“Charlie, where are you?”
“Home?”
“Above the bakery?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I come and see you?”
“Now?”
“Yes. Because…” I had to take another breath. “You are full of shit. You are so fucking full of shit. You fuck people left, right and centre because you are bored, because you have nothing to hold on to. You said it yourself, you need roots. You are not a bad person, and you are not unreliable. And nice? You are fucking nice. You, of all people, should know that. Have you seen yourself? Have you heard what people say about you? They all tell me how lovely you are. Any friend of Charlie’s is a friend of theirs. People pat my back like… like I belong to you, and trust me, you do. You belong to me, and I belong to you, and yeah, now I’m back to being controlling and demanding, and yes, I know. My wife told me every fucking day. I can’t make decisions for other people. I don’t always know right from wrong, and I certainly don’t always know what is right for one person and not right for another. I am not God, and I am not in charge. I am completely out on a limb here with you because you are right. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know if I want my penis up your arse or if I would freak out if you put yours up in mine. I don’t know because how am I supposed to know?”
“I am definitely buying you a dildo. Go figure it out.”
“I don’t want a dildo!” I shouted to my empty house as Charlie laughed softly in my ear.
“Then what do you want, Daniel?”
“I want to see you. I want to try this… with you. I want to… sleep with you.”
“I don’t want to sleep with you, Daniel. I want to have sex with you. I want to fuck you and completely destroy you. But if I did? It would destroy me because I can’t take it. I can’t do this anymore.”
“I’m not following you,” I said softly.
“You want to try things with me, but what if you don’t like it? What if this all goes tits up? I’ve had weeks of this. Weeks of all this loving you and hating you and loving the idea of you, and then I remember you shouting at me in the street, and I just… I can’t…”
“I need to see you. Now,” I said, my voice low and gravelly.
“No,” he replied. and I could sense him moving around.
“Please?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Charlie, please,” I said. “Please, please, my darling. I need...” I just needed to not feel like a freak because right now I did. I just wanted to… Fuck him. “Fuck you, Charlie. Just fuck you.”
“Charming. And fuck you too, Daniel.”
“I want to hug you so bad, right now. Do you know how good it feels to hug you? You give the best hugs. So, fuck you.”
He laughed. Thank God for that.
“I’m hanging up on you now,” he said.
“Please don’t.”
“Daniel…”
“I can’t do this. I can’t play this game anymore. I can’t go to sleep not knowing where I stand. I’m so tired. I’m so fucking tired of this madness of being in love with you and not knowing what the hell I am doing. Charlie, please.”
“Go open your front door,” he said.
“What?”
“I’m coming to you, you idiot.” He laughed. Then he hung up on me.
This thing with Charlie had obviously made me lose my mind because I had no idea what just happened, what I’d done or what I’d said.
“I’ve…” I said out loud, but I couldn’t say anything else. I was just standing there, staring at the phone in my hand.
Then I panicked, and I could almost hear Charlie’s laughter as I knew exactly what this meant. I was having a full-on gay panic because I was in love with him, and now, he was finally coming to see me, and I sniffed my armpits and checked my hair in the windowpane. I looked like shit, and I panicked even more.
Then I didn’t. But still, my heart was beating out of my chest as I went to open the front door and stepped out on the wet stone step. The sky was black, and the streetlight a few doors down was casting a dull sheen over the road, glittering little rivers of water running down the asphalt towards town as I kept watch for movement.
There was none, and I sighed, crossing my arms around my body to keep out the chill. It was January and mid-winter. I smiled as I realised my house was nice and warm, the roaring fire in the front room making the space I now called home a ridiculous damp-ridden place of calm.
I went back inside, leaving the door on the latch. Smoothed down the blankets on the sofa and let out another resigned sigh at the neglected mattress, still carelessly leaning against the wall. My pillows mocked me in their naked state on the floor, and I hadn’t even unpacked the sheets or made the duvet up, instead, curling up and spending my nights on the sofa, like a lazy teenager.
I ripped the plastic off the mattress, placing the heavy springs carefully on the floor as far from the fire as I could get it. It looked ridiculous, but right now? It would have to do. I opened up sheets and shook out pillowcases, making the bed up like a grownup to keep my head straight, and I needed anything right now to keep me calm because…
I threw the duvet on the makeshift bed, carefully straightening the corners.
It would have to do. I sighed, staring at my messed-up ideas of interior design.
I lit the scented candles and then blew them out, feeling like I was trying too hard, when all I wanted to do was scream.
Then, I stood on my doorstep, gazing down the empty road like a lovesick fool.
I was a fool and lovesick was as close as I could describe the feelings that I struggled to put words to in my head.
And there he was because I would recognise him anywhere, keeping a steady pace up the incline of the hill, carrying a bag on his shoulder and wearing a knitted hat on his head.
I shivered, then smiled, then hugged myself and rolled on my heels backwards and forwards like an overexcited child.
Charlie, my Charlie.
“Daniel,” he said politely as he took the first step up the stairs and stopped.
“I love you,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” he said back, smiling as he skipped into my arms.
