Falling (22 page)

Fitting
, I think, remembering the intensity of the first time I kissed him as we lay here, half-drunk and desperate. In a heartbeat Angus moves to cover me and he crushes our lips together, his tongue hot and perfect as it explores my mouth. Still as sweet, but he’s so much more confident now. Using my thumbs, I stroke down the long muscles either side of his spine, causing him to arch into me and make a sound deep in his throat. I lock my legs around his back and grind against him, careering toward completion before we’ve even undressed. He bites my lip and grips me so hard, his thumbs make marks on my arms when he comes. I roll him onto his back and kiss him and kiss him. The force of our coming together is bruising.

“Fuck me in the shower with the water raining down on us,” he gasps, eyes closed.

I grin. I wrote that. For once I don’t feel ashamed of him knowing. He knows my deepest fears—why would Angus knowing my fantasies be any more embarrassing? The impulse to share everything with him is so powerful, it consumes me.

I lift him into my arms and carry him into the bathroom.

After making sure the water runs warm and not too hot, I undress him and guide him into the shower that is fixed over my bath. He’s still boneless and trembling, so I make him sit in the bathtub under the spray as I drop my trousers and climb in with him. I sink down and tenderly cup his cock and balls, lathering him up and washing him gently, playfully ignoring his advances when he tries to kiss me. His cock stiffens in my hand, and I let him go, wanting this to last a little longer.

“First time it isn’t always… comfortable,” I murmur, cupping the back of his head.

With his wild hair wet and slicked back out of his face, Angus looks different—fragile in a way that has nothing to do with how physically strong he may be. Even more vulnerable, perhaps.

“Please,” he whispers, tugging my hand to his backside.

He watches as I roll the condom down my cock, more desire than apprehension in his expression, though the apprehension is there.

Pulling him into my lap, I take my time with him even though I want to go hard. My hand is trembling as I ease him open with one finger, then two. I watch his face for any sign of discomfort and tease him with kisses and my hand on his cock. He pants needily and reaches down to grip my hand, pushing my fingers deeper.

When I replace my fingers with the head of my cock, rubbing it against his hole in tiny circles, he drops his head back as though he’s completely letting go. This is what does it for me. This surrender.

“Please,” Angus begs, falling forward and running his teeth along my shoulder.

The water is warm, and I’ve used so much lube, everything feels so slick and so good.

With one hand on his hip, I slowly guide myself inside him, feeling him stretch around me. It’s so intense, I forget to breathe.

Angus gasps, his face screwed up in pain.

And I stop.

For minutes we pause like this. Minutes where we just kiss and touch, jaws, collarbones, fingers, mouths—painful, restless minutes that seem endless until he groans and lowers himself, forcing another inch of me inside until I am buried deep.

We barely move.

“Oh fuck.” Angus’s expression is stunned, his eyes not leaving mine. “Oh fuck,” he groans again, rocking ever so slightly, his dick in his hand.

This bare movement almost brings me over.

I want to ask what he’s feeling. I want to say
Tell me
. I want to feel it too.

But all I can do is throw my head back against the tiles and grip his hips as he lifts himself and slides back down.

The noises he makes—little yelps that are such a tight mix of pleasure and pain—are fucking wonderful, whereas I can barely take enough air in to breathe and whisper his name.

I come like that, before him, so completely wiped out by the force, I can do nothing but wrap my arms around him and cling on.

“I can feel you coming inside me,” he groans, ejaculating against my stomach.

Afterwards, we hold each other. The water washes over us and we don’t move. I could stay like this forever. I don’t want to pull out of him. We fit together so well. It’s as if we were made this way.

I
N
THE
early hours of the morning, everything seems dreamlike. Our touches are sure, our knowledge of each other surer. I’m not certain if it is a dream. We’ve fucked as though we’re tattooing a thousand desperate promises onto our skin, and now all I want is to sleep.

When I wake I find Angus propped on his side, watching me in the drifting morning light.

It’s early, but not too early.

