Watching his straight back as he walked rapidly towards the stairs, my vision suddenly growing distinctly hazy, I knew this would be the last, the very last time our eyes ever met.
Of course he was unwilling to even bear looking at me – I must disgust him. Not for the first time I vehemently regretted the way I was and the manner in which I sabotaged every flourishing relationship. I recalled the aversion in his eyes when I revealed the truth and the alarm as our eyes locked even this brief moment.
My past was lashing back at me, I was forever being punished for the sins I committed then. I breathed out in a sorrowful sigh, forgetting his colleague standing next to me. She spoke in courteous tones, but I didn’t hear her just then.
“Pardon? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I turned to look at her, she was a very friendly, outgoing woman. Lacking somewhat the ability to uphold a bridge between client and representative, yet I was rather pleased with her work and it was unfortunate to have to let her go.
“I was just saying I hope you’re aware Sean’s opinions doesn’t reflect the whole company…”
“Sorry, I’m not following you?” my heart stood still at the mention of his name. I regarded her with confusion, attempting to understand what she meant by ‘his opinions.’
She seemed rather uneasy and tried to give me smile, but failed, turning her face into a strained mask. My sudden decision to drop them had taken her aback and I was certain she was still reeling from the shock. It wasn’t merely Sean who had that extraordinary dislike of losing clients.
“Well, I took it you were aware of his… thoughts, since you wanted someone else…” her voice faltered as she watched me. I wondered whether I looked angry, I didn’t feel angry, just extremely tired.
Sean hadn’t recounted his colleagues’ response to those circumstances, I remembered that we had had an earnest argument concerning it. Or in truth I could recall spanking him for something in association with that event, but then we had both forgotten about it. Or I had at least.
I ended the uncomfortable conversation as politely as possibly by referring to a prior engagement and hurried out of there. Against common sense I did look around for him outside, even thought he had naturally left as soon as he could. It was a long cheerless drive home.
I checked my answering machine with the absurd hope to hear his voice, but there was simply a few messages from people I worked with. My friends seemed reluctant to ring me as of late, not that they ever rang much. Usually Carolyn and Sandra simply wrote their diverting and rambling e-mails instead, which always amused me. Ollie claimed he used the phone too much during work and therefore avoided cancer by not ringing anyone the rest of the day.
And as for Linda, well I’d rather not speak with her at the moment anyhow, she was utterly devastated that Sean had, as she put it, ‘stomped all over my poor heart’ and she used every breath to proclaim how definitely disgraceful she though he was – oh she did use longer and far less flattering words concerning him and they hardly helped ease my mind, as I found myself fervently taking exception to all she said and trying to defend him.
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t expected to see him today, part of me had even wanted to, though I had had the excuse that it was only polite to meet with them for this dismal resolution. Yet utterly hopeless romantic that I was, hope never completely left me, not until he turned around without even acknowledging my presence.
“Ronan you daft bugger,” I muttered dejectedly to myself and went to pour myself a whiskey, but before I reached the cupboard I chose otherwise and headed to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Sebastian had promised to try to make lunch, if he could escape the fire breathing dragon that guarded his tower.
But then again perhaps I had as little right to say anything about his relationship as I felt Linda had to say about mine. Or lack of one as it were.
I began making lunch, but found it hard concentrating even on the simplest of tasks due to things drawing my attention from the food. For instance the fact that I had begun putting the salt beside the stove instead of on the spice-rack reminded me of his blameless face when I told him where I wanted it and his compelling argument for this different arrangement. And then the fact that he constantly kept mixing the forks with the knives so that I still found forks in odd places made me sigh and look up to complain about it… what was the matter with me today? Honestly, I was behaving sincerely erratic at the moment.
As it were I was still far from done when the doorbell rang and in the sudden stress I stubbed my toe on the table leg and had to bite off a curse. I was slightly out of breath and agitated when I finally reached the door.
Sebastian gave me one of his concerned looks and stepped inside. The smoke detector sounded before I could even say hello and I turned to save the food in the frying pan.
