing him.
Their tongues wound together. Chris could taste the lingering mix of Champagne and cake on his tongue. Isaiah’s nimble fingers undid the buttons on Chris’s shirt one by one, peeling it off of him. He sighed as Isaiah latched on to his neck, sucking hard enough to leave a mark.
“Again,” he whispered.
Isaiah sucked another bruise just below his collarbone, then stepped back and kicked off his shoes.
He let his trousers fall to the floor in a pool of fabric, revealing the silk jock and shirt stays with garters that wrapped around his thighs beneath the formal ensemble.
Chris choked down whatever words had threatened to break the moment between them.
“You like?” Isaiah asked, somehow seeming to turn shy under Chris’s intense stare.
“You look like a fucking portrait. Like I’ve stepped into a renaissance painting or a fucking Oscar Wilde novel.
I can’t believe this is real. I can’t decide if I want to touch you or if that would break the illusion, but at the same time I need to feel you so badly I might combust.” He stepped forward, allowing his fingertips to ghost over Isaiah’s jaw.
Isaiah ducked his head. “Chris,” he whispered. “Just kiss me.”
“I can do that.”
They crashed together, savouring each other as hands went everywhere. Chris breathed in Isaiah’s spicy citrus scent and let his hands memorise the planes of his muscles.
When they broke apart for air, Chris panted as he took in Isaiah’s dishevelled state. His kiss-swollen lips and mussed hair. “I want this moment painted on my eyeballs forever, so I never have to forget. I want to be able to look back at this in twenty years and remember every detail.”
“We could,” Isaiah whispered.
“Could what, cariad?”
“Remember this. Record it. For us.”
“You mean like…” Chris baulked internally, but his cock twitched at the thought. His own personal video; better than a private session, better than a photo. Something real. Something just for them.
“Do you want to?”
“Just for us?” he asked. It was dangerous; his hands shook as he thought of the risk. But he wanted it. He wanted it too much.
Isaiah nodded. “Just for us. Give me your phone.”
Chris pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Isaiah, who set it up against a stack of books he quickly created on the opulent rolltop desk.
He stepped back and turned to Chris. “Now fuck me, Green. Fuck me like I’ve wanted you to since the second I saw you with that stupid superhero mask on the other side of my screen.”
Chris smirked. “That mask is sexy as fuck and you know it.”
Isaiah laughed, open and warm. “I do have a rather visceral reaction to any mention of it these days.”
“Yeah?”