False Start

by Emrys Apollo

  FALSE START

  CHAPTER 1

  It’s been awhile. That’s Clive’s excuse. It’s been a long, long time since he’s gotten laid, and he’s just tired of jerking off to exaggerated and criminally unrealistic porn. Though his imagination helps, and so does his work, which allows him to see fit naked men on a daily basis. Clive’s subtle, but he does have eyes, after all, and he does look, sometimes.

  His professional field hockey career had been on a downward trajectory with a string of losses following the high he’d been riding. That’s life, people had said after he’d come home. But he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was uncomfortable enough, holding this secret disappointment and resentment towards his best mate, even without considering the unrequited love he’d had for Robin for years on end.

  Robin was just golden. He was supposed to be golden. He had always been that way, warm with sunshine hair, popular and approachable and funny and charming in a way Clive got to see up close, but never quite have.

  Clive isn’t sixteen anymore. Jerking off is fine for the most part - especially during the season when he’s on a strict schedule, but he’s twenty-three. His friends are starting to settle down, find proper long-term, girlfriends. They have someone to go home to, someone to rant to about bad results, someone to hold them at night; someone to make love to after winning, and someone to lose themselves in after losses.

  Clive doesn’t. He’d tried dating girls, but it hadn’t gone well - it had just been living alone, but with someone else. Or living with a friend. It hadn’t been enough.

  Clive’s way too young to be coming home from parties feeling empty and lonely. He’s getting jaded, he can feel it. Bottom line is, he’s desperate to have a real man again. Even if they don’t sleep together. He just needs to go out and flirt with someone, to have someone actually show some sort of interest in him. Someone with a dick. Maybe he can get a kiss off a hot stranger, at best, before he gets recognized and has to disappear.

  He drives an hour and half, to get away. He can’t risk being seen. It’s his first time trying this - it’s been three years since he’d last slept with a man. He’d been drunk, the guy had been cute and sweet, and that had been all Clive had needed.

  But it’s been a long time, is the point, and Clive’s desperate enough that he doesn’t even care anymore, and so he goes out to a gay bar, driving an hour and a half away from home, trying to increase his chances of anonymity. The bar’s called Desires or something equally salacious, and there are a lot of lads in, and a few women, too, making eyes at each other or sticking close to the friends that had brought them.

  He settles at the bar, ordering a beer. He drains half of his drink in one go, then sips at the other half, more slowly. It eases a tension in him, the alcohol. It doesn’t take much, for him to get a nice little buzz. He’s not there yet, but he’s not far off. He takes a deep breath, and he’s just about to order another, when a man slides into the barstool next to him.

  “Buy your next drink?” he asks politely, signaling the bartender and ordering his own pint.

  Clive smirks at his nearly empty glass and drains the last of it in three large gulps. He can feel the man watching his throat swallow.

  “Please,” he says, turning to look at the lad. He’s got average looking hair, short back and sides, but he’s wearing a tight t-shirt that shows off his chest and his arms, and dark jeans. He can’t quite make out the color of his eyes in the dimly lit bar, behind thick-framed glasses that sit well on his face, but they’re light-colored, not dark like Clive’s own. He has hollow cheeks with high, striking cheekbones that highlight his mouth. And his mouth… Clive can barely take his eyes off of his full lips, lips he’d rather like to see wrapped around his cock, cheeks hollowing even more as he took Clive in further...

  “I’m Jarrod,” Mystery Guy says, offering Clive a hand, “Jarrod Franklin. Me mates call me Frankie, though.”

  Clive shakes his hand and almost lets his real name slip out of his mouth. “I’m… Robin. Nice to meet you. What’s - “ He pauses, trying to word the question politely.

  “A guy like me doing in a place like this?” Frankie teases, leaning in a little. He pulls off his glasses and places the end of them between his parted lips, pink tongue peeking out as he properly looks at Clive, takes in every detail of him with bright, intelligent eyes. “Looking for a guy like you, of course.” He leans in closer and brushes something off of Clive’s shirt. “Sorry, you had a little thread or something.”