“Just a moment… it’s just…” he came in after me and regarded me seriously as I stared down at the messy blackish substance that had once been potatoes. “Well it was potatoes… now it’s…”
I turned to put it down and he came up putting a hand on the back of my neck, turning me around and into a hug. Like I’d comforted him so many times in the past, like how I wished my brother had held me. But all I could think now was how much I wished it was Sean I held.
“Are things that rough?” he said when I pulled away, I simply nodded – lying to Sebastian was as pointless as lying to myself. “You, you saw him today then?” I didn’t bother nodding.
“What did he want now?” I asked when Sebastian returned from talking to Lee yet another time, he’d rung six times since my friend came with various excuses. He was naturally keeping Sebastian under his thumb as usual, watching him like a hawk.
“Nothing…” Sebastian pulled a face. He knew my feelings on the matter, but I didn’t say anything now.
The Japanese style watercolour beside the left bookshelf were crooked and I rose to correct it, stopping underneath it to look at the bundle of photographs carelessly placed on top of the books. Sean’s doing… Sean in the photos as a matter of fact. I stared at his face, I’d forgotten about them. He was so charming, so careless and yet so self-conscious, he hated having his picture taken and Linda had chased him with that camera until he was about to break it over her head.
Sebastian came up behind me, again with a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Ronan, why don’t you just ring him? You had something, don’t throw it away because he’s stubborn…”
“Perhaps I’m the stubborn one…” I mumbled.
“You love him…”
“I loved Andy too!”
He stepped back a bit, and I shrugged. I knew he hated it when I mentioned him. No other relationships in my life had been such utter disasters and Sebastian thought that I was simply torturing myself by dwelling on it.
Sometimes I counted the time in before and after Andy, and at other times I counted it simply before Sebastian, not that he knew that.
“That has nothing to do with this,” he said, sitting back down in the sofa.
“It does…” I objected. “Sean doesn’t even know, but he senses it, he doesn’t trust me anymore… no one should ever trust me again…”
Sebastian muttered something about my lack of intelligence, well he called me a bloody numbskull, but there’s no need for details. It would’ve angered me, I didn’t relish being insulted in any way, but I couldn’t work up any energy to disapprove at the moment. He looked at me, no he glared at me. So unlike kind and gentle Sebastian, where were those looks when Lee was whining?
“Of all people, don’t come telling *me* that!” he said sounding quite upset.
“You knew! I lied to Sean! He doesn’t know I put someone in a mental hospital!”
“You didn’t! He should’ve been there in the first place! You know that!” I closed my eyes. I wanted to hear those words and I wanted to believe them. I usually did believe them. It wasn’t my fault, never had been, but the guilt was there all the same underneath it all.
“He came to me for help… and I couldn’t…”
My vision was clouded and the room was so quiet the silence seemed to take up all space. I hadn’t told him, about the phone call. Andy’s voice, trembling and still so calm. It was little over a year after me and Sebastian first decided on our arrangement.
“You’re just feeling bad about Sean, stop dragging this up now!” I nodded, of course, he was probably right, but I still felt like tormenting myself with guilt.
I hadn’t felt like this since, well not for a very long time.
“I’m sorry, you’re right…” I forced myself to say, and even to smile. He guessed to some extent that I wasn’t telling him the truth, but he let it drop, like one does when not prepared to dig too deeply into someone else’s mind, old friend or not.
The next week went by so slowly. I began sleeping less and less, I had always had these bouts of insomnia as a youth, but in recent years they had been rare.
“That’ll be £4.50… thank you…” Chris, the clerk, flirted with me, he always did. He was sweet, we’d had a few nice chats late like this when there were no customers in line. Still, he was a little young for me though… perhaps Tessa would like him. I’d have to see about ringing her one of these days. It felt awkward thinking ringing one of Sean’s friends. But really I’d quite liked Tessa and there was no real reason for us not to keep in touch. Was there?
I packed my things away smiling at Chris, who winked and put a bar of chocolate on top of my detergent.
“Oh that’s not mine…” I said.
