Flesh & Blood

by A. E. Dooland

  I shook my head. “We can look them up.”

  There turned out to be an app for it: I could even hold my phone up towards the sky and it would pick the brightest stars and tell me what they were called. We spent a little while playing with it; holding it in all directions, learning about celestial bodies and what all their names were. Lying still in one spot, though, I began to feel the chill in the air.

  “It’s getting cold,” I commented, putting my phone back in my pocket. “Maybe we should go inside.”

  Bree didn’t make any sort of attempt to move. “Or maybe we should get the doona.”

  I chuckled at her and tapped her nose with an index finger. “Okay.”

  The ground felt too solid under my jelly legs when I climbed off and tried to walk like a normal person again. I stole a glance at Bree before I struggled up the stairs to the house: she was lying on her back, limbs outstretched, gazing upwards at the sky. Her hair was fanned out around her head in perfect little ringlets. There was a gentle smile on her face, and while I was watching her, it deepened. I wondered what she was thinking about.

  Inside, all the lights were out. Rob and Sarah must have gone to bed after their shower. I grabbed the doona off my own bed, and was about to head straight back outside again when, coincidentally, my eyes fell on the hard packer on my desk.

  I stopped for a moment.

  Don’t make this wonderful night about sex, I immediately thought, feeling guilty. It’s not the right time, another voice said, and then, what do you actually think you’re going to do with that ridiculous thing, Min? I smothered them, thinking about Bree’s generous smile, her outstretched hand helping me up onto the trampoline, and those polka dot knickers. Something stirred in my chest at the thought of her.

  I abandoned the doona and went to pick the hard packer up off the desk. I could put it on now. A nervous smile immediately rose to my lips at the thought of that, and my stomach filled with butterflies. Yeah, just in case she wants to, I could put it on.

  Unable to wipe the stupid grin off my face, I pulled my jeans and boxers down around my knees and threaded my legs through the harness. It was easier the second time, and I knew how to fit the shaft in my boxers so my jeans zipped up. I let the front of my hoodie fall over the bulge. I preferred it hidden like that, actually. I didn’t much like how the hard packer looked—seeing it made me really uncomfortable—but as long as it was hidden, I kind of liked how actually having it felt. I was ready, in case something happened.

  I gathered up the doona again and went back outside, tossing it in a big heap on top of Bree and listening to her giggle and try and unearth herself from it as I climbed up and flopped down beside her. We wrapped ourselves in it, and then relaxed back onto the mat.

  Bree didn’t speak straight away. She was staring up at the sky with that same gentle smile she’d had earlier. “I was just thinking how different my life was six months ago,” she eventually said. “Everything was shit. It was such total shit. I used to lie in bed at night and wonder if that’s just the way life was going to be for me.” She turned her head towards me. “But it’s not.”

  Her hand found mine under the covers.

  “That’s not what my life is. It’s this: lying under the stars with someone who treats me like I’m the world. Someone who makes me feel like if I asked for one of those stars, she’d climb right up there and get one down for me.” There were tears in her eyes. “And I know it might not seem like anything, but I’m really, really excited to get my marks back from those assignments. I’ve never had that before. Teachers always wrote things like ‘disappointing’ and ‘not good enough’ on my papers. I can’t wait to see what they write this time.” She smiled a bit, quietly watching me. “I’m just really happy, Min,” she said. “And I wish this whole thing with your mum would go away so you could be really happy, too.”

  I sighed audibly, squeezing her hand. “Yeah,” I said, with feeling. “But given the circumstances, things are actually pretty good. Especially right now, listening to you talk about how happy you are.” I leant up a fraction, bringing a hand to her face and tilting her chin with my fingertips.

  She broke into a big, open smile and let me kiss her. Her lips tasted like ginger and alcohol—a sharp taste, but not unpleasant—an interesting contrast to how soft they were. She opened her mouth to me and let me kiss her slowly and thoroughly, her lips occasionally pulling tight on her teeth as she smiled. Her gentle fingers touched my jaw, combed my hair and then snaked around my back, holding me against her. I bent one of my knees a little so she couldn’t feel the packer, but she kept drawing up to me, looping her calves around mine and trying to straighten it so we could be closer. I didn’t let her, as much as I wanted to. I didn’t want to ruin a romantic moment.