“Morning.” I smile sleepily, reaching out a finger to trace his jaw. He’s so beautiful, I want our time like this to be endless so I can show him how I feel and never stop.

I trace his lips slowly as though I am memorizing the shape of them and catch a flicker of anxiety in his eyes.

“We sealed the deal last night, you know,” I whisper, wondering if he’s worried I’ll be handing him his clothes and shoving him toward the door as soon as we get up like I did last time.

Even though I’m still scared, I’m not stupid enough to throw what we have away again.

“I know,” he murmurs and lies back down by my side.

Wrapping his arms around my back, he presses his head into the crook of my neck, that space reserved for lovers, for those seeking comfort or reassurance.

I can’t help getting turned on by his naked proximity, especially when we are so new to each other.

I cup the base of his cock in my hand and stroke his warm inner thigh with my thumb.

“Sore?” I murmur.

“No,” he whispers.

We try to draw out our pleasure, to slow it down, but it’s not easy when every new exploration of skin sets you off like a rocket. We laugh. A lot. We talk a lot too. Something else I’ve never done so much of during sex. After that first time in the shower, I somehow lost my own inhibitions enough to ask Angus what he feels when I fuck him, when I suck him off. And he tells me, shyly at first, then cruder and dirtier the closer to orgasm he gets.

I have the day off, and we spend it in bed, on the living room floor, in the kitchen—Angus bent over the kitchen table. We christen every room and then some.

In between exploring each other’s skin, we talk about tomorrow, the day after that, the future
—
even though I hate talking about the future
—
but I do it because Angus needs to. He seems to need to know this isn’t some fling, a love affair that will be over by Christmas.

Early evening I light a fire in the living room, and we sit in front of it on the sofa cushions I pull onto the floor. The room flickers as it fills with warmth, and I know I have never felt so certain of what I want in my entire life.

We wear each other’s clothes and eat pasta out of my mismatched bowls, our hair wet from the shower.

“What do you normally do at Christmas?” Angus asks, swirling the last of his pasta round his bowl but not eating it.

Try to ignore it like it’s not happening
, I think, but I don’t say that.

I do a quick calculation in my head and realize Christmas is only a week away.

I get the impression Angus might quite like Christmas.

I
might quite like Christmas if I get to spend it with him.

I shrug. “Nothing much.”

“Can I do nothing much with you?” he asks shyly.

I smile. “We can spend it with Eleanor too, if you like. Hospitals usually lay something on, and visitors should be allowed for a big portion of the day. So we can go there. Be with her.”

Angus puts down the bowl of pasta on the floor and fiddles with his leather bracelet. He swallows uncomfortably.

“What about my dad?”

I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say. I wait to see what he wants to suggest. But Angus dips his head and remains silent. When he looks down like this, his hair covers his face, so I have no idea what he’s thinking.

With a frown I lean over and brush his hair aside. I run my finger down his cheek.

“I’ve never had a Christmas without him,” he whispers.

Oh.

“He misses me.” Angus looks up. His eyes shimmer glassily, and I know he’s trying not to get upset. “I know… I know I should probably be angry for the way he’s treated me, and I am, but when I went round the other day after my exam, he looked so awful, and he was so fucking sad. He misses me. I know he does. Even though he said all that stuff to hurt me—about how no son of his could possibly be gay—I know it hurt him too.”

“Come here.”

I put my bowl down and pull him into my lap.

“It wasn’t always bad, Josh. What I told you that day after the beach—it wasn’t always like that. I don’t want it to be like that.” His last words come out all broken, and his shoulders tremble.

“I know.” I kiss his hair. He smells of my apple shampoo, and he smells of me. Angus’s childhood is not as bleak as I once feared, I know that. I know he has been loved. But the past few years have been crap for him. At a guess I’d say it coincided with his dad’s drink problem getting worse.

I love you
. I hold his palm open, trace the words, and fold his hand closed around them.

We’re both worn out. Emotionally, physically.

