Holidays in Blue

by Eve Morton

  “Do you have condoms?” Eric said after their kissing and touching soon became grinding. The head of Cosmin’s dick was stretched against his pants. Eric cupped it with his palm; he squeezed, and he throbbed, needing so much more. “I don’t think I have any.”

  “I...” Cosmin’s first word during this whole ordeal seemed like an acquiescence of power. He shifted and pulled his waist away from the pawing of Eric’s palm. His movements spoke clearly: they didn’t have condoms.

  Shit. That was awful. A goddamn crime. After so long waiting without realizing he had been, Eric didn’t want this to be over. He grabbed Cosmin’s waist and undid his belt. Cosmin murmured, trying to explain what Eric already knew.

  “Shut it,” Eric said. “Let me suck you.”

  Eric plied Cosmin out of his pants eagerly. A wet stain against his boxer-briefs gave Eric’s heart a jolt of passion, along with the heady and masculine scent of his body. Eric trembled as he peeled back his underwear to reveal tight curls and dark pubic hair. He ran his hand along the underside of his cock, squeezing the precome to the tip and then lapping it with his tongue.

  Cosmin breathed heavily through his nose. He let out low moans in his throat, almost as if he was trying to hide them.

  “Oh no, let it out,” Eric said before he latched on to his cock again. He worked on taking Cosmin as far as he could go and then switching to his hand while he spoke.

  “You wanna come in my mouth?” Eric asked in a hushed whisper. It was something a character in one of those gay erotica books had said. It got him hard reading it. It got him hard thinking about it. And Cosmin opened up under the words, in addition to the syllables Eric spoke against skin with his tongue. Eric smiled. “I want to taste you. God, I want to taste you.”

  Eric bobbed his head. Cosmin’s grip on his shoulders was becoming viselike and thrilling. Eric flicked his tongue against the head, and then opened his mouth to murmur more epithets at him. He heard a telltale deep moan before he latched on. He waited, he swallowed, and then it was done.

  Eric stood. His belt was undone and his fly was open. His cock was aching in his hand, and he pumped it while he examined Cosmin’s open mouth in ecstasy. No author he’d read had described this, the shell of a man’s body in the aftermath. He loved it. He wanted to remember all of it. He kissed Cosmin’s open mouth and placed Cosmin’s hand next to his own on his cock. Each gesture was quiet and subdued, but it was somehow better this way.

  “Come on,” Eric said, whispering in Cosmin’s ear. There was no need to dress up the words any more. Pleas were enough. “Please,” he begged. He whispered, “Please.”

  When he came, it was while his head was against Cosmin’s neck, his mouth open in a similar muted cry. And it was so much better than all the fantasies he’d had as a teenager, peeping out his window and catching something he wasn’t supposed to see. It was better than being in the hallway, late at night, scared and aroused. It was quiet, it was pleasure, but it was something he knew he’d repeat again. Somehow, as Cosmin turned up his chin to meet his mouth, he knew this was not the last time this would happen.

  “Hey,” Cosmin said as he ceased their kissing. Their bodies were still together, their voices not above a whisper. “You... I can’t think of an un-crass way to say you have quite the mouth on you.”

  Eric chuckled. “You don’t need to be polite. I’ll take its meaning both ways.”

  “I... Okay.”

  Eric caught Cosmin’s gaze. He lingered in all of its complexities and ambiguities. He wanted to get dressed and grab all the salt from his parents’ garage so he could buy as many condoms as he could shove in his pockets. The night needed to go on; this moment needed to last.

  Cosmin touched his lips and coaxed him closer. As they met again, the lights flickered. And all, for a while, was darkness.

  Chapter Eight

  Cosmin grabbed the flashlights his father kept under the sink, along with the toolbox, and went into action. He shined the light against the small pile of bills he’d slotted into a kitchen bowl that had once held fruit. He crosschecked the bills he remembered paying online. Hydro was one of them; the account, which he now held in his hand, was all paid up. “So why are the lights out?”

