Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The light comes in different. East-facing window, Celyn’s flat, not mine. I know this light. How it hits the post-its first.
I’m on my back, Celyn’s bed. The sheets smell like sleep and underneath. Skin.
Celyn’s asleep. Curled towards me, not touching. The hoodie, still the blue one, not mine. The joggers ridden up past the calves. Bare ankles, the feet tucked. The hair across the pillow, dark with the unwashing, falling where it falls.
The stubble’s grown in. Along the upper lip and under the chin where it comes in thickest.
I look at Celyn sleeping. Something settles. What a foundation does when the weight on it is right and the ground underneath holds and the whole structure just, sits.
I lie there, the light, the post-its, the mug, Celyn breathing.
I could get up, make tea. I know where the tea is, the tin without the writing, second shelf, behind the instant coffee. I know which mug is mine. I know the kettle takes four minutes because the element’s going.
I don’t get up, the light, the breathing.
Celyn wakes slow, the eyelids first. A flutter, then open, then the grey-green finding the ceiling, then finding me. The focus takes a second.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’
The voice is rough. Morning-rough.
Celyn looks at me, I look at Celyn, the pillow between us, the six inches. The light on the post-its.
‘You stayed,’ Celyn says.
‘Yeah.’
The heart, my heart, Celyn’s hand on it, is doing what I thought I’d grown out of.
The young bloke thing. The speed that comes with not knowing what comes next.
I’ve been with girls and I know the rhythm, the route, how it works when it’s predictable.
Celyn moves differently, the touch stays.
The hand doesn’t grab or demand. It just reads.
Like Celyn’s fingers are taking the pulse and the pulse is telling Celyn something mine can’t reach my own mouth to say.
The six inches were a wall. Now they’re four and the wall’s becoming something I’m walking through and I don’t know if I’m ready. For myself. For the version of me that’s on this mattress with the light in the wrong direction and no exit plan except whatever happens next.
The ribs settle, the heart’s still going fast but it’s different now. The speed you hit when you’re pouring concrete and you’ve got maybe ninety seconds before the whole batch sets and you have to commit to the angle with your body and your hands and no chance to think about whether it’s right.
Celyn’s looking at me, waiting, the eyelids half. The mouth a question mark.
I’m out of breath, from deciding.
‘You slept in your jeans.’
I look down: jeans, t-shirt, socks. I slept on top of the covers in my clothes like a lad who fell asleep at a mate’s and forgot to leave.
Except I didn’t forget. I lay down when Celyn lay down and I stayed awake listening to the breathing for.
I don’t know, an hour, two. Until the breathing slowed, the hands unclenched.
‘Didn’t want to move.’ I start. Stop. ‘Wasn’t sure if you’d want me to stay.’
Celyn puts a hand on my wrist. The touch that doesn’t ask anything. Just sits.
‘You can take the jeans off, Ron.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
The jeans go, the T-shirt goes, the socks, I’m in boxers. Celyn’s still in the hoodie and the joggers. The six inches are four now.
Celyn’s palm settles over my heart. The same place as, the last time. The time that went wrong.
My heart’s going fast now. Different fast. Not the Lewisham fast, not the running-from fast.
‘It’s fast,’ Celyn says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Good fast or bad fast.’
‘Good fast.’
The hand stays. The thumb moves, a small circle over the sternum. The nail catching the skin. The nail that used to be green, blue, purple, yellow, red. Bare now, still Celyn’s nail, still the same thumb.
I put my hand over the hand. My hand, bigger, callused, the dust in the knuckle cracks. Over the fingers, I press down. Here. This heart. This speed. Yours.
Celyn shifts closer. The four inches become two. The hoodie’s warm, body-warm, sleep-warm. The stubble against my shoulder. The hair on my skin.
‘Ron.’
‘Yeah.’
A breath. Celyn pulls back enough to see my face. The eyes, close. Grey-green with the light in them.
Celyn’s hand finds the small of my back. The pressure, slow, downward. Not a question.
My stomach drops, bigger than fear, warmer. The yes before the head’s caught up.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah. I want’ The word. ‘Yeah.’
Slow.
That’s the first thing, everything slow.
Celyn’s hands, the hoodie comes off and the joggers and underneath is skin and stubble and bone and the body I know but haven’t touched in days and the days are nothing and it’s a year.
My hands remember the shape before my brain does.
Ribs, hip. The dip where the hip meets the stomach. Line of hair below the navel. Warmth.
Celyn’s hands on me, the boxers go.
Celyn pushes me back. Gentle. My back on the mattress. The pillow under my head. The light on the ceiling. Celyn above me. The weight of them settling, the knees either side of my hips, the hands on my ribs. Looking down.
