Love in Every Season

by Charlie Cochrane

  “Thank God for small mercies,” Alex looked unusually pensive. “And it gave me something to do on Valentine’s Day, apart from mope.”

  Jamie weighed his words carefully. Suddenly, without warning, they’d moved into uncomfortable waters, the sort of dangerous place where a fledgling relationship could easily founder. “You really do hate that day, don’t you? What have you got against it?”

  “Plenty.” Alex stared at the hearth, thoughts evidently somewhere he didn’t want to be. “You said you felt the same. What’s bugging you?”

  “Hey, that’s not fair. I asked first,” Jamie said, relying on humour, as he’d always done when things became difficult. Hopefully this wouldn’t be one of the rare occasions when it didn’t work.

  “You’re such a dick at times,” Alex said, but at least he grinned as he said it. And at last he was looking at Jamie again. “I’m going to sound a right whinger, but I always dreaded St. Valentine’s Day when I was a teenager. I only ever got one card, and that was from this girl with buck teeth and acne who used to go all gooey over me.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Double ouch. She was really nice, you know, although it was never going to do her any good. I felt sorry for her, but I always worried that if I showed any sort of compassion, she might get the wrong idea. She suffered enough stick from her mates when I got outed, for wasting all her efforts on a lost cause.” He knocked back the rest of his pint then turned the glass slowly on the table. “Like I said, cruel.”

  “It takes a long time to get over these things,” Jamie replied, not sure they’d entirely got to the heart of the matter.

  “Yeah, and I thought I had. There’s another chapter to this story.” Alex pushed his chair back from the table. “Want another?”

  “Just a half, please.” Jamie watched—and admired—as he sauntered over to the bar. Long legs, which had probably been lanky when Alex was a teenager, making him gawky and awkward, just as Jamie had been, but which now gave an easy grace to the grown man’s walk. “Thanks,” he said, as Alex came back with a couple of halves, but he waited until the bloke had settled before asking, “Do I get the rest of the story?”

  Alex shrugged. “You’re welcome to it. Nothing secret. February the fourteenth was my partner’s birthday. Marcus would be drowned in a shower of cards of one sort or another, and we’d go out to celebrate. For three—no, four it must have been—years it had become a happy day.”

  Jamie took a swig of beer, trying to gather his wits at how upset Alex had become. “I’m sorry,” he said, eventually. “Is he…” the word dead felt so blunt, whereas passed on seemed so insipid.

  “No, nothing like that,” Alex said, with a sudden smile. “Sorry, I didn’t put that very well, did I? ‘Unintentionally gave the interview panel the wrong impression,’ as Boosyboots would have said.” He laughed. “I think it would have been easier if he had died, which sounds callous but is probably true.”

  “I’ll let you know if it’s callous when you tell me what he did.”

  “Buggered off, last year, with a bloke he met in a club. After two timing me with him for a month.” Alex knocked back half of his drink in one swallow, then slammed the glass down on the table, as though it was responsible for all his woes. “When I found out, we had a blazing row. That was on his birthday, too, as if I needed another reason to hate the day.” He lifted his beer. “Maybe we should drink a belated toast to the anniversary.”

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish?” Jamie asked, raising his own glass.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think it at the time, but maybe you’re right. Good riddance.” Alex chinked their glasses together, took a drink, then put the rest of his beer down, more gently this time. “Perhaps one day I’ll be able to say that and really mean it.”

  “I hope so.” Jamie caught his gaze, held it, drinking in the firelight reflected in his deep, dark eyes. Had that sadness been there all the time, and he’d not noticed? Or not let himself notice?

  “Are you booked on any more courses?” Alex asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, narrowing the space between them without making it obvious to anyone else watching.

  “A couple,” Jamie replied, disappointed at the way the conversation had gone back to bloody governor stuff again, after the encouraging sign of Alex pouring out his troubles.

  “I better make sure I’m not on them, as well.” Alex looked at him sideways, something new—and unmistakable—in those dancing, shining eyes.

