CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ON FRIDAY, JAMES KISSED ELLIOTT out of the blue in the rain. Elliott wasn’t sure he meant to kiss him on purpose, he was reaching for the umbrella. The torrential rain turned the July sky into gunmetal at noon.
The dormitory was emptied after the summer midterm examinations were over and the fourth of July celebrations drunkenly commenced miles away in the smoky mountain town. By afternoon, it was quiet and airy with silence.
A light summer rain drizzled on to the gothic literary structures of the Exeter Athenaeum, sonorous thunder reverberated in the distance behind the Saexhelm Library, and leaden clouds converged over the Harry S. Truman English Building, spilling a torrent of water upon them.
Although Elliott hadn’t planned it, he kissed him in return passionately.
They were outside, rain pattering down the slope of Elliott’s nose, the haze of sweet summer wind mingled between their shared breaths.
Elliott’s lashes were wet and dewy in the inpour, and James kissed his lashes.
James was filled with impossible urges that were incoherent, messy, and commanding.
His body demanded to strip Elliott naked and take him against the tree in the middle of nature, even if it made no sense.
As James pressed himself against Elliott, Elliott didn’t expect the scent of aftershave, and the rugged plain of a missed shave on the side of his jawline. He’d forgotten how callused James’s hands were on his body, but he liked it more than his own hands.
Elliott wandered with him into the densely thicketed woodlands of the Marlborough Mountains.
James smirked against his mouth. “‘Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?’”
“‘Pay them at thy leisure, one by one[15],’” Elliott smiled. ‘A thousand kisses buys my heart from me.’ Plato had spoken of love making a poet out of everyone, and James found even himself quoting Shakespeare. He knew fragments of Shakespeare through proximity to James’s lectures.
Feverishly, they kissed behind the elms and even though their ankles were muddied, their trousers splashed with sodden water, James slid his tongue across Elliott’s bottom lip.
Their erections brushed together and Elliott released a soft sound in his mouth.
Impossibly, James hardened even further against him.
The sun peered through the clouds as if to alight Elliott’s eyes in their daze of lust. James’s hand unzipped Elliott of its own will. He slipped his hand inside his trousers.
He didn’t dare risk undressing him there, though it wasn’t nearly the first time that he’d had sex with someone in the Nixon Forest on the other side of the Eisenhower Woods.
Elliott arched against him, his eyelids hovering in ecstasy.
James held him still with one hand, pleasuring him with the other. Part of him wanted to learn him, explore how long he could last, roam where his weaknesses were. He felt his own trousers being unbuttoned.
He felt an unskilled hand enter his dark briefs, apologizing. They were both clumsy, bumping their heads accidentally, when Elliott went on his knees in the mud to take him in his mouth, James motioned to stop him.
“You’ll ruin them. The tweed won’t wash well.” James knew very little about cleaning his own laundry, but he knew that much. Elliott wore tweeds and linen, affordable fabrics that were resilient, but still stubborn with a stain.
“I don’t care,” Elliott responded with a shrug and James fought back an inhale of euphoria when he felt Elliott’s pink tongue skim the length of his need. Elliott’s tongue disappeared from sight, but its adoration was felt.
Elliott cherished him.
The devotion, the love, the affection made James’s mind abandon him early and he released in rapture before he could exhale his breath.
He couldn’t find the right moment to ask Elliott if he could fuck him.
It felt like the equivalent of asking for rough, pornographic sex in the middle of an idyllic, halcyon dream. Everything about Elliott was idyllic.
They headed to the showers afterward.
James ran the water hot. He lathered his hair with apricot shampoo, hearing Elliott step in with him.
It was different than the twilight dark of his dormitory to gaze at Elliott stark naked in full light, he appreciated the sight of him.
Elliott was his favorite construction of a charmingly saccharine physicality.
Though Elliott and James hadn’t kissed in around a few minutes, James kissed him as though it had been years apart.
Their hands moved by memory, not by sight. It felt too intense and intimate to let James gaze at the neediness in his eyes, therefore Elliott kept his eyes on his chest.
“Let me gaze upon you,” James murmured, softer than he’d ever spoken to Elliott. James kept his eyes trained on Elliott, watching the pleasure spread warmth across his face.
By the caress of James’s hand, Elliott could tell he’d practiced being tender, compassionate.
James stroked him with imperfection, neither of them used to the appendage of the other, the heat, the silken texture, the thrumming pulse.
Elliott felt his rod twitch for James’s return every time James’s hand left him.
Even with Elliott’s eyes half closed, he saw James drinking in the sight of his want, examining him, analyzing every hitched breath.
James studied what Elliott preferred, what made him moan with sensual fever, then he repeated it.
Until Elliott was on the edge.
James clasped their mouths together to swallow the sound of Elliott’s impending release. Elliott convulsed, feeling the familiar rising electricity between them, and he almost couldn’t take it.
James licked his thumb afterward where a part of Elliott released in a splatter of seed. It had been instinct to taste him. Natural for him.
Elliott didn’t even think James noticed what he’d done.
His words surprised him.
“Sex never felt meaningful before you.” James asked him if that made sense. Elliott had been his sexual awakening that James could even be attracted to another man. He spoke with candor. “I am bicurious and I want to explore it with you.”
Throughout his life, James was reckless with romance and sex; he’d never had to earn it, therefore he was careless with love given in his hands.
He had entirely platonic friendships with men–Knox and Finch–without any non-platonic feelings or subliminal romantic intentions with them. Elliott was his revelation.
His curiosity was insatiable.
James asked, “I needed you to know that. What do you think of it?”
James found himself shy in front of Elliott all of a sudden. Would Elliott want to continue an explicit relationship with him? He’d been physically naked in front of Elliott before, but he’d rarely been internally naked with him.
He feared what he might say.
Belatedly, Elliott realized James had come out to him. “Every part of me wants to explore the curiosity within me with you.”
He was bicurious as well. Good. “I’m glad.” James sounded relieved, he’d been worried that he imagined their mutual desire in his sensual frenzy.
Elliott didn’t know what he experienced was bicuriosity. There was no word for it in him. He never thought of his sexuality before. Sexuality was not something openly spoken about in Banebury, Connecticut.
Homosexuality wasn’t condemned, neither was heterosexuality expected.
It was deemed rather brash, young, and attention-seeking behavior to declare any sexuality.
Even weddings were quiet affairs. Marriage was meant for prestige, it had very little relevance with sexuality.
Sexuality was the one of the rare internalities in Banebury that one could hold sacred only to oneself.
No one else had to know one’s sexuality, it belonged only to them.
As inchoate feelings of romantic intimacy arose in him, bicuriosity arose with it.
“When did you know?” James asked.
“When you kissed me in the laundry room.” Elliott reflected on it for the first time. “When did you know you were bicurious?”
James’s entire face pinkened. He considered lying at first. “After I drank of you on your bed, you gazed up at me sweetly.” I was smitten. I was irreversibly taken with you.
Elliott felt as though James opened a new universe to him. Emotional attraction mattered to him most. As long as his heart was in it, he knew the love would feel right.
As far as James was concerned for himself, James was Elliott-sexual. All he knew was Elliott.
Elliott gazed up at him with adoration and it only reminded James how much Elliott looked up to him as an upperclassman. Elliott venerated him.
“Elliott, you can’t look up at me like that.” James pressed his hot breath against his ear. “It makes me want to fuck you. Hard. I can barely restrain myself around you.”
“Fuck me then.” Elliott liked the thought of trying it himself afterward. “I want to be inside of you.”
James smirked in return, “I’m versatile.”