by Anna Martin
“This is good too,” he said after trying it. “Elderflower?”
“It was a risk,” Danny said with a shrug. “I thought you might go for it.”
“I do,” Alex agreed. “Do you need me to pay now or can I start a tab?”
“Yeah, we can take a tab, no worries—van Amsberg, right?”
“Right.”
“Your table is right over there. Just give me a wave if I can get you anything else.”
“I will.”
“So, you’re a student?” George asked.
Alex nodded. “Yep. I’m doing my master’s, actually. In architecture.”
“Oh,” George said, trying to sound like he didn’t know this already. From his not stalking. “That’s interesting.”
“I think so.”
“Do you study the theory? Or do you want to do architectural design?”
“Both,” Alex said, and took a sip of his cocktail. “I love theory, and I love history. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel a fair bit. I love cityscapes—looking at how different people have come together to create iconic skylines.”
“I don’t know that much about it.”
“You know more than you think,” Alex said lightly. “I could show you a silhouette right now of London, or Paris, or New York, or San Francisco, or Seattle, or Sydney, or Rome, and you’d likely be able to name them. Because of their iconic buildings.”
“And that’s what you want to do? Design iconic buildings?”
Alex laughed. “Sure. What architect doesn’t? My master’s thesis is about iconic skylines, but I expect when I start work, I’ll go into domestic architecture.”
“How come?”
“Because I like people,” Alex said. “I really love the idea of working with a family to create a home that they’ll pass down through the generations.”
“Alex?”
“Mm?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you?”
Alex grinned. “Twenty-three. You?”
George winced. “Almost twenty-nine. I feel like a cradle snatcher.”
“Don’t. I like that. Guys my own age are almost always mindless idiots. Tell me about your family?”
George laughed and shook his head. “You don’t wanna know about them.”
“I do!” Alex insisted. “I do.”
“Okay. Well, I’m one of eight kids—”
“Eight? Seriously?” Alex interjected.
“Yeah,” George laughed.
“Where are you”—Alex waved his hand around demonstratively—“in that line-up?”
“Second. I have an older brother, Maggie—”
“Wait, your brother is called Maggie?”
“Will you stop interrupting me?” George said, poking Alex in the shoulder.
“Sorry.”
“His name is Keith. But our last name is Maguire. Maggie Maguire? It’s a nickname.”
“Got it.” Alex slurped his cocktail loudly, then grinned.
“Okay, so I’m two years younger than Maggie. Then I have six sisters.” He took a deep breath. “Caroline, Emma, Charlotte, Megan, Luna, and Felicity. And my sister Emma, she has a baby. Lily-Rose.”
“That’s a lot of girls.”
“Yeah,” George laughed. “Caroline is six years younger than me. It was just me and Maggie for a while, then the rush of oestrogen started.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine having seven brothers and sisters.”
George shrugged. He’d grown up in a big family, though having the one brother made all of the sisters bearable. They were both close to their dad too and his dad’s brother, who co-owned the garage where his dad and Maggie worked.
“Are you out to them?” Alex asked.
“To my mum and dad and Maggie, yeah. And my nan.”
“No one else?”
George shook his head. “Not right now. It’s not a massive secret, you know? I just… I don’t want to be the ‘gay brother’ or the ‘gay uncle’ or ‘Paul’s gay son.’ I need to figure it all out for myself first. I only told them a year ago.”
“Really? Wow.”
“I only figured it out for myself about six months before that.”
Alex’s jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“You only knew you were gay a year and a half ago?”
“Yeah,” George said again, feeling defensive. “Not all of us figure it out when we’re ten, you know.”
“I know,” Alex said. “I’m sorry. It’s just… everyone I know came out when they were teenagers. It seems mad to me that you could be in your midtwenties before you know about your sexuality. Were your folks okay?”
“Pretty much. My dad asked me if I was sure about a hundred times. He wasn’t upset or mad or anything. It just took him a while to get his head around it all. Which makes sense, I suppose. He’d known me as straight for almost twenty-five years before I corrected his assumptions.”
“Did you go out with girls?”
“Yeah. I went out with Laura Churchman for about five years, from when I was sixteen until I left uni.”
“Wow.”
“And I know what you want to ask,” George said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Yes, I had sex with her. Not that often, though. She said she didn’t like it, that it hurt too much, so sometimes she gave me a blow job or whatever. We just didn’t, you know.” He sipped his cocktail again, liking it more than he wanted to admit. “How about you?”
“When did I come out? Or when did I know I was gay?”
“Both.”
“Well, I went to an all-boys private boarding school. And then I went to another all-boys private school.” He shrugged. “I never really worked out women, what to do with them, what the appeal was supposed to be. And I know it’s a cliché and all, but there’s a lot of show-and-tell that goes on at boarding school. I always thought, what’s the fuss about with girls, when you could have one of those studs?” He laughed and stretched, clearly comfortable in his surroundings. “I had crushes on older boys for years before I even knew what ‘gay’ meant. You never had that?”