  She was the one who pulled off her own tie, and unbuttoned her own shirt, and placed one of my hands on her breasts. Her skin was cool, despite us being wrapped in a doona.

  “Your hands are warm,” she whispered, leaning into me so her breasts filled them and flesh spilt between my spread fingers.

  A lot of me is warm, I thought, feeling how quickly my pulse raced as I kissed down her neck and across her shoulders, and put my warm lips on her chest.

  She inhaled and drew up against me, tugging at my hoodie. “Can we take it off?”

  I let her help me pull it and my t-shirt up over my head, and then she shrugged off her own shirt and bra and settled against me for what she probably thought was the long haul. We hadn’t gone further than this since the first week we were together. She knew what I was struggling with and probably wasn’t expecting more, so when I pulled back for a moment and took her hand, guiding it slowly down my body to cup the bulge in my pants, her jaw dropped.

  God, what a reaction. I kissed her open mouth. “Only if you want to,” I murmured into her lips.

  She came to her senses and pulled right up against me, pressing hard against it. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?” She couldn’t get her knickers off fast enough.

  She went to take her skirt off, too, but I stopped her. “Leave it on,” I told her. At her surprised expression, I explained, “I don’t want to see the packer.”

  “Oh...” She unbuckled my belt, unzipping my jeans and pushing them down my thighs. I kicked them off. “So, hang on, you don’t like it after all? After last weekend, I kind of thought you did…?”

  I made a face. “I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s still on probation.”

  She stopped kissing me and pushed me away for a moment. “Then you can take it off if you want, Min. It’s totally okay. Don’t wear it just for me.”

  I considered that. I liked her response to it, and that was definitely part of the reason I was wearing it. It wasn’t the whole reason, though. “I’m wearing it for myself, too.” I promised her. “I just want to see if…” If this is what I need. If this is what works for me. If this is what stops me from feeling like something’s wrong, I thought, but I couldn’t say it.

  She looked relieved. “Okay,” she said. “Well, let’s see.”

  She pushed me onto my back with a firm kiss. I could feel the cotton of her knee-high socks brush my bare thighs as she straddled me and felt around between us, lifting her hips for a moment. Then slowly, carefully, she lowered herself down onto my lap. I didn’t need to be able to see what she was doing to guess: her lips parted, her eyes fell shut, and she exhaled a cloud of steam that filled the chilly air between us. I gathered the doona up around our shoulders so she wouldn’t be cold.

  She hardly noticed, relaxing down onto me and giving me a loose kiss. “Is that okay?” I murmured, glancing downward as I enveloped her in my arms.

  She nodded. “Yeah,” she said vaguely, resting her cheek against mine for a moment. I moved my hips steadily underneath her and listened to her take little gasping breaths beside my ear.

  She didn’t stay there for long. She sat up a little and then took over the movement herself, rocking gently on top of m
e. We kissed as she did, our lips matching the rhythm, but she kept closing her eyes and freezing in the middle of them; the kiss forgotten as she focused on feelings elsewhere. She opened them eventually, though, cupping my chin with her hand and looking up at me from under those long brown lashes. “That’s good,” she breathed. “That’s really good.”

  I kissed her bottom lip. “Tell me if you want me to do something.”

  She shook her head, her fingertips frozen on my chin as her mouth opened again. It was a moment before she spoke. “This is enough,” she murmured. “It feels really good, Min.” I smiled, listening to each breath she took and trailing my hands down her body to her soft, full hips.