  “Is being with me that bad?” Jamie’s emotions were all over the shop. Why did Alex’s words seem to be giving him the brush off while his eyes communicated something different?

  Alex dropped his voice. “Bad? You’re bloody gorgeous. I’d have to spend the whole session stopping myself grabbing you and bending you over the table. The only reason I survived yesterday was that I’d convinced myself that you’d punch my lights out if I tried chatting you up.”

  “But what about all that stuff with The Line of Beauty? I thought you’d twigged by then?”

  “I was still fishing. You know. asking the candidate half a question to see how they interpret it. The look in your eye told me the fish had taken the bait.” Alex smiled, the sort of smile that went straight from your eyes to below your belt without connecting with anywhere else in between.

  “So how did you survive today?” Jamie asked, trying to persuade the contents of his trousers to behave themselves until they were in a place where they could respond to that smile.

  “By telling myself that this was going to happen.” Alex waved his hand to take in the pub, the fire, the drinks. “I just had to be patient.”

  “You mean you had to wait for me to ask you out for a drink?”

  “Something like that. And resist killing Bruce and the rest of that little clique of dinosaurs.”

  “They’d have tried the patience of a saint, wouldn’t they?” Jamie sipped his drink. It was nice, sitting here—good atmosphere, roaring fire, cracking pint—but he couldn’t help thinking about making a move to somewhere even nicer. He had food and drink at home, enough for two. And a big, comfy sofa that hadn’t had the springs tested in a while.

  “They’d have had Job running around in circles, tearing his hair out. Bless them,” Alex added, with a sardonic smile. “How awful for all those blokes spending their lives thinking they’d been handed the winning ticket at birth, being white and straight and male, and then finding somebody coming along and saying there has to be a redraw. I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.”

  “I’m glad you added the ‘almost,’ or I’d have had to punch your lights out.” Jamie laughed, happier now that they’d negotiated those choppy waters, at least for the moment. “We’ve got some of them at Cattlebridge. Can’t understand why we just can’t recruit a male headteacher when our present—female—one retires next year. To compensate for the lack of Y chromosomes at the school. Only they dress it up by calling it lack of ‘gender role models.’ I’m tempted to say we have to ensure they’re gay, to compensate for the lack of sexual-orientation role models. And fit, to compensate for the lack of totty.”

  “I can’t decide whether to drag you down off your high horse or dare you to do it. Only I’d have to make sure I was there to see their jaws hit the desk.” Alex shifted in his seat, pressing up against the table as if, should he get close enough, it might fall apart, and he’d end up in Jamie’s lap. “Maybe if I’m brave enough to say we should be getting a fit, gay, male for our Deputy Head then I should include a romp on the settee as part of the additional activities. There are some bean bags in the infants’ reading corner. I could relocate them to the first aid room.”

  “You’d give your dinosaurs a heart attack. You’ve never got an all-male short list?”

  “No chance: not a Y chromosome among them. More’s the pity.” Alex cocked his head to one side, as though shepherding his thoughts. “Remember what we asked that woman we interviewed about vulnerable pupils?”

  “Jess
? Yes, I do. But I thought you said shop talk was off the agenda?” Jamie, wrong footed again by the change of conversational direction, gently shifted in his seat. He knew he looked particularly attractive sprawled in a chair, or so he’d been told plenty of times, so why not make use of the fact? He needed to get Alex’s mind back on course again.

  “This isn’t shop talk.” The renewed glint in Alex’s eye, after he’d given Jamie’s pose the once over, suggested the sprawl was doing its business. “What did we ask her?”

  “We asked…” Jamie sat up, suddenly remembering the question, and the next bit of the interview, realising why Alex had asked him to repeat it. “What the difference was between monitoring what you’d done and evaluating what had happened as a result.”

  “So far so good, and Jess gave a pretty decent answer. I hope the people next week make as good a fist of it.” Alex leaned even further over the table, lowering his voice as he did so. “And what did Bruce say?”

