Chapter 8 #3
‘Stop,’ Celyn says. ‘Just. Stay there. A second.’
I stop. Halfway. The body screaming to move and I don’t move.
Celyn’s breathing, fast, shallow, the stomach rising and falling.
The face, the eyes closed, the teeth clenched, the stubble, the eyeliner.
Something crosses the face. The body adjusting around me and I can feel it.
The muscles relaxing, opening, pulling me deeper without me moving.
‘Okay,’ Celyn says. Opens the eyes. The grey close, wet. ‘All the way.’
I push in the rest. Slow. Every inch. The pressure rises through me and into my throat and I can’t breathe. I’m inside Celyn. All of me. And the world goes. Small. The flat is gone, the street is gone. There’s skin and breath and I drop my face into the neck and feel Celyn’s hands find my back.
‘Move,’ Celyn says. ‘Slow. Like this.’ The hips under me show me. The rhythm. I find it. Lose it. Find it again. The bed creaks. The headboard hits the wall. I put my hand on it to stop it and Celyn laughs.
The laugh. In the middle of this. Warm and real and I laugh too and we’re laughing and I’m inside Celyn and it’s imperfect, the angle’s still not right, there’s too much lube, my knee keeps slipping on the sheet, and it’s the best thing. The best thing.
Celyn’s fist works their own cock between us, fast, the knuckles knocking my stomach on the upstroke.
The head slick, flushed dark. I watch it, can’t not, the wet sound of their hand under the wet sound of me moving in them.
I watch and move and the rhythm changes, faster.
Celyn’s breath changes, the Welsh word. The same one from the other night.
Twice, the back arches. The body under me goes tight, the thighs, the stomach, the fingers on my back, and Celyn comes.
Low, broken. The sound goes straight to my cock, the pride of it landing in the body, not the head.
I last three more seconds. Maybe four. The tightness and the Welsh word and I come and the coming is.
Not what I know. Not the shape of it. It’s longer and louder inside my head and the heat finds somewhere deeper than the hips, under the ribs, a place I didn’t know I had.
The grip around me pulses, keeps pulling, and I come in waves that don’t know how to stop.
My hips shudder. The stomach. Somewhere behind the eyes.
I keep going after I’ve come. The body doesn’t know when to stop because nothing’s told it, because this isn’t a shape the body’s filed before, and I make a sound I don’t recognise, low and raw and from a place I’ve never come from.
Everything shuts off, room, name, flat. Just the pulse and the grip and the breath and when it’s done my arms give and I’m against Celyn and the heartbeat is there. Both heartbeats, mine and the one under my ear, not synced, not even close, and that is.
My eyes are wet.
There’s water on my face and I don’t know when it started and it’s not sadness. It’s not anything I’ve got a word for. The body’s doing it. Too much. Nowhere for it to go.
Fingers move slow through my hair, and the breathing slows down with them.
I press my face into the neck. The garden-fruit smell, the sweat, the skin.
‘Ron,’ Celyn says. Something else in it. A thinness. Like the word cost something.
Eventually I pull out. Slow. The condom, the tie, the toss towards the bin.
Hits, doesn’t miss. Celyn’s still on the back, breathing.
I rest my forehead between Celyn’s collarbones for a minute, maybe more, the cock soft against the thigh now, the body finding the floor again.
Celyn’s thumb on my cheek where the water dried. Doesn’t say anything. Just there.
Don’t sleep.
I’m on my side. Celyn’s on the other side, turned away, the back, the shoulder blades, the mole between them I didn’t know was there. Lower, the small of the back, the curve, the sheet across the hips.
Behind the ear, a tattoo, a semicolon. Small, the size of a fingernail. Black ink on pale skin. I’ve seen it before. Glimpses, when the hair moved. Now it’s here, close enough to touch.
Don’t touch. Look.
The face slack. Eyeliner smudged under one eye. Mouth open. Slightly, the lip tint completely gone, the lips dry. Breathing in, out, the ribs expanding, contracting.
On the floor: the lace knickers. Black, next to the jeans. Next to the flannel shirt. Next to the bra. Next to my jeans, my shirt, my boxers. All of it on the floor in a pile that doesn’t sort into his and hers. Just. Ours.
I lie there, the ceiling, the nail. The streetlight coming through the blinds making stripes on the wall.
Something’s opened in my gut, in whatever part of me I haven’t got a name for, and it’s not closing.
I close my eyes. Images come, all of them. The laughing, that sound, the Welsh word. The tears I didn’t plan and the unasking hand.
I sleep. With Celyn’s back against my side and my hand on Celyn’s ribs and the heartbeat under my palm. Slow, even. The body’s got a new thing in it. A shape, a weight.
The character opened the door. Whatever’s on the other side.
We’re in it now.