  When her movements got stronger she sat back a little, each breath coming quick and fast. I could see down her body between us, to her breasts bouncing on her ribs and the little fold in her stomach just above the hem of her skirt. Her soft thighs across me. Her knee-high socks on her calves. The pearl pendant dangled between us, swaying as she moved, and her hair falling over my face and tickling my skin. They were all little details that reminded me that this wasn’t just anyone, this was Bree, my Bree: someone with endless energy and patience who bought strawberry-patterned aprons and got excited about tableware. Who dreamt of a quiet, domestic future and all the children she wanted to love. And she loved me. She loved me with all of that big heart of hers, and I felt it in everything she did for me and everything she said about me. It felt endless, and safe, and having her here in my arms, kissing me and making love to me like this felt like the perfect, complete expression of it. It felt so natural.

  It wasn’t long before the muscles in her thighs began to quiver, and her lips parted soundlessly, and her breath caught in her throat, and she stiffened for a moment, shaking, before she finally exhaled, flopping back against me and breathing heavily. She lay there catching her breath. I could feel her smiling against the skin on my shoulder.

  After a little while, she lifted up her head and was about to say something, but she saw my own pink cheeks and parted lips. Considering them for a moment—and watching my face very carefully to make sure it was okay—she loosened the straps of my packer, slipping her hand underneath it and into my boxers to finish me off. Afterwards, we lay side by side, snuggled together in the warm feather down doona, gazing up into the trees.

  She had a big, satisfied smile. “Okay, hands up everyone who thinks you should keep the packer,” she asked ‘everyone’, and then put her hand up.

  I laughed and put my hand up, too, and she rolled over to give me another kiss before relaxing back on the mat. “I knew it was a good idea!”

  I curled one of her ringlets around a finger. “Yeah. I’m glad you bought it.”

  She grinned at me. “You’re glad I bought it?” She giggled. “I’m pretty glad I bought it! It’s awesome! And, come on, how many girls can say they chose their boyfriend’s dick for him?”

  I laughed at that, but then sobered a little. “’Him’?”

  She looked across at me. “Is that wrong?”

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “I’m just used to you she-herring me, I think.”

  Bree considered that. “’I chose my boyfriend’s dick for her?’” she tried, and then scrunched up her face. “That is one incredibly fucked up sentence.” She laughed a bit at it. “I just mainly use whatever pronouns seem right depending on where we are and what I’m saying.”

  “Yeah,” I told her. “I know you just say what seems right. It’s just interesting you chose ‘he’ when we’re alone together.”

  “Well, in heaps of ways you are a he,” Bree pointed out. “You always prefer words like ‘boyfriend’ and ‘Mr’ and all that. If you don’t want me to use ‘he’, I won’t, though. It’s up to you. Which pronouns do you use for yourself? Like, when you’re alone and you think about yourself?”

  I couldn’t remember. “I don’t know,” I said, straining to recall the last time I’d needed to use them.

  She turned on an elbow towards me. She was frowning. “You’d tell me straight away if you wanted me to use different ones, wouldn’t you?”

  I ruffled her hair and smiled. “Of course. It’s just that I honestly don’t know the answer, and with Mum saying ‘wife’ and ‘daughter’ constantly, it’s hard to think. I guess if those words aren’t right, ‘he’ is, isn’t it? Except that when you guys she-her me, I don’t even notice. I notice when you use ‘he’, but is that just because I’m used to ‘she’, or because ‘he’ is wrong? And if ‘he’ is wrong, why do I prefer it when strangers use it and think I’m a regular guy?” I sighed. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. The only thing I know for sure is that I wish Mum would stop talking all day about what a beautiful bride and dutiful wife her daughter should be. She’s relentless. She couldn’t give a fuck what I want.”

  Bree lay back down beside me. “Well, maybe she won’t always be as bad as she is now.”

  “It’s been like this for 26 years,” I said, and sighed. Somehow, despite the wonderful evening and the fact we’d just had great sex, we were talking about Mum again. “Sorry, we’re supposed to be celebrating, aren’t we? I didn’t mean to turn this into a bitch fest about how shit Mum can be.”

  Bree laughed once. “Probably as shit as my brother can be,” she said. “Except one day I get to move away from home and hopefully never think about that psycho fuck and everything awful he’s done to me ever again.”