  He was no longer speaking to Eric. The sudden darkness sent him backwards in time. He was with Suzanne her first summer with the Tesslers. The power had been knocked out and she’d been terrified. He’d grabbed the flashlights then and held his under his chin to amuse her, just like he’d seen another boy in his grade do. But his actions scared her, instead. It was the first time he’d truly scared her, and it terrified him in turn. Just when he thought he’d never mend their fragile friendship, she saw a shadow against the wall. He made a rabbit with his hand, an eagle, and somehow, Abe Lincoln. The lights came on. The storm raged on, but Suzanne was by his side.

  Eric grabbed his arm. The touch sent him back to the moment. Eric’s green eyes replaced Suzanne’s blue ones; his smooth skin was no longer her milky complexion, marred by freckles. Cosmin’s own face flushed. He was being a fool. After such an intimate moment, he couldn’t believe that he’d fallen backwards so quickly.

  “Look outside,” Eric said. There were two flashlights in the toolbox, and Eric had selected the smaller hand-held one. Eric shined the light against the window. Though it looked out into the backyard, it was hard to see anything at all beyond the blackness.

  “Oh. The streetlights are out.”

  Eric shuffled to the front door, dragging his feet so he didn’t slam them against the front foyer chair. Cosmin followed in turn, and together, they both looked out the front door at the suburb that had once been a multicoloured festive light show become cloaked in utter darkness.

  “It must be the ice.” Eric leaned out the doorway to assess the power lines overhead. “They don’t seem weighed down too much, but it must have hit a transponder or something.”

  “I’m sure it’ll come back soon.”

  “Yeah, probably. You have candles?”

  Cosmin murmured, “Yes, yes. Candles are this way. Come on.”

  Their clothing had slipped back on easily enough in the darkness. All evidence of their act, too, had been cleaned away. Eric’s lingering smile, which Cosmin had caught a glimpse of with his flashlight as they stepped back into the house, was the only bit of evidence that remained. If Eric wanted to do it again, he said nothing.

  He went into action alongside Cosmin, lighting candles and bringing some life back to the kitchen that had made him think he was in another era entirely. They reminisced about old weather events that had caught them off guard in the past, like ice storms, blackouts, and hail the size of tennis balls. It was all mindless chatter; all done on Cosmin’s part to keep his mind from replaying what had just happened between them, and what he wanted to do yet again.

  “Is there anything in the freezer we need to worry about with the power off like this?” Eric asked.

  “Other than a bunch of other Hungry-Man dinners? Not that I remember, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a second freezer I don’t know about somewhere. My father bought in bulk a lot.”

  “A food hoarder, too?”

  “Yes. And of emotions.”

  Cosmin bit his lip after the words came out. He wished he hadn’t said that. It drew too much attention to...well, Maurice, for one, but also the witness to that horrible failing. He shifted from foot to foot. He wanted to go back to Toronto, to not be in this house anymore, and precisely because he couldn’t, it felt like another punishment for that holiday faux pas.

  He’d come out to his father then. Suzanne and Lily were both dead and had been for a while. He didn’t want to spend another Christmas with his father alone, skirting the issue of girlfriends, so he brought his boyfriend. His live-in boyfriend, a former student who’d shown a penchant for Petrarchan sonnets and who now shared his futon and who Cosmin wanted to
marry. Even if it wasn’t legal in Canada, and they were both quite young, he wanted it so badly. Like always, though, his desire had been put on hold. His father didn’t exactly say anything bad to him that day, or to Maurice when he came the next afternoon, but his stare was disappointed.

  And he never mentioned Maurice again. So Cosmin had stopped coming home.

  “I suppose if this does last a long time,” Eric said, “we could just put the food in the backyard or something, right? I mean, it’s cold outside. That’s kind of why we’re in this mess.”

  Cosmin took a while to understand what Eric was saying. He nodded but said it would be a bad idea. “Raccoons will emerge. Coyotes, too. And I really don’t think this will last very long. It shouldn’t.”

  Eric’s easy smile faltered.