“No, not at all. My parents never put any pressure on me to behave a certain way. I suppose they watched me grow up and interpreted from my behaviour that I was straight.”
“Let me guess,” Alex said, leaning forward so his forearms were resting on his knees. “You liked sports. Video games, riding your bike, messing around with boys your age. Being dirty, being loud, doing okay in school but never exceling because you’d prefer to be outside. You had strong male role models who showed you what it meant to ‘be a man.’ You’d drink beer, get into fights, stumble home and apologise to your mother.”
George frowned. “Okay, but I also liked to be with my mum. I would help her out with my sisters—I could change nappies from when I was about fourteen. I helped her out with making dinner and stuff, and I loved reading, and adventures, and playing with my sisters too.”
Alex cocked his head to the side. “Aren’t you the little enigma?”
“Not really. I’m just a person, Alex. Not a caricature.”
“Point taken.”
“Can I ask you why you live here, rather than in the Netherlands?”
“Oh, that’s a long story,” Alex said, sighing as he collapsed back into the comfort of the chair. He raised his hand to get attention at the bar, then circled his finger in the air for another round of drinks. George wanted to say something, to tell Alex to go and order his own fucking drink, but he stayed quiet. No need to be purposefully antagonistic.
“Same again, guys?” Danny said, coming over to pick up their empty glasses.
“Please,” George said.
Alex grinned and winked. “Surprise me.”
“I can do that.”
“So?” George asked when Danny went back to the bar.
“Okay. Well, my mother is English. She grew up between London and Bath because my gra
ndfather was a member of the House of Lords. Obviously she moved to the Netherlands when she met and married my father, and then they had me and my brother.”
“You’re older?” George asked, and Alex nodded.
“Yes, by eighteen months. I was brought up bilingual—basically my mother spoke English to me and my brother, and my father and most of the rest of the family spoke Dutch. When I was seven, my mum asked if I wanted to stay in school in the Netherlands, which I wasn’t particularly enjoying, or try a school in London. So I moved to Notting Hill to live with my grandfather and Greta, who was my nanny at the time, and went to Harrow.”
“It’s hard for me to wrap my head around who you actually are. You just seem posh to me, not, you know, royal.”
Alex laughed. “Thanks, I think. It’s weird, but my brother is much more royal than me. Hendrick stayed in the Netherlands with my mum and dad and went to a private school there instead of coming to London. So he was around all of the family shit a lot more than I ever was.”
“Why is it weird if he was there and you weren’t?”
“Because he was never going to be king,” Alex said. “Nor was I, really. My dad is the second brother, so he would have only been king if my uncle died without any kids. Then it would have passed to me.”
“But he does have kids?”
“Now he does,” Alex said with a grin. “I have three cousins. They’re all young, though. Uncle Wil didn’t have kids until he was older, but my parents were both young when they had me and Hendrick.”
“Got it.”
He watched as Danny slid out from behind the bar with two more glasses on a tray, then set each down on the table between them.
“Here you go,” he said cheerfully. “Can I get you anything else?”
“I think we’re good,” George said, smiling at him. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He slipped discreetly away.
“There’s still a possibility, though,” George continued, “that you could be king someday.”
“Well, not really. Only in the same way that there’s a chance Prince Harry could be king. That would only happen if a lot of other people in his family died first.”
George pulled a face.
“Exactly.”
“Are you out to your family?”
“Oh God,” Alex laughed. “Yeah. Since forever.”
“What did they say?”
“Well, I don’t think it exactly came as a shock, I’ll say that much. I was always an ‘unusual child.’”
“I bet you were.”
George picked up his refreshed drink and took a tentative sip. It tasted even better than the last one.
Earlier in the evening—sometime around his third cocktail—Alex had decided it was going pretty well. He didn’t normally date people, not like this, and George was fun. He was smart and interesting and funny and hot, and Alex was prepared to break some of his own rules to spend more time with him.
Alex laughed softly as he pulled away from George’s lips. They had found a dark alcove in the already pretty dark club and had been grinding together and snogging for… longer than they probably should have been. George’s hands gently kneaded Alex’s asscheeks, and he smiled, skimming his lips over the corner of Alex’s mouth, then knocking their noses together.
“I am…,” Alex said, then sighed. “Conflicted.”
“Oh?”
George moved one hand and carefully worried Alex’s nipple through his shirt. He pressed a slack kiss to Alex’s throat, and Alex forgot nearly every thought that was in his brain.
“Why are you conflicted?” George growled.
The stone wall at Alex’s back was cold. The chill prickled at his neck, and he reached again for George’s waist.
“Because I wasn’t going to ask you to come back to mine tonight,” Alex said, the words taking longer than they should to come out. His brain was fried. “But every second you do that makes me lose control a little bit more.”
George chuckled low in his throat. “What makes you think I want to go back to yours?”
“Um…. Your hard-on pressing into my thigh?”
George laughed then, a different sound, rich and warm and right. “You may have a point.”
“So…. Will you? Come back with me?”