  I snaked an arm underneath her neck so I could hug her against me. “You could move out now, Bree,” I offered, squeezing her. “I’d actually feel better if you never went back to that house. I don’t know why you do, with everything that goes on.”

  Bree exhaled. “Because it’s my home, Min.” She looked tired all of a sudden.

  “But you hate being there.”

  “Yeah, but I love the people inside it,” she paused. “Well, some of them.”

  I wanted to tell her that she could just love them from a different address, but I left it. It wasn’t really my place to be pushy about her moving out. Remembering what she’d said about the house being foreclosed on, they probably wouldn’t be there together for much longer anyway.

  While I was wondering how long it would be before they were kicked out, Bree spoke again. “I want you to come over again. Maybe during the holidays? I can do what I was planning to: maybe pick a night when Andrej is working late and, like, cook a nice dinner for you and my parents so you can all sit around the table and talk and they can learn all about you.”

  I frowned. Learn about me? “I thought you didn’t want me to tell them straight away?”

  Bree’s eyes were wide. “Yeah, not straight away. Don’t, like, walk in the door and be all like, ‘Hi, I’m Min Lee, I’m the big, scary Korean dude dating your daughter and, also, I’m a trans guy!’ or something. But… you know. Maybe by the end of the night, if they like you and if it kind of just flows... you should do it.”

  “I should do it?” The thought made me sweat. I kept thinking of Bree’s mum nearly ramming my car and then shouting and hammering on my window. I’d rather Bree be the one to tell them, preferably when I was as far away from their house as possible.

  “Yeah, of course you should do it? It’s totally not my place to come out for you. Also, the sooner you do it, the less we have to worry about Andrej blurting it out to ruin everything because he’s a bastard.”

  She had a point, but I suddenly discovered I had something else to worry about in addition to my wonderful mother. Fuck. Why couldn’t Bree and I just have nice, moderate parents who voted Greens and joined PFLAG? “Let me think about it,” I told her, knowing it was all I’d fucking think about until it was over.

  “Well, we have two whole weeks,” Bree reminded me. “And I need some time to decide what I’m going to cook anyway!” She spent a few minutes grinning up at the sky. “I can’t wait to tell them my marks from those assignments, too. They’re going to be so surprised.”

  I smiled at
her. “I’m not surprised.”

  She looked absolutely delighted and shuffled upwards again. “I just totally lost my virginity to the right person,” she said, and then gave me a big kiss before settling on her elbows and looking around us. “Are we going to sleep out here, by the way? This doona is, like, super amazingly warm.” She looked excited.

  Since this was her night, I silenced the nagging voice telling me that someone might see us, or even that Mum would somehow choose this moment to arrive on Sarah’s doorstep, and let Bree help me take off my binder. Then, leaving my top off and tucking the hard packer and my binder behind me inside the covers, I gathered the doona up around our shoulders and turned over to be Bree’s big spoon. It was the first time we’d slept skin-to-skin.

  Then, under the clear sky, a million stars, and gently swaying gumtrees, we finally fell asleep.

  SEVENTEEN

  I woke up to the warm sun on my hair, the sound of magpies warbling, and with Bree’s curls tickling my neck and my shoulders. I brushed them aside.

  She stirred. “You’re warm,” she mumbled into my shoulder. “And topless.”

  “Likewise,” I told her, and kissed the top of her head as she snuggled into me. I could feel she wasn’t wearing knickers, and I was feeling a bit smug about that right up until the point where I realised I couldn’t feel her skirt either. Knowing Bree, she’d taken it off at some point during the night, unconcerned about being completely naked under a doona in Sarah’s backyard. I was a bit more concerned, especially about the fact I was topless, too. “We should probably get up soon.” I felt around for my t-shirt.

  Bree hugged me more tightly. “No,” she said. “Let’s stay here forever.”

  A third voice spoke. “Well, you can if you want, but there’s rain forecast tonight.” It was Sarah, and she sounded very amused. My eyes flew open to her leaning over the edge of the decking in her dressing gown, her hands warming on a steaming mug. She toasted me with it. “Good morning.”