  “I was going to say what’s a Scouser doing in Birmingham, actually.” Clive hates most Scousers, comes with his upbringing - but this one is so handsome, and he’s gay, and he’s interested, and Clive really isn’t in a place to be blowing his chances.

  Unless ‘blowing his chances’ is a euphemism for sucking Frankie’s cock in the toilets, in which case he’d love to.

  “I’m a student,” Frankie says, “and you’re, what, a Manc? Mancunian, I mean.” He’s blushing now, from the unexpected slip. He must not like Mancs, either. And yet here they are. “You’re a ways from home too, lad.”

  “I’m… a student, too,” Clive lies. “Studying… history. You?”

  “Medicine. It’ll be Doctor Franklin, one day. I’m young yet, only in my third year, but… one day. I love history, though. Did my A Levels and everything, and I do a lot of reading about it on my own, or I used to, back when I had a life and free time - I was really interested in the Great Leap Forward in China and the Meiji era in Japan - pulling countries forward at hyper speed like that, it was odd to see what worked and what didn’t. And then the Perónistas in Argentina - I thought Juan and Eva’s relationship was incredibly complicated, and the mechanics of the party - cradle-to-grave recruiting, it seemed so effective. And then I liked Ancient Rome, too. The myths were full of gore and sex and everyone was gay, I thought it was heaven.”

  “Yeah…” Clive hates himself. The Great Leap Forward? Meiji Japan? The Perónistas in… where was it again? Armenia? He’d been focusing more on the shape of Frankie’s mouth when he’d been talking than on the words he’d said. “I tend to focus on Europe, mostly.”

  “Oh, god of course! I should have asked! I really love the arc from the French Revolution to now - it’s so interesting to see national sovereignty really crystallizing, especially after the 1848 revolutions, to watching it become a threat, and watching European solidarity and a desire to maintain stability reforming as a force to influence policy after the First and Second World Wars. The EU as an institution, too, is just so innovative, it’ll be really exciting to see how it unfolds, going forward - “

  “Yeah,” Clive agrees weakly, having absolutely nothing to say on the subject, “but tell me about you, babe, that’s what I’m interested in. Third year, you said, right? That makes you twenty-one? Or is it twenty-two, did you take a gap year?”

  “Twenty. I skipped a year at school.” Jarrod’s blushing - he must feel self-conscious about his age. Most kids when to uni late, not early, took a year off to work or travel or party instead of working their asses off to get in early. There was something remarkably familiar to the story. Clive had been the first-choice right back by the time he was twenty.

  “Shouldn’t you be home studying anatomy, Dr. Franklin?” Clive asks flirtatiously, “Or are these just for show?” He leans in close to Frankie and taps a fingertip gently to the frame of his glasses.

  “I study all the time. Look, Robin, clinicals are killing me. I haven’t been eating properly. I’ve been sleeping in on-call rooms for a couple hours a night, and I have crazy insomnia, so I spend almost all night reading up on statin dosages and motility issues and emphysema, how to call a code, reviewing CPR, putting in a IV, that sort of thing. I was too busy to even watch the cham
pionship game, mate. I just - I need to cut loose. After this next drink, will you dance with me?”

  “Yes,” Clive breathes. He downs the drink quickly, and Frankie does too.

  Frankie turns heads on the dance floor, and he dances like he was born to do it, pulls Clive’s hands to his hips and moves them fluidly. He wraps his arms around Clive’s neck, and starts moving, and Clive - fuck, Clive might actually be in love. With Frankie’s hips, if not with Frankie himself. It’s so clear that he only has eyes for Clive that most of the interest dissipates, other than the few glares Clive feels aimed at his back. He turns around and Clive stares shamelessly at his ass as he moves to the music. He grabs at Clive’s hips and pulls him impossibly closer, until he’s flush against Frankie’s ass, and then he grinds on him, and Clive’s not even ashamed to find that he’s already hard.