He hugged me, and I hugged him back. I held him in my arms as my chest constricted and sobs threw punches in my stomach. I hugged him and held him, and my face was in his neck, and I wondered if I ever could let go. If I did, what would happen, and if I didn’t? I would just stay here forever. I wouldn’t mind, I thought as I rocked him in my arms and let my lips kiss the skin on his neck. I kissed the soft hair on his neckline, and I kissed the back of his ears. I ripped off the damp hat on his head and sniffed at his hair, breathing him in like the lovesick fool I was. I loved him. I didn’t care anymore. I needed him. Him.
“Daniel,” he said into my chest. “Are we going to stand here all day or are you going to invite me in?”
I just giggled, almost hysterically, because I was suddenly feeling a little bit high. High on him. High on everything we could become.
“Come,” I said, taking his hand. “Come in.”
I showed him around the shell left of a house that was once somebody’s home. I showed him the peeling wallpaper and the patches of dirt. I introduced him to my rat-infested toilet, and he promised to give the rodents names if we decided to keep them as pets. We laughed at the drips from the ceilings in the freezing rooms upstairs. I made him climb into the loft, where we stood and looked at the stars because there was a hole in the roof here too, just large enough to see them through. I took his hand again because I wanted to, and it was just there fitting nicely in mine. I steadied him with my other hand because the floorboards were just random planks, and I wouldn’t want him to fall. So, we were standing there, hand in hand, with my other hand awkwardly resting on his shoulder.
“I assume you are fixing the roof?”
“Proper loft conversion, Big Derek said. One day, this will be our bedroom, and it will have this big, ma
ssive roof window just here, over where the bed will be. There will be another one over on this side here, where the en-suite bathroom will go. Then, there will be a smaller window just there by the staircase that will open up into a very tiny little balcony. It will be tiny, not even enough for that Big Derek to stand on, but he said it will be good enough and add value to the house. People love little balconies and random stuff like that, he said.”
He smiled. I could feel it in my bones despite the darkness, because his hand was in mine and we were staring at the stars, and I suddenly didn’t care if I’d be debt-ridden for the rest of my life as long as I could give him the stars and the moon to calm him at night.
“Did you think you would… do this? Together with me?”
“Fix up the house?”
“Yeah?” he said quietly.
“The plans can still be changed, and Geoff needs you to sort out the units and worktops and all that. I don’t know what you need in a good kitchen. You’re the chef. I don’t even know the difference between a gas hob or an electric oven… thingy.”
“It’s your kitchen.”
“Ours,” I said. “I’m going to be bossy here because I can. This, here, now? This is my wreck, but when we are done with it? It will be our home. I want you to come stay here like you live here. I’ll give you a key, and you can come as you please. I want you to have a say in what we do with it and choose things like, you know, colours of the walls? Then one day, maybe you’ll move some things in here and then… One day you’ll just, stay.”
“We haven’t even had sex,” he muttered as I pulled him back into my arms.
“We haven’t even kissed,” I replied, letting my hand tangle in his hair. My fingers tracing the piercings through his skin and the pearls on their strings as I kissed his cheek. There was stubble against my lips. Softness and warmth. I kissed again, let my lips stroke against his nose. His eyelids. Little pecks on his temples as I tried to remember how to breathe.
“Don’t have a big gay panic,” he whispered.
“Not having a big gay panic,” I whispered back.
I kissed him, just pressing my lips against his mouth. He returned it with a fervour that made me a little dizzy because he was suddenly everywhere, his hands in my hair and his tongue in my mouth, and it was like everything and nothing all at once. He was with me and in me, and I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t know what to do.
So, I pulled back and clumsily cupped his face in my hands. I couldn’t see him, but he breathed into my mouth as I kissed him again, then I stopped and whispered, “Charlie.” Because… what else could I say?
“So, our first kiss was in the town square.” His arms were around my neck and mine around his back.
“We’re not going to count that one.”
“Yes, we are. It’s important to the story of how we met.”
“It’s nobody’s fucking business how we met.”
“It is. It’s the true, thrilling story of how I ended up turning you gay.”
“Charlie,” I whined.
“No, hang on, scrap that. It will be a thrilling X-rated Christmas story of how I turned you into a totally bisexual-slutty-sex-machine in just one night because you know what?”
“What?”
He laughed. I giggled.
“Our second kiss was in the place where our bed will one day be. Right here. Under the stars.”
“Our bed.” I sighed. “And I am nobody’s slutty sex machine.”
“Oh, Daniel, you will be. You’ll be my little sex-machine. Anyway, we will need loads of pillows and bedside tables. And we could put a kettle up here and a little fridge for milk, so we can make tea in the morning without going downstairs.”
“Charlie, it’s freezing up here, the milk will be fine.”
He said nothing as I took him back down the loft ladder and carefully folded up the hatch, leaving him standing in the hallway with his hands in his pockets.
“So…the sex-machine thing. If I asked you to, would you let me?” he said with a little smirk on his face.