“I know, but a man who buys detergent at eleven o‘clock at night is in dire need of chocolate, I always say,” Chris grinned. “Besides with the lack of condoms you’ve been buying I take it things went bad with the smoker, am I right?”
I gave him a dry look and he laughed. Pulling a face I took the paper of and put the chocolate in my mouth speaking around it.
“Ich’s nod ov yorh bvusnech!” he shook with laughter as I left the shop and I couldn’t help but grin at him from the door. Such a sweetie.
I decided that ringing Tessa, or Brian, which Sean always called her, wasn’t such a bad idea. I could check how Sean was doing as well, without having to go through Linda and Peter. Well that wasn’t being obsessive, he’d been a big part of me… my life, for quite awhile, it was only natural I wondered about him.
My apartment was fairly far down in the old building. I didn’t appreciate heights and a marvellous view the way Sean, for instance did, I wanted to be close to the ground where the trees, the few that there were, was above me. In all honesty I wanted a house, but what’s the use of having one when you’re alone in it? I refused to become some reclusive old hermit in a great big house somewhere.
I had been cleaning frantically a few days ago, a silly outlet for the frustration that never seemed to want to let go. I’d found a tie that didn’t belong to me and a comb, it was odd that he had forgotten so few things here. Well I’d given his shoes to Peter and my slippers had been returned, if they didn’t so acutely remind me of that day I would probably be very amused that he’d walked all the way home in them. As it were there was merely a dull, perpetual ache inside me and I’d put them in a cupboard.
I read the paper again, sorted my laundry and watered my plants. Anything not to have to go to bed, where I’d be tossing and turning indefinitely. I knew that had I been somebody I knew I would have had a serious talk with me about this type of bizarre behaviour.
Finally I drowsed off in the sofa and didn’t wake up until the teenager
in the apartment above mine assaulted my eardrums with some screeching music at
It took a shower and a steady meal to make sense of the world again and still I chose to take the day off rather than to try and catch up with any work today. I’d always deemed my choice to work at home as one of my better notions, but I supposed it prevented me from getting out as much as I needed.
It was a very nice day, a tad chilly it seemed, but nice nevertheless, the sun glinting through the clouds and lighting up my kitchen.
Recalling my idea from the night before I picked up the phone and after hesitating awhile, even attempting to dial a few times, I finally gathered enough courage to actually ring Tessa. Unfortunately the cell phone number I had seemed out of order, which struck me as odd seeing as it wasn’t all that long ago I’d been given the number.
After three tries I gave up and went to find Tessa’s home number instead. I consider myself something of a perfectionist, neat freak if you were to ask, well any of my former boyfriends. Still I had a hard time finding the note where I’d written the number down. After nearly an hour – once I start something I rarely give it up – I found it stuck to the notice board in the kitchen… obviously so I wouldn’t forget where it was. Quite a perfect perfectionist, wasn’t I?
The phone rang and rang, I gave up after five signals and decided to ring back later.
The signals seemed to go on forever and after ringing three times with a few hours in between, I gave up, there was no reason for someone like Tessa to stay home in the evening, she didn’t usually seem to do that anyway and I realised that I would seem pathetic ringing this many times.
Really there was no need for me to be ringing at all, it wasn’t as if we’d become very close during the time I’d been with Sean. But somehow, my intuition was giving me the feeling something wasn’t altogether as it should be. I tended to believe in my intuition at most times, I was rarely wrong, though lately I had been very uncertain about most things.
I listened to it now much more than I had when I was young, I had made the mistake of ignoring it once and I had ended up finding my lover soaked in blood in a bathtub. He hadn’t died then, but his family, people I had never met, had taken him with them. I hadn’t wanted them to put him in that home, I’d wanted to tell them that it was wrong, but deep down I’d known I couldn’t, that I didn’t have that right. I’d failed him.
Moving Sebastian in with me had been, I admitted to that now, a step in the process of escaping from my past. I had been reasonably successful in that escape up until now, but it was all going to pieces around me.