  Jarrod turns around so they’re chest to chest, Clive’s hands resting on his waist. For a single moment, they’re standing under the green lights on the dance floor, and Jarrod’s head is thrown back, eyes closed, glasses reflecting the lights, mouth hanging open, and Clive wonders if this is what he looks like when he comes, and if he hadn’t been hard from the dancing, this singular moment would have done it. This whole trip is worth it, for this moment. He’s going to replay that moment in his mind for the rest of his life, probably. Or the next three years, at least.

  He stumbles forward and presses his mouth to Frankie’s, and suddenly they’re still, in amongst the crowd of dancers. They’re standing completely still as Clive licks his way into Frankie’s mouth. Frankie starts rolling his hips again, slower and harder against Clive’s. They keep kissing for several long moments, until Clive pulls away, to keep himself from coming in his pants like a sixteen year old virgin.

  “Do you live close by?” Clive asks, mouth near Frankie’s ear, pulling his earlobe into his mouth and grazing it with his teeth before he presses a line of wet, messy kisses down his neck, all the way down to the collar of his shirt.

  Frankie lets out a downright pornographic moan, and nods, pulling on Clive’s hand. “It’s just two streets away, we can walk,” he says. And then it’s a warm July night, and Clive Reynold’s holding a Scouser’s hand, walking down two streets in Birmingham to a building that’s clearly student housing. Clive’s never actually been in student housing, and he’s bizarrely excited, about all of it, though maybe that’s just the buzz of the alcohol mixing in nicely with the high he’d gotten from kissing a real actual human man. Jarrod unlocks the front door to a building and they take the elevator to the fifth floor.

  “Roommate?” Clive asks as they step out of the elevator, pinning Frankie to a wall in the hallway and kissing him hungrily.

  “No,” Frankie gasps, “not this year. Worked more to pay rent.”

  Clive suddenly feels half-guilty - he’d been mentally whining about how hard it was being a professional athlete, and here was this kid, younger than him, smarter than him, just as hard-working, and yet he was struggling.

  Frankie pulls him in for another kiss, sliding his hands into the back pockets of Clive’s jeans to press their erections together. He tugs Clive down the hallway until they stop at a door, and Clive can’t help it - he kisses him again. “It’s not much,” Jarrod says modestly as he flicks on the lights. He’s right. It isn’t much. A little studio apartment, a tiny kitchen with a little fridge and a two-burner stove, toaster and coffeemaker sitting front and center on the countertop, with a microwave tucked in a corner.

  The twin bed is in the far corner, and there are two doors on the wall nearest the entrance - closet and bathroom. There’s a little sofa, covered in notes except for a small spot where Frankie clearly sits, and a coffee table in front of it, laden with books and a single mug full of pens. There’s a bookshelf, too, full to bursting, with medical textbooks and some history books, and falling-apart paperbacks held together by hope and gaffa tape.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Jarrod asks, breath ragged, as if it’s not a completely ridiculous question. Clive raises an eyebrow, pulls away from him, and strips his shirt off, letting it fall to the floor.

  “Holy fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Jarrod whispers reverently, “I mean, I knew that from the second I saw you, but god, your body is so fucking perfect, Robin - “

  Clive comes close and leans up to kiss him again - Frankie’s just barely taller than him and it’s perfect.

  He pulls away and yanks his jeans and his boxers down with one harsh tug. He kicks off his shoes and rips off his socks, a little awkwardly, but it gets the job done, and eventually he’s standing completely naked in a stranger’s flat.

  “Patience, babe,” Frankie murmurs, stripping a little more slowly. He’s gentle with the sea-green t-shirt that’s seen more than a few washes, careful not to jar his glasses when it goes over his head and lands on the floor. He unbuttons his jeans and undoes his fly before he pulls them down, and the boxers follow after, more quickly. The thought strikes Clive that maybe he doesn’t have many extra clothes to be careless with these ones. Or maybe it just speaks to a physician’s mind - meticulous, exact. Finally, they’re both standing naked, and it’s quiet for a moment.