“What are you asking?” I said, a small shiver going up my spine because I knew exactly what he was asking. He took a step forward and chewed a fingernail on his hand, staring at me from under his fringe.
“I’m not going to agree to you and me messing around, taking things slow and all that because I don’t think that would work here. We’re both grown up, and you are skittish enough as it is. I want to take you downstairs, right now and fuck your brains out on that mattress in front of the fire. Let’s just do this and do it right,” he said like it was a done deal.
“Oh.”
“I told you, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t just dance around the elephant in the room. I need this, with you. If we’re laying roots? Then they’ll start right here.”
“By you sticking your dick in my arse.”
“That’s the idea. I know what I want. I want you, every way I can have you. That’s the deal. And you need to own up to yourself and tell me exactly what you want in return. Because kissing and bribing me with keys and beds and stars in the sky and bloody granite worktops, is all good. But us? You and me?”
“You want granite worktops?” I smiled, trying to buy myself some time. He wasn’t buying any of it, staring at me like I was being a particularly truant toddler. I didn’t know what I wanted because I wanted everything. I didn’t know what to say because I wanted to say it all. I didn’t know what to do with this man on my landing with his hands back in his pockets and his fringe in his eyes. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings inside of me. I didn’t, so instead I grabbed his arms and shoved him against the wall, and I kissed him, my chest pushing him up against the peeling wallpaper as my hands ripped at his trousers, and he tugged almost violently at mine.
“So, your dick in my arse will solve everything,” I hissed into his mouth as I dragged his jeans down over his arse.
Then I had to stop and breathe as my hand smoothed over his curves because, fuck me, sideways, he had a fine arse. Rounded firm globes under my palms as I rutted into him and suddenly, I realised that this? With him? Didn’t feel so weird after all because this part I knew. This part I understood as my t-shirt went flying, and my arms were in the air as his mouth was sucking hickeys into my collarbone, and his hands were all over my back.
There was cold air around my groin as my joggers hit the floor, and his hand found a firm grip around my cock. Then he stroked it, and my mouth groaned.
“It’s too cold for your fine arse up here,” he grunted and gave my behind a little slap.
My mouth didn’t seem to be able to form words for a comeback, so I just nodded like a puppet and stumbled down the stairs with one jogger leg still round my ankle and a sock on the other foot. The heat of the downstairs was fantastic as I dropped the last of my clothing on the floorboards in the kitchen and dragged him behind me into the room where the fire was just at a nice glow in the fireplace and the bedsheets were warm against my skin. I tumbled down on my back with a now-naked Charlie crawling on top of me, his mouth trailing kisses on my bare skin, and his hand dragging his bag behind him.
“Got lube and condoms and a small plug, just to get you used to the idea.”
The gulp that came out of my mouth was ridiculously loud, but at the same time, my dick jolted. So, I didn’t know what side of the fence to sit on, if I liked this or not because there was smooth skin under the palms of my hand and a defined chest and softness around his stomach as I let my fingers roam. He was freckled everywhere, even around his nipples where the skin was marbled with toffee specks of colour in smooth little shapes.
“Roots,” I mumbled out, “is what I want. I want roots growing right here with you. I want us to figure this out, and I want you to come home to me at night and not fuck around with anyone else.”
“I won’t be your little wife.”
He wouldn’t look at me after the words had left his mouth, almost like he regretted the entire evening in an instant
.
“Don’t be a dick,” came out of mine because that was exactly what he was being. I might have spent the last month regretting those awful words that had so easily spilled out in my moment of madness, and yet here he was throwing misery right back in my face.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m not just used to… you know. I want to tell you stuff, but I’m so used to shutting myself off. Sex, it’s just physical you know. With you? I don’t know how to behave right now. I’ve never been… so invested in sticking my dick into someone like I am with you. I want you to… Daniel, I want you to want this as much as I do. I want to be with you, and fuck knows, I want to build this bloody house with you. I want to live here and wake up with you and have you tell me you love me because… You know?”
“I don’t know,” I replied sternly. “I don’t know who you are when you are like this, but I love you. I love the Charlie who makes me dinner. I love the Charlie who never stops to breathe. I love you when you are stupid and ridiculous, and I love you when you make me laugh. I even love you when you piss me off, and right now? I kind of love you, even though I am kind of being blackmailed into having sex with you… and that thing… you mentioned.”
“It’s a small anal plug. It won’t hurt you,” he said, suddenly being a totally different Charlie again. One that was small and frightened and curled up in my arms. I stroked his hair. Let my fingertips touch his skin.
“You don’t have to be anyone other than yourself with me.”
“I pretend I don’t care with people I fuck because I don’t. I just want a good time, and it’s easier just to shut the feelings out. I don’t know how to do this… with you. With all the feelings because I have them, right here. They are right here inside my chest, and you? Fuck you, Daniel.”
“I love you too.” I kissed him again. Hard and deep, claiming every little breath that was trying to escape from his mouth.
“I’m no good with all those words.”
“There are no right or wrong words.”
“I’m supposed to say it back.”
“You don’t have to. I know you do. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
This Thing With Charlie Page 7