“Stop being so melodramatic, you bloody twat…” I muttered to myself.
I decided to ring Linda, Peter wasn’t too thrilled with me, not that he blamed me as much as Linda blamed Sean for the break up, but I still felt that he wanted to stay loyal to Sean and he was uneasy talking to me.
“…I got it! I got it!… Hello!” Peter’s voice,
a bit stressed perhaps, or just tired, I checked the time. Oh for heaven’s sake
it was
“Oh I’m sorry, Peter, I didn’t realise it was so late… is Linda busy? It’s Ronan.”
“She’s in the bath… can I help?” he was a very kind person, not the
type to be peevish when one rings at
“Oh, it wasn’t important, I was just going to ask whether you know anything about Tessa’s cell phone? It seems to be out of ordered and I couldn’t reach…”
“Oh! Of course! You didn’t know! She staying at Sean’s now,” he sounded suddenly concerned and I felt an indescribable emptiness come over me. Tessa with Sean? “It’s an awful mess, just terrible! Well I shouldn’t get into it too much I suppose, Sean didn’t want us to drag you into it, though he was asking for you in the hospital, the silly prat!”
“Hospital?!” I swallowed and looked at myself in the mirror across the hall, my face had lost all it’s colour.
“Er, yeah, it’s all right, no harm done, just a cut on his arm, this weirdo’s been stalking Tessa for a couple of weeks and she’s staying with Sean, well Sean went over to pick up some things for him and this bloke came at him with a knife…”
As I hung up I didn’t know whether I was boiling with anger or shaking with anxiety. Peter hadn’t known too many details it seemed or he’d been too confusing to speak with for me to manage to get a clear picture of it all. He always managed to sound as if you knew what he was thinking in between the things he actually said.
You’ll believe me if I say I didn’t sleep that night? Horrible images of Sean cut up in pieces flashed before my eyes until I went up and had a cup of tea with milk. I felt silly standing in the kitchen in my underwear drinking tea and thinking of what on earth I was supposed to do. I had to see him, I simply had to.
So at
He opened fully dressed and with a pen stuck behind his ear – not that I paid much attention to his state of dress, I was merely staring aghast at the bandage on his forehead and the black eye. The frown on his face took me a moment to note. We didn’t speak.
Finally he cleared his throat and straightened up as if to make me act, when I couldn’t manage to state my reason for coming he sighed.
“A little early to come calling, isn’t it?” he sounded utterly sarcastic in that way he has that makes me just want to turn him around and swat him hard. “Was it Peter? What do you want from me?”
“Who said I came to see you?” I took him aback, he didn’t expect me to fight his attitude with the same coin.
There was a moments pause again.
“Wh-who is it?” Tessa’s voice was small and nervous. Whatever this person had done it’d been too much for her that was more than clear. Sean glared caustically at me.
“It’s my ex!” Oh spit in my face while you’re at, why don’t you?
“Who?”
“Ronan, it’s Ronan…” he allowed me to pass him, leading me into the living room where Tessa, or rather Brian for he looked far from a Tessa at the moment, sat curled up in the sofa under a comforter. He was dressed in a far too big T-shirt, Sean’s most likely, and his hair was shorter than when I saw him last.
“Ronan! Darling!” he smiled at me with a mischievous glimmer in his eyes. “Did the watch dog bite you?”
“Are you all right?” I sat down next to him, my god he looked tiny without those elegant clothes and flashy hairdos.
“Fine just fine… shaken but not stirred, eh? Oh you look dreadful, you don’t sleep enough! Just like him, if I told you how he…”
“Bri!”
“Oh, bugger. Make some tea, won’t you, Sean?” Sean scowled; I could never say that he pouted, he simply wasn’t cut out for pouting. Sean did death glares, not pouts.
Well I soon found out the whole sordid story from the chatterbox in the sofa. He wasn’t half as broken as he’d seemed, or he simply acted very well – which of course I knew that he did. Apparently he’d met a man rather a long while ago, who had gone berserk the morning after. This same person, a certain Jim Tinker, had since come by his shop, wrecking it when not finding him there, and later been searching him out, threatening and following him.