We’ll figure something out tomorrow
, I think, though I’m not sure what.

I take him to bed and hold him in my arms until he’s still and sleeping. But I don’t sleep. Instead I lie awake, wondering if there is some secret way to make everything right for him. To make his dad less of a selfish bastard unable to show Angus that he’s perfect just as he is, that he is so worth loving; to make Eleanor well and not so full of fear. Of course there isn’t. All I can do is deal with my own fear and anxiety, and keep loving Angus as best I can, and hope that is enough. It has to be enough.

Just before I fall asleep, I come to the conclusion that perhaps it might be.

F
OR
THE
first time in my life, I buy a Christmas tree.

I buy it from the market in town at lunchtime and have to carry the stupid thing back to work. Soren laughs when he sees me half dragging, half hoisting the monstrosity over my shoulder as I walk through the shopping center and into the shoe shop, probably dropping pine needles everywhere.

“Wow, you can just about climb that thing. Size really does matter to you, eh?” he says, smirking.

“Shut up. It was the best one they had. It has a beautiful shape to it,” I add a little self-consciously.

I’d made the market guy undo the netting on quite a few to see the shape of them. He hadn’t been too impressed with me. This one was the least spindly, and all the branches looked evenly spread out.

“Now you’re just showing off.”

I store the tree at one end of the stockroom and close the door. I walk over to Soren at the cash register, wondering if I’ve done the right thing buying a tree. I fold my arms across my chest and pace back and forth in front of him.

“Do you think Angus will like it?”

“Does it matter? It’s your flat. Your tree,” Soren says offhandedly. He’s reading some pregnancy magazine. The page is open on “Pregnancy, the First Signs.”

“His tree,” I say.

“You bought a Christmas tree for him?” Soren glances up, raising his eyebrow. “Well… does he like Christmas?”

“I guess.”

I think about all the holly he’s filled my flat with. Every day there seems to be more of it, hanging over picture frames and across the mantelpiece. Yesterday I found a huge spiky wreath hung on my door and long stems of ivy wound around the communal staircase. I’ve no idea where it all comes from, but he and Oskar spent a bit of time at the park down the road.

“He’ll love it, then.” Soren punches my arm, and looks at me as though I’m an idiot for worrying. “Go with it,” he mouths. “Unconventional presents rock.”

W
HEN
I
get home, I’m not sure what Angus makes of the tree. He’s unusually quiet as he helps me take it down off the top of my car. It’s freezing, and Angus is wearing only a thin jumper and no coat, so we unfasten the tree quickly and carry it as best we can into the house. Oskar watches from the front door. I get the feeling he wants to help, so I gesture to him to follow us upstairs.

The tree is far too big for the living room, but we stick it in there anyway. I move one of my armchairs out of the corner by the window and push the tree up against the wall. The top branches hit the ceiling and bend over. I head to the kitchen for some scissors to snip them off.

Angus puts a hand on my arm before I reach the doorway.

“Leave it, Josh. It grew that way. I like it,” he says quietly.

I want to ask him if he’s okay, but he turns away too quickly as if he’s evading anything I might say.

B
OTH
A
NGUS
and Oskar take over decorating the tree with the ten or so sets of fairy lights I bought after Soren told me I needed
something
—I couldn’t just bring a tree home. Soren had taken great amusement at the fact that I had no decorations—that I’d never even
had
a tree before.

I leave them to it.

In the kitchen I can see from the explosion of kitchen utensils and pans that Angus has prepared a meal, or at least attempted to. Some sort of pie, perhaps, or a casserole. The oven is on and it smells pretty good, so I don’t investigate further. Instead I hunt through the mess for the kettle and the sink and make myself a strong coffee. I need it to be strong enough to surpass the brief moment of panic I’m having at the way everything is changing so fast. Unfortunately, it’s not that strong.

Does he like the tree? Does he think it’s weird that I bought a tree for him? Does he even know I bought it for him? Should I make that clear? Should I just forget about it? Should I suggest he take it downstairs?