  “God, you’re so fit,” Clive says admiringly, looking at Frankie’s body. He has a strong chest and strong arms, and his stomach is flat and just slightly defined. It’s not quite a six pack like Bartholomew, but it’s realer, almost, because working out isn’t Jarrod’s entire job. His stomach doesn’t suggest a desire to show off for magazines or pretty girls so much as it does inadequate nutrition and chronic overwork. He feels a pang in his chest as he wonders suddenly if Frankie gets his three square meals a day, or if he’s ever had to ration things or skip meals, towards the end of the month.

  Either way, his body is perfection defined, as far as Clive’s concerned.

  But there are a lot of jagged scars running down from where Frankie’s belly button should be.

  Clive stares at them for a few seconds, then looks back up, at Jarrod’s face. The sexual tension abates, the moment palpably stutters, and Jarrod looks disappointed and a little tired, all of a sudden, even though he’s three years younger than Clive.

  He sighs and glances back down at his shirt, but doesn’t bend to pick it up. “It was a long time ago. I’m perfectly fine now. I can still have a normal life, don’t worry. Sex included.”

  There’s a story there, and Clive had be lying if he said he wasn’t curious - he is, definitely, but he lets it go in favor of the immediate goal.

  “Top or bottom?” He asks Frankie, “I’m good with either.”

  “Me too. You’re my guest, babe, tell me what you want.”

  “I need you,” Clive whispers, “I need you inside me.”

  That breaks the stillness of the moment, and suddenly, Jarrod’s on him, pushing him towards the bed, mouth latched on to Clive’s, until the back of his knees hit the bed and he lets himself collapse onto it. He moves to lay on his back and spreads his legs, cock standing proudly, hard and leaking. Jarrod looks at him appreciatively as he digs through his nightstand drawer and pulls out a condom - he struggles a bit, it’s a new box, still sealed shut, and a jar of lube, not new, but nearly - either Frankie got laid a lot, or… Or he never did, and Clive suspects the latter.

  Frankie’s fingers are steady as he slicks them up. He kisses Clive as he pushes inside him, fingers finding his prostate faster than anyone’s ever found it before - himself included.

  “Fucking hell - “ he gasps.

  “Oh, fuck me.”

  “Next time. For now, you fuck me. Please. I need you - “ Clive says desperately.

  Frankie closes his eyes for a moment, to savor the feeling of Clive around him, and then opens them again, to see Clive underneath him, to see the way his abs flex every time he leans up for a kiss.

  “Need you to kiss me.” It’s demanding, but unexpectedly soft from the guy who answered ‘do you want a drink’ by taking his clothes off. So Frankie obeys, leaning in close
to press his lips to Clive’s. He’s quiet, at first, relishing in the feeling of being full again.

  “Are you okay, love?” It comes out more tender than Frankie had meant for it to, but it’s out now.

  “It’s - it’s been a really long time,” Clive admits, “I’ve needed this for a long time.”

  “Am I your… first?” Jarrod asks apprehensively.

  “No! Oh, god, no! You’re not my first, babe. Just my first in a while.”

  Jarrod still treats him like it’s his first time, though. He kisses him through it, and he moves slowly, pushing against Clive’s prostate on each thrust, until Clive’s got his eyes closed, and he’s begging him to please, just go faster -

  “Please, Robin, I love you - “ Clive cries out.

  Jarrod stills for a moment. It’s not a good feeling. He’d actually thought they’d been hitting it off pretty well, until now. He bites back the urge to pull out and kick Clive out of his flat, preferably naked, because he deserves it. He doesn’t, though. Because it’s been awhile for Jarrod, too, and he needs this just as much.