  Cosmin’s words were heavy, an admonishment if he’d ever heard one himself. He realized he sounded like his father talking about Maurice. He let out a sigh. He ate a piece of cheese, since there was no point in putting it back in the fridge, and poured them some whiskey. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.”

  Cosmin nodded. Eric was sincere. And though Cosmin’s skin still felt too raw from everything they’d spoken about tonight, he knew he couldn’t exactly run from these thoughts anymore. There was simply nowhere to go. “You should stay the night. The house will be warmer with two people. I can get more blankets from the basement, and the guest room should be good for us.”

  Eric seemed to sense the practical side of the request, rather than the desirous. “Besides, it’s probably best for me to avoid going outside anyway. One fall already tonight. Things will seem better by morning.”

  “Yes, by morning.”

  Twenty minutes later, their drinks were done. The cheese plate dinner was mostly crumbs as well. Cosmin blew out the candles in the kitchen and brought Eric upstairs using the flashlight. He took out blankets from the hall closet while Eric set up a temporary candle in the bedroom.

  Each blanket had a cloying scent of Irish Spring that his father kept in bulk inside the hall closet so everything would smell “nice.” It was his father’s home without his mother’s touch; she would have told him to just use fabric softener if he wanted the clothing to smell better.

  It was strange to feel so young and so old at the same time, so part of the modern era and yet plunged into an antiquated sense of being. The guest room was across from his father’s room and used to act as his mother’s study. Before then, it had been Suzanne’s bedroom. Cosmin’s childhood bedroom had been changed into a room for his father’s business, and then, of course, taken over by even more boxes and excess clothing, furniture, and junk as his father’s collections became mere hoards.

  “Should we wear clothing?” Eric asked. When he caught Cosmin’s gaze, he quickly followed up. “I mean, I think I read somewhere that skin on skin is actually warmer. Isn’t that what they recommend for people in the wilderness?”

  “In sleeping bags, yes. But I think we can wear what we normally wear.”

  When Eric chuckled, Cosmin knew that was a sign that he often slept naked. Cosmin watched from the side of his gaze as Eric stripped to his boxers and T-shirt easily before hopping into the bed with the aplomb of a child at a hotel.

  Cosmin still wore the pullover sweater and dark jeans he’d worn to talk to Sherry about his show. Was that still only today? Again, time eluded him; it stretched and repeated like a polymerase chain reaction. When he checked the time on his phone, and it read three in the morning, the exhaustion hit him in his bones. He’d been up so long today, and yet sleep still felt impossible. Especially with Eric in the bed.

  “Good idea.” Eric picked up his own phone with a black screen—clearly dead—and a cord from his pocket. He plugged it in at the other outlet and then laughed. “Good idea in principle, I suppose.”

  “Yeah.” Cosmin plugged his own phone in as he sat on the bed. “But whenever the lights come on, it’ll charge the phone. It won’t be long.”

  “Yeah, it won’t be long.”

  Finally, Cosmin took off his sweater and jeans. He slid into the bed next to Eric. An inch separated their bodies. He was overwhelmed with the urge to hold him. The warmth between them was incredible, even without the heat of bare skin. Their breathing seemed on a hair trigger.

  “I’m going to blow out the candle,” Eric said slowly.

  Cosmin nodded. In the low light, it was nearly invisible. So he grabbed Eric’s hand in acquiescence. When Eric turned to him, the kiss was taken with ease. Cosmin placed his hands on Eric’s face, exploring with his tongue. He was hard again, like a teenager. He knew Eric was as well, could feel him under the covers as their bodies moved close together. Cosmin wanted to do so much more, and was desperate to be inside of Eric, but without condoms, that fantasy would remain a fantasy for now. Cosmin was too old to take risks without condoms, and too tired to do anything else other than continue to kiss Eric.

  “In the morning,” Eric said once he broke the kiss, “when all the ice is gone, I will come back here with what we need.”

  “I like that plan. When the ice is gone.” Cosmin kissed him one last time before Eric slipped a hand around him in the narrow bed. Not five minutes later, his breathing became rhythmic. He was asleep.