“Poor Jonah! He was devastated, he called the police after the shop was wrecked… I couldn’t believe the mess they made… the police that is! And how he got my number I’ll never know, him, you see not the police… anyhow, we were forced to close down the shop…”
I was watching Sean as he moved about, bringing Brian breakfast, pushing around papers and things with a rare glance towards us. At certain points he was about to interrupt, but changed his mind seemingly trying to ignore us, or at the very least me. He was polite enough to bring me tea though, for which I was very grateful. I tried giving him a smile but he didn’t meet my eyes.
Brian continued telling me about how after the fourth threat that had resulted in a black eye for Brian, the police had suggested he dress less flamboyant and try to keep a low profile.
“And then he was outside my apartment one day when I was coming home. I’ll tell you I near up and wet myself! Well I turned tail and ran! Happily Sean was home, not that I was better off here… the telling off he gave me still makes my ears burn!” he laughed sipping his tea. “I should’ve told him, I suppose, he’s my best friend after all…” his eyes took on a sudden affectionate light of admiration when he looked at Sean, who just muttered something faint and went into the bedroom.
I smiled despite myself.
“So… Peter said he, well that he was in the hospital…” I tried fishing for some information about Sean without sounding too eager.
“It was the day after… all my fault, he wanted to make up being so mean to me I think… you know, he threatened to box my ears…” he laughed, “I started crying, I’ve never seen him so angry…”
I held my breath with my eyes towards the bedroom door, wondering whether he’d heard what I was being told and whether it would bother him.
“Oh well, I should probably let him tell what happened when he got there, but never mind, he wouldn’t tell you all the same. Well he went to fetch some things for me and seeing as he’d never seen him, he was surprised when he jumped him. He was stabbed once, upper arm and knocked unconscious, my neighbours phoned the police because of the racket. Not that they’ve caught the bloody bastard!”
He picked up his teacup, sipping it thoughtfully.
“Sean will kill me if he finds out I told you, but the first thing he
said waking up was ‘where’s Ronan?’ Peter wanted to run and phone you straight
away, but I suppose it was for the best that Harry and
Suddenly he clambered off the sofa and picked up his clothes. He smiled at me saying that he was starting to feel silly sitting in bed like some king in an audience chamber.
“I’m going to leave the two of you alone,” he said very resolutely as he brought his trey out in the kitchenette or whatever was appropriate to call Sean’s little kitchen and bar. He then went to put on his shoes and jacket while I tried to tell him it was probably not a good idea.
“Do you love him…” his question came out of the blue and yet I didn’t hesitate even a moment when I heard it.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what happened, but you deserve a chance, at least for closure if nothing else, I’ll just take a stroll down to the café. They have the most delicious new baker there…” he winked and then closed the door, leaving me bewildered in the middle of enemy territory.
Work seemed to be piling up for Sean I noticed as I looked around the living room, so very unlike him. The mess was the same though, my fingers itched to start picking things up, but he hated it when I did that and what he would do now if I took that liberty was not something I wanted to think about.
I folded Brian’s bed linen and sat down in the sofa. My presently restless mind kept prodding me to get up and do something, but I refused it. Questions came unbidden time and time again. What would Sean do when finding me still here? What was I supposed to say to him? What was taking him so bloody long?
“Did he leave…?” Sean stopped dead, he stared at me for just a moment before looking away.
“No, he didn’t,” I answered and he gave me an ironic curl of his lips.
“Did Bri go out? On his own?” he asked then, a nonchalant tone spoilt by the worried frown and the glance towards the door.
“Yes, he was going to the café he said…” I guessed that he hadn’t been out alone then for a long time because of the mess with the stalker. I shuddered, I didn’t want to think about it. Things like that didn’t happen to people you knew and cared about, they just didn’t. I wanted to ask Sean about the stab wound, but he was having no more polite conversation.
“So what do you want?”