‘Here,’ Celyn says. ‘Slow. Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Lube. The drawer, the bedside table, the same place. Celyn’s hand, the fingers. I’ve watched them type and push hair back and hold a mug and wrap around a pen and trace a line down my spine and now they’re,
Warm, slick, one finger first, the press. The breath I take, deep, through the nose, how I breathe when I’m lifting something heavy and need the core stable. Celyn watches my face, reads it.
‘Okay?’
‘Yeah.’
Second finger, the give. My hands grip the sheets. The cotton, the sheets I’ve slept in and fucked in and held Celyn in and now they’re under my fists. Something that doesn’t have a name. Weight inside, press.
Celyn’s mouth on my hip. The stubble on the bone. Soft mouth, rough chin, the fingers moving, slow, slow. The angle changes and a sound tears out.
‘There,’ Celyn says. Quiet. The mouth still on the hip. ‘Stay.’
The third finger. My back arches off the mattress and my hand leaves the sheet and finds Celyn’s shoulder and grips. The muscle under the skin. The bone underneath, I hold on. The sound again, the one from somewhere I didn’t know had a voice.
‘Ready?’
I can’t, the word won’t come, I nod. My eyes on the ceiling. The cracks, Celyn’s ceiling, the cracks I know.
Fingers leave. The empty after them. A part of the body clenches after the fingers, wanting them back. The thing the body learnt weeks ago and forgot in the days apart. Relearning now. Fast.
Condom. Sound of the wrapper, the tear, the roll. Celyn’s breath, quick, concentrated, mechanics matter.
Then, the press, the head. Blunter than fingers. Hotter. The latex slick from the lube and underneath it the shape of Celyn, the ridge of the cock I’ve had in my mouth and on my palm and inside me before, long, and somehow the days apart made the body forget how much there is of it.
‘Breathe,’ Celyn says, mouth at my ear. ‘Out, slow. Push back when you breathe out.’
I breathe out. Push back. The body opens around the head and Celyn slides in an inch and stops.
‘Fuck,’ I say. Not pain. Not exactly.
‘I know.’ Celyn’s mouth on my shoulder, the kiss there. ‘I know. Stay there. Tell me when.’
For a second I want to say stop. I breathe. I don’t move. I let Celyn keep pressing because the want’s bigger. The want’s the only thing bigger.
Celyn cups my face. My cheek, then the thumb sliding to my temple. ‘Look at me.’
I look. Grey. Close. Face above mine. Mouth, not the half-smile. Open. Lower lip bitten and released. Wanting.
Celyn pushes in, slow, slow, the stretch burning and easing and burning, every inch of the length feeding into me and my body opening round it by degrees.
My hand grips tighter. My other hand finds the hip, Celyn’s hip, and holds.
The fingers pressing into the bone. The body taking something in and adjusting around it and the body’s full, fuller than the fingers, full to the back of the throat it feels like, and my eyes are doing something I don’t want them to do and I can’t.
‘Yeah,’ Celyn says. Still. All the way. Not moving. ‘Here. I’m here.’
The breath stops. No warning. I wait for it to come back.
Celyn’s hand flat on my chest. Feeling for it. Doesn’t move until it does.
‘Move,’ I say. ‘Please. I need you to move.’
Celyn moves, slow, out, in. The rhythm that isn’t a rhythm yet, it’s finding itself, like two people find a rhythm when neither of them is pretending they know what comes next.
My hips follow, rise. The angle changes and there it is again, the jolt, the nerve, the place that makes the sound come out.
‘Yeah,’ I say. Or moan. The line between the two has gone. ‘Yeah. There. That fuck. That.’
Celyn hooks an arm under my knee, lifts it, changes nothing but the tilt of my hips, and now every stroke finds it. Not deeper. The slant of it. Forward, against the place, on the way in and the way out both. The long drag of Celyn over it and the wire lights and stays lit.
‘There,’ Celyn says, reading it off my face. ‘Stay there. Yeah.’
Celyn’s hand on my cock. The grip, sure, tight, the rhythm matching the movement inside me. Celyn’s face above me and Celyn’s hand on me and Celyn inside me and I’m, I’m held. Held. The way a structure’s held when the frame is right and the weight is distributed and the whole thing stands.
I’m the structure, Celyn’s the frame.
My hand on the back of Celyn’s neck. Pulling down, the mouth.
The kiss. Messy, open, teeth and tongue and breath and the stubble scraping and the taste of morning and sleep and underneath.
Celyn groans into my mouth and the sound goes straight through me and I feel it in my cock, in my stomach, in the place where Celyn is inside me.
Faster, enough. The headboard tapping the wall. Celyn’s breath getting shorter. The catch in the throat, the one meaning close.
‘Ron. I’m close.’
‘Yeah.’ My hand on the hip. Pulling. Deeper. ‘Yeah. Come on.’