  “Mr. Daft Ideas? Some great screed about it not being what you had; it was what you did with it made all the difference, all of it laden with double entendres to which he was oblivious. How she kept a straight face is beyond me.”

  “How I kept a straight face is more of a miracle.” It had certainly been a tiring couple of days, but Alex’s eyes were still as bright—and as suggestive—as they’d been the morning of the day before. “All I could think of was what you have and what I’d like to do with it. Every time I heard ‘impact’ from then on, I kept thinking…”

  Jamie pushed his chair back from the table, then hastily swigged down the last of his beer. “Come on. Tell me what you were thinking when we get to my place.”

  ***

  Jamie only lived twenty-minutes’ drive away, and—as Alex insisted it was on his way home—it was the logical place to go, wasn’t it? Especially when Jamie had a cottage pie in the freezer which could go straight into the microwave? Maybe if he and Alex had been younger, and more reckless, they’d have made use of one of the unlit laybys on the main road, both of them having just one thing in mind as they left the pub. But Jamie didn’t fancy thrashing about on the back seat of his Mini and maybe the chances of them being caught at it were too high, the Friday night traffic taking the rat run to the motorway being at its peak.

  By the time they’d pulled onto Jamie’s drive, his stomach was getting the upper hand in the competing demands of kitchen and bedroom. Was this what middle age would be like? The first steps down the slippery slope to becoming one of those dinosaurs, when you were ruled by what was above your waist rather than below it?

  As Jamie started to unlock the front door, and before he could ask if Alex wanted something to eat, the bloke’s rumbling stomach provided an answer.

  “Sorry about that. We should have picked up a takeaway en route.”

  “No need.” Jamie ushered them into the house. “I’ll rustle us up something. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. Make yourself at home.”

  Alex’s coat hung up on the peg next to Jamie’s, looking like it was meant to be there, directions to the toilet given and made use of, cottage pie into the microwave, coffee pot put on. Jamie had just started to warm the plates when Alex’s voice sounded from the kitchen door.

  “Would you be offended if I said how nice it is to share a bit of domesticity again?”

  “Of course not. Don’t your dates always get out the cottage pie for you?”

  Alex grinned. “That sounds vaguely smutty. I’ve had precisely one date since Marcus pissed off, and that was at an overpriced and underwhelming restaurant. This smells a damn sight better.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Jamie had turned around to rummage in the cutlery draw, when he felt wiry arms encircling his waist.

  “You smell good, too, nice enough to eat.” Alex nuzzled against his neck.

  Jamie leaned into the embrace. “I can put this on hold for a while.”

  “No, don’t do that,” Alex said, loosening the clinch. “I might go all weak for lack of food just as we get to the interesting bit.”

  “Daft beggar.”

  While they ate, the chat started off with the jobs they did, the places they worked—the people in the office who got their goats or floated their boats—then drifted briefly through their time at university back to school days and, inevitably, onto governance again.

  “Right, if we’re going to put the world to rights about headteachers and why some of them could do with slapping into the middle of next week, let’s go into the lounge,” Jamie said, getting up from the little kitchen table. “Then if I fall asleep, at least I’ll be comfy.” Maybe he’d fall asleep in Alex’s lap.

  “Don’t worry, you won’t fall asleep.” Alex slipped his arms round Jamie’s waist again. “I’ll see to that.”

  “Oh, will you?” Jamie manoeuvred them through the kitchen door and into the hallway, careful not to break the embrace.

  “Yep.” Alex leaned in for a kiss. “I’ve spent so long listening to people going on about strong leadership from school governors I’ve become indoctrinated.”

  “Strong leadership? That’s the first time I’ve heard it called that.” He brushed his hand across the front of Alex’s trousers as he drew the pair of them into the lounge and in the direction of the sofa.

  “Strong, hard, and full of impact, Jamie. I’m ready to offer you my very best, if you think I’m the man for the job.”

  Jamie couldn’t really think straight at all, except for knowing that he was just as excited as Alex was and that they both wanted this. So much. “I haven’t got any bean bags. Not like the ones you wanted to try out in the first aid room.”