You! Hadn’t I used that line before? Well so much for that then. I looked concerned at him, he was thinner really, or was that just what I wanted to see. He surely hadn’t slept well, that much I could tell. There was something dark about him. Something pained.
“Look…” What was I going to say? Of course I had thought about what to say to him if I ever got the chance, but what you make up in your head late at night and what you actually say aren’t the same.
“I though we had said everything we had to.”
“Well you maybe!” I stated calmly. “Look, just allow me a few words, please and then I’ll walk out of your life forever if that’s what you want.”
He shrugged and stood there, shoulders slumped his face turned away. It ripped at my heart, but I had no right to ask him to look at me or to touch him, and knowing this hurt even more.
“The last thing I ever wanted to do was to hurt you. I love you. It was a long time since I was really in love with someone and I suppose that I let things just happen with us in a way I shouldn’t have. I demanded so much of you, I… I didn’t realise I wasn’t giving as much back…” I waited for him to react. But he didn’t. He was as if made of stone.
“I don’t know what to tell you, except I’m awfully sorry about never giving you the choice you deserved. I didn’t tell you half as much about myself as I expected you to…”
“Why didn’t you?”
I looked up puzzled as his voice came across the room, there was something so tense about him I wished I could go over and hold him, touch him in any way. It was sheer torture knowing I couldn’t, when had I become so desperate for him?
“What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said and turned slightly to look at me his hands shaking on top of some papers in a pile and his brow furrowing into that menacing little scowl. I sighed, I didn’t have a choice, if I wanted even a chance at winning him back I would have to tell him everything.
And that might mean I’d lose him forever.
“Where do you want me to start?” I asked quietly.
“Wherever! Tell me how you could use me like that!” He bit his tongue and stared away from me.
“I didn’t, I never felt anything remotely like arousal when I spanked you!”
Saying it out loud seemed to make it too real to him, he fled, walked briskly away from me and made sure the bar was in between us when he turned towards me again. He had a suspicious look. It gave away a lot, he was easy to read and yet so immensely complex, just one of the things I loved so much about him.
“When I gave up the scene, I gave it up completely. I had too many bad memories from that time…” he still watched from a distance, tensely, waiting. “Seeing Desmond brought back a lot of those feelings, which I suppose is why I didn’t handle the situation as well as I would’ve otherwise.”
I didn’t know what to tell him, what it would take to win him over. Perhaps it was a lost cause, perhaps he wouldn’t be won over. I sighed and walked over to him. He stiffened and moved backwards.
He was about to object when I sharply put up a hand for him to keep quiet. There was a hesitant look on his face as he closed his mouth and relaxed against the kitchen counter.
“I don’t demand a second chance, Sean, if you want me to leave I will. But I’m telling you now that nothing I did was ever meant to hurt you, or use you,” he snorted in disbelief, but wouldn’t look at me when I was this close. I wondered for a second if he was afraid that I was indeed telling the truth. “I’m just so sorry you found out the way you did. I can understand your feelings better than you know.”
“Oh you can, can you? Well that’s lovely to hear, now can you take your little speech and go tell it to the bloody…”
“You just have to ask and I’ll leave… I just want a clean break, if a break is what you want. Nothing more.”
There was a moment when feelings fluttered across his face, I took them in quickly trying to sort them out. He face was so familiar I had traced those features with my fingers so many times, when they laughed and when they cried. Now he seemed anxious and angry at the same time, troubled and tired.
It happened so quickly. Suddenly he was pushing past me and almost stumbling, his voice came out in a little yelp as he watched a pile of folders and papers tip over and scatter around the room. I stared at the mess… was this a sign?
“How can? Why the hell did this happen?!” he was picking up papers. “Bloody hell I won’t find a thing in this! Bet there’re fucking gremlins in this bloody building!” his voice was nearly trembling.
“It was just overbalanced… here let me help you…”
“No! You’re just making it worse, you’ll just… it’s just… I don’t…… I asked for you in the hospital!” the last he said hardly breathing quickly and quietly.