  Cosmin shifted out from Eric’s arm so he could stare at the black ceiling. I have been here before. With Maurice, with Julian, with a few other men he could name but it wouldn’t be the point. It was not the desire that was a problem; it was the house. It was the walls and the time period. It was his chatter, his ghost following him around. I have been here before, he thought again. How can I be here again?

  It was perfectly normal to have these feelings, he told himself. He tried to channel his professional advice; his doctoral research; even the self-help-y book he’d written. People grieved in a myriad of ways, including through anonymous sex. Sex after extreme losses, especially death, often worked because it was life-affirming. His father’s death wasn’t exactly a wound he needed to mend, but it was so obvious that he would fall right into the arms of the first person he saw after his show was cancelled. Even if he had been rude at first, even if Eric was so much younger than anyone he’d normally look at. Of course this would happen. Anonymous sex.

  But it wasn’t anonymous. That was the real problem. Eric was Eric. Cosmin knew him, had seen him, had watched him grow up—but then again, how much did he really know about Eric? He’d been married. He was bisexual. But what of anything else? They could fall in bed together with the ease of a hook-up and let their bodies take over, but with slightly more comfort in the cuddling due to their shared history and location.

  When Cosmin was with people in the past, especially after Maurice—and especially Julian—he had kept his past his past. He refused to talk about it. And when people asked, he’d just quote Shakespeare and think he was being clever. The past is prologue, my dear friend, and everything else beyond this point is our own. It was a line from The Tempest, a text he had to teach that year he’d met Maurice. He had been the first person he tried to get to see his past.

  And his father had ruined it.

  So when Julian, nearly a decade later, had found Cosmin’s past through his own means, it was enough to leave another man whom he thought he was going to marry.

  The people who got under Cosmin’s skin without his permission were the ones who always had to go.

  But here was Eric. Here was this beautiful young man in his bed, who knew about all the bullshit, but also didn’t know about any of it. He’d gone to school with Maurice and witnessed their embrace; he’d also gone to school with Suzanne and knew that one day she and Lily simply hadn’t come home. Cosmin didn’t have to explain the pain of those moments because it was too obvious, so Eric hadn’t asked too many questions. Even when he messed up with Cosmin’s father and the end of his radio show,
he hadn’t tried to pry out the juicy bits of gossip; he’d offered up his services in the basement. He knew about pain, but he never asked to witness it in Cosmin’s expression.

  That was it as well, wasn’t it? Cosmin never wanted someone to witness his pain, probably because his father had refused to do it years ago. To ask someone to be there for him would make him too vulnerable. Like Miranda in the play asking Ferdinand if she loved him. Her question was brave, so brave, because it was the worst part of any relationship. The question left you open and laid your desires bare since the only reason you were asking was precisely because you wanted it to be a mutual affirmation. The same went for wedding proposals; all kinds of questions were asked with the desired response in the affirmative. To then have the negative come back was too hard to think about, so it was always best not to ask the question in the first place. It was why Cosmin and Maurice, and then Cosmin and Julian had talked about marriage, but never asked it to either party. Cosmin learned that even saying hello, this is my boyfriend could sometimes be too much.

  Eric’s words from earlier came back to Cosmin: Can I ask a question? What a profound statement that suddenly was. And Cosmin had asked it back. He swallowed hard. These were inconsequential questions. They meant nothing, he tried to tell himself. Yet all those nothing questions had led to this body next to him. A hook-up that was just a hook-up, yes, but also...

  Cosmin didn’t want to think about it anymore. He didn’t want to pile more loss on top of loss, lest he become a hoarder like his father. He turned over in the bed, facing away from Eric’s body, but he still didn’t sleep.

  After about an hour of his repeated obsessions and going through what he remembered of The Tempest, he realized he wasn’t going to sleep. He rose, careful to not disturb Eric, and then shut the door again. With a flashlight in hand, he assessed his position. He could go back to the basement in search of what he needed, but they’d looked extensively already. It was most likely not there. He shined the light on his father’s bedroom.