by Robyn Elliot
“Did you hear me, Danny…I think you’re so beautiful, you’re breathtaking,” Stephane said, hearing only the blank space of Danny’s silence, but feeling the heat from those cheekbones.
Danny retreated for a few moments into his wine glass, which he emptied gratefully. Stephane replenished it for him, solicitous, attentive.
“I don’t know what to say to that, Stephane”, the lovely voice, slightly croaky with wariness.
“You don’t have to say anything, I just wanted to tell you.”
They looked at each other across the table. The restaurant was busy, but the low key atmosphere remained undiminished. A couple took the table adjacent to Danny and Stephane’s, but otherwise no one could hear them. Waiters drifted passed, one of them smoothly replacing the empty bottle of wine with a full one. Stephane opened it, giving Danny time to adjust and, besides, he had decided he was going to go for broke.
“I wanted to tell you in the hospital...how lovely you looked, even wired up to that machine; if it’s any comfort, my heart was going crazy, too.”
Enough, enough, Danny thought, he’s playing with me. If he thinks he can get a quick fuck just because he’s probably giving me a line he’s used a gazillion times, he can forget it. Danny watched Stephane pour their wine, his eyes moving over the lightly haired forearm, to the shape of his refined hands.
Still, those words had made him want to leap up from the table and…what? Jump up and down with excitement, tell the waiter to bring him some ice cubes because the guy he was dining with must have a temperature? No, Danny needed the ice cubes to slide soothingly over his brow and upper lip. Because no one had ever told him something like that, except his mother; and that didn’t count, that was part of the rules.
Instead of launching into an attack of the skeptics, Danny found himself asking “Honestly?” He hated the way his voice sounded, kind of small, and cornered.
Stephane traced a forefinger up and down the stem of his glass, watching Danny as he did. Danny followed the rhythmic motion, thinking it the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Almost. If only the stem was Danny’s jaw line, came the traitor thought.
“U-uh,” came the succinct response.
“C-can…c-an we talk about something else, Stephane?”
Ye gods of doom, not the stammer, Danny begged silently - usually under pretty good control these days, but then that was what private speech therapy sessions did for you. Now, the beast was raising its head again, after years of rolling ‘r’s and just a hint of a breathy pause before every sentence uttered. It had taken Danny a few more years to suppress the stammer’s presence with people who didn’t know him. He thought he’d cracked it when he completed his entire pupillage without a hint of ob-ob-objection, but now, here it was. Back, like a long lost son that had previously nicked all the family silver, and was requesting forgiveness. That, and a short term loan of a hundred quid. Unwelcome, unwanted, unbelievable.
He pretended it hadn’t happened, and Stephane wouldn’t notice. Best form of strategy, Danny decided. Oh, that, and pretending that the man of his dreams hadn’t just told him he was breathtaking.
“Sure,” Stephane said, slowly, obviously not keen on being diverted, “but I mean it, Danny, every word.”
“Tell me about France,” Danny switched quickly.
He was breathless, dazzled by Stephane’s up front attitude – never mind being told he was beautiful by a guy he could barely take his eyes off. And utterly unused to that kind of candor, apart from Katharine's infamous bon mots. That thought made Danny wince inwardly.
God, the idea of his friend, whose internal dialogue was permanently missing in action, and Stephane meeting, was something that Danny figured he’d need to prepare for, with a fair sized bottle of wine consumed as friend-meets-boyfriend therapy. Boyfriend? Meeting best friend? Hold on, cool those jets, Perry Mason; not that he didn’t want things that way. Boyfriend meant relationship – not forgetting the little matter of sex, as well as sex, and there was also sex to think about. Yes, Danny thought, talk about France. Toot sweet.
“What do you want to know?” Stephane asked, his eyes, alluringly dark in the low light of the restaurant, moving over Danny’s features. There was a teensy hint of humor in those smoky depths, gentle teasing, and Danny couldn’t deny it was turning him on, the banter between them.
Danny pushed his plate aside, satisfyingly full. He was enjoying himself. That strange sensation was coming over him again, making him light-headed, giddy even. Wondering if he could get used to it; being happy.
“Tell me everything!” Danny said enthusiastically, leaning his elbows on the table. Relaxing a little more in Stephane’s company, he allowed his mind to drift, wondering what it would be like to be kissed by that sultry mouth; questions, questions. Would Stephane’s beard, neat and sexy as it was, chafe on his pale, sensitive skin? How would his kisses feel? Deep, slow, wet, lingering? Never having kissed a guy, and seeing as kissing the television screen when Henry Cavill appeared on it didn’t count, Danny was thinking that Stephane would quickly suss his sexual inexperience with guys.
Stephane looked momentarily uncomfortable, then shrugged, resting his hand under his chin.
“Okay...well, I was born in Lyon, but we moved to Paris when my father got his job at the University…there’s myself, Delphine, and Guillaume, he’s five years older than me, though you could add a zero onto that, the way he behaves sometimes.”
Danny listened attentively, feeling Stephane was becoming more real to him, as he relayed his potted history; becoming more possible.
“What does your father do?”
“Did. He taught politics, and tried to convert his students to Trotsky’s views of the world.”
“He’s a Marxist, then? Hold on, I mean a Trotskyite?” Danny laughed.
Stephane pulled a dour face. “Neither. Jean-Claude is a Clermontist, which essentially means he’s right about everything, and the world needs to catch up.”
Danny nodded, taking another drink of his wine. Fathers and sons. He understood how easy it was to feel hostility to the whole concept. “And what does he do now? Apart from trying to change the world, that is…”
“Tries to change me instead,” Stephane muttered darkly, “I keep telling him, that after 33 years it’s not going to happen!”
He’s 33? Hell, six years on me then, Danny mused, a little surprised, and that turned him on too.
“When he’s not telling me what a disappointing son I am, he’s messing about in his château, attempting to turn back the tide of 400 years of damp, and arguing with every department official he can agitate.”
Danny spluttered slightly on his wine. “Excuse me. Château?” and he shook his head at Stephane’s joke. But Stephane wasn’t smiling.
“Yes, château, Danny.” Stephane registered Danny’s perplexed expression, and relented. “I know, I know, but it is draughty, fucking freezing, excuse my Anglo Saxon, with a roof that leaks even when it isn’t raining.”
Danny was too busy laughing to see the tight line that Stephane’s mouth had become. That was the Jean-Claude effect, he’d learn. “Come on…really? A château? Are you winding me up, Stephane?”
Seeing he’d got Danny relaxed and laughing, albeit at his expense, Stephane joined in. “Absolutely not; it’s been in our family…God, listen to me, I sound like the last of the Bourbons!”
“Go on,” Danny egged.
“About 400 years we've had the pile of stones, give or take half a century or so.”
Danny blew out his cheeks. “I imagine there aren’t many waiters who live in a château, then,” he fished, ever so slightly, and Stephane