We sat still on the floor in the middle of his paperwork and looked at each other. He seemed suddenly very lost and I reached out a hand, he didn’t move away as I held it against his cheek. I nodded.
“Peter or Brian?” he asked dryly sneering, only not half as grimly as earlier.
“Both,” I said gently.
He leaned forward tentatively and his forehead touched my shoulder, a sound like a deep breath on the brink of tears broke the silence.
“Tell me what made you… stop…” I knew instinctively what he meant and I’d been afraid I would have to answer this question, but hadn’t I thought the answer through enough? Had I wanted to go back I would’ve, but I hadn’t felt the urge to not even once in all the years Sebastian and I lived together and not after that.
“I had a lover… I was young and idealistic and I thought that love conquers all, you know? He was… we were in love, but it didn’t matter in the end… he wanted pain to rid himself of the pain inside and I could offer that. I suppose I really thought for awhile that I could help him.”
“But you couldn’t,” Sean spoke against my neck, his breath warm and comforting. I blinked away sudden tears.
“I couldn’t and he tried to take his own life… he went to stay in a hospital for quite some time, and during this time I moved in with Sebastian to try and heal my heart and also help someone with more manageable problems,” I drew a breath and dried an especially obstinate tear from my cheek.
It was impossible for me to tell him what I had never even told Sebastian, not the worst part, not the part that I still dreamt about. Not Andy’s voice on the phone, trembling and still so calm. Not that last time.
“Don’t lie…” Sean said with a throaty voice. “I… I could bear it, you doing that to me, but only while I didn’t think you were…”
“If you’re worried that I ever took pleasure in spanking you I can’t assure you in any other way than telling you that no I did not. But what good is that, eh? I do think though, that during the time I lived with Sebastian I separated discipline from any sexual feelings since believe it or not I really never had those feelings for Sebastian… perhaps because he always seemed to think of me as a brother.”
He nodded – to my utter surprise he nodded, slowly and uneasily, but still he nodded. The flood of relief I felt was immense, weeks worth of despondency and fretting ran away like a wave sweeping through me. I let my arm tighten around him.
It was somewhat later. The living room tidied up and a few questions about his work having been asked by me and ignored and avoided by him. He was sorting out the last few papers and glancing at me now and then. Finally he straightened his back and looked at me uneasily.
“So… what are we suppose to do now? Do we kiss or what?” I gave him a look torn between laughing and just thinking he was so adorable. “Quit that!”
“Quit what?” I asked a tad uncertain.
“That bemused look you have, it’s driving me mad!”
“Bemused?” I tried for a second to stifle the laughter but I couldn’t and suddenly he was in front of me, glaring fire at me. He moved carefully and I felt his lips brush against my jaw line, just ever so slightly, but it was there, a kiss. I turned to meet his lips with my own.
A moment passed while we kissed, I felt as if it couldn’t get long enough.
“Will you do that, that thing to me, if I ask you not to?” he mumbled against my hair.
“No,” I stated firmly.
“Never?”
“Never.”
He kissed me again, deeper and with much more certainty. I finally dared let go and feel the hunger and lust I’d pushed far away flowing freely through me. My hand bumped into his as we both tried to raise them at the same time and he laughed against my lips.
From the hall came the sudden bang of from the door closing. He gave us a quick look and smiled slyly.
“Just making certain you hadn’t killed each other… I’ll go over to Peter’s now… do I have good news for him?”
“Get out before I throw you out!” Sean growled at him but there was laughter behind the threat.
“I’ll take that as a yes then darling, shall I?” he blew him a kiss and vanished out the door.
I woke with a start, at first unsure of where I was and then recognising furniture and the clutter of Sean’s bedroom. I relaxed and dragged my hands through my hair. The voice in my dream was still clear as ever. Just as it had been that night, trembling and still so calm: ‘I just wanted to say good bye, I never got to say good bye before.’
The sleeping figure next to me moved, a murmur reaching my ears. Turning over I slid my arm around him and buried my face in his hair. I had come much too close to losing this, whatever happened now I knew that I would never let it go that far again.
The End… for now