George had the best example of resting bitch face Alex had ever seen. Even when relaxed and calm, his brow was furrowed and his eyes were angry; his bottom lip was full enough that it looked like he was constantly pouting. Up close like this, Alex could see the very fine white scar that tugged the corner of George’s top lip up into a permanent snarl. He’d obviously split it at some point and it had healed crooked. With his buzzed short hair and unshaven jaw, George looked tough, rough, mean.
Then he smiled, and his whole face lit up with sweet softness. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Alex said and bit George’s pouty bottom lip. “Let me go settle the bill and call a cab.”
“Nuh-uh. I’ll split it with you.”
“I asked you out, I’ll cover the bill.” He pressed his hands to George’s chest and thought about the possibility of getting this man naked again. “Can you go and get our coats, though?”
George nodded, then his eyes glazed over. He turned Alex slowly, backing him against the wall and slipping his tongue between Alex’s lips. It took another five minutes before Alex managed to get as far as the bar.
By the time they got outside, it was after midnight and the March air was bitingly cold, enough to sober them both up and calm some of the intense heat that had been building between them. The cab was waiting, thank God, and Alex gave his address and quick directions to the driver as George climbed into the back.
It was a city cab, rather than a car, so there was plenty of space in the back for George to stretch out his legs, and Alex reached for George’s hand experimentally. He still wasn’t sure how out George really was, so he was pleased when their fingers were twined together.
The journey back to his flat didn’t take long. He lived far enough away to justify taking a cab—plus, it was cold—while still living in the middle of Edinburgh. Marchmont was an area of old Victorian tenements: long rows of tall buildings, each containing beautiful flats that could easily house a whole family. His own was just behind the main road, with a small garden in the front and black and white checkered tiles in the porch.
Alex caught George looking.
“Nearly all of the tiles are original or restored,” Alex said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
He let them in, pleased that he’d left the heating on so it was toasty and warm.
“Nice place,” George said as Alex closed the door and locked, then bolted it.
“Thank you. I like it.”
The flat was a split level: a living room and huge kitchen on the ground floor, then two bedrooms and a bathroom below. Like most of the buildings in this area, the flat still boasted most of the original features—high ceilings with intricate coving, wooden floors, huge sash windows that let the light flood in. Alex had found antique chandeliers and furniture that either complimented the old features of the house, or contrasted with them in an interesting way.
George shrugged off his coat and kicked off his shoes, setting the first on a hook near the door and the latter underneath. Alex followed suit, then grabbed his hand.
“Let me get you a drink.”
“Water?” George said, almost apologetically. “I don’t normally drink cocktails, and I think it’s gone to my head.”
“Lightweight,” Alex teased. He tugged gently on George’s hand to lead him through to the kitchen.
Some of the flats in this area had four, maybe five bedrooms, they were that big. Alex’s flat had the same amount of space, he’d just used it differently. Instead of having a dining room, he’d knocked the wall through so his kitchen was huge. It meant he had a big sofa just to the side of the kitchen where most of his friends would hang out while he cooked.
Alex enjoyed that, bringing people together, though his work schedule meant he didn’t get to do it as often as he liked.
George was looking around as they walked quietly through the flat, mindful of something in the darkness Alex couldn’t name. He took two glasses from a cupboard and filled them with water from the jug in the fridge, the one with the filter on it.
When he turned back to George, Alex found himself being backed up against the counter and kissed thoroughly. With a glass of water in each hand, he couldn’t do much about it, and he smiled into the kiss, ducking out of it when his fingers started to itch with the need to touch.
“You’re insanely fucking beautiful,” George murmured against Alex’s neck.
Alex preened, adoring the attention, and tilted his neck to the side to give George better access. He went straight to it, nibbling and licking and sucking, and after putting the glasses back on the counter, Alex wrapped his hands around George’s thick biceps.
Fuck, you’re ripped, Alex thought, though he somehow managed to keep that to himself.
“Come on,” he said instead. He took George’s hand once more, passed him one of the glasses and picked up the other for himself, then led him out of the kitchen and downstairs.
“You have an upside-down house,” George said.
“Hmm?”
“Bedrooms downstairs, living area upstairs.”
Alex shot a grin over his shoulder. “I suppose. It’s nice down here, though. Much cosier than upstairs. And warmer too, because we’re below street level.”
It was dark in the hallway without the lights on. Alex knew his way around well enough in the dark, and didn’t reach for the switch. His guest bedroom was at the front of the house, his own bedroom and the bathroom on opposite sides of the hallway at the back.
Because of the low ceilings down here, Alex didn’t have an overhead light in the bedroom. Instead he’d picked out lamps: a few for the walls, one standing and one on each bedside table. They cast warm shadows over the room, making it much more intimate, in his opinion.
He looked back to where George was hovering in the doorway.
“Do you want to come in?”
George smiled shyly and rubbed the back of his neck, then ran his hand over his shaved head. He set his water down on one bedside table, then skimmed his hand over the heavy oak headboard.