  “Shame.” Alex dropped onto the settee, taking Jamie with him. “I was thinking about me and you and those bean bags while I was driving back here. All the things we could do with them. Now I think I won’t be able to go around the school without having inappropriate thoughts.”

  “Tell me about it. We’ve got a learning walk at Cattlebridge in a fortnight. I’ll look at the reading corner and think of you and me snuggled up there. You and me on the PE mats. You and me on the bark under the big oak tree on the fie—”

  “Stop it,” Alex said, after they broke from the kiss which had stopped Jamie in his tracks. “I won’t be able to look at a pub seat again without thinking of you lying sprawled over it. You sprawl beautifully.”

  “I know.” He returned the kiss. Alex’s lips were cool, but the heat of his tongue was a surprise. It had been too long since Jamie had been snogged.

  They didn’t talk about school stuff, or anything, the next few minutes, tongues too busy exploring each other’s mouths and necks to be used for anything as boring as talking. They found a proper use for their hands, too, Jamie pulling up Alex’s shirt to caress the skin at the base of his spine, Alex with his fingers drumming along Jamie’s thigh.

  “You’d better be careful. I think I’ve lost any self-control I had.”

  “Who needs self-control?” Alex whispered against Jamie’s neck, which didn’t help the situation at all.

  “You might change your mind if I end up making a mess of your shirt.” There was a very real possibility of that, the way Alex kept pressing closer and fiddling with Jamie’s flies. Once the snake was loose, it was going to be getting straight into action.

  “Come on. It’ll be comfier down here.” Jamie eased them both off the sofa and onto the rug, taking some cushions with him. More room on the floor. Easier to clean the rug than the sofa, as well, he remembered from past experience.

  “Yeah. That’s better.” Alex made a beeline for Jamie’s flies again. “Come on, let the dog see the rabbit. Wow. That’s a hell of a rabbit.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Jamie said, breathlessly. “Oh! Bloody hell.” Alex was doing things with his hand—simple, skilled movements that had no right to make Jamie feel the way he did.

  “Want me to stop?”

  “No. No. Just make it happen. Here. Now.” Jamie gave up try
ing to hold himself in check. He’d forgotten what that glorious moment felt like. The one just before you came, the one you both wanted to go on forever and wanted to finish—in satiation—right away.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Alex said, caressing Jamie’s neck with his tongue while he brought him off.

  “Understatement,” Jamie replied, when he could at last say anything sensible. “Let me…” He didn’t need to let this particular rabbit out. Alex was laid bare, as elegant in this part of his body as in all the rest of him.

  “Help yourself.” Alex lay back, hard, beautiful, and ready for immediate action. “I’m all yours.”

  “So much choice. I don’t know where to start,” Jamie said. But he headed due south.

  ***

  “I won’t ever be able to read anything about impact without thinking of this evening. I’ll have to resign.” Him, Alex, that rug: how would Jamie be able to keep the smirk off his face? They sat, propped up against the settee, warm in the afterglow and the comfort of a blanket they’d pulled off the sofa.

  “I’m not going to be able to keep a straight face next week. I never realised there were so many double entendres lurking around.” Alex pinched Jamie’s arm. “It’s you and your smutty mind leading me astray.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve ever been led anywhere you didn’t want to go.” Jamie ran his fingers over Alex’s chest. It was nice just to talk. Tomorrow was Saturday, which surely meant no work and no reason why Alex couldn’t stay if he wanted. If it was too long since Jamie had been either seducer or seduced, it had been equally long since Jamie hadn’t woken up alone. “And you probably made the people doing the leading believe you were just a lamb to the slaughter. Are you still going to hate Valentine’s Day?”

  “I’m not sure. It’ll take a lot to get all the crap about Marcus out of my system. Maybe I could move from hating it to tolerating it, then to not disliking it. Small steps.” Alex stroked Jamie’s head. “How about you?”

  “I think I won’t dislike it, either. Certainly not this year’s incarnation. It managed to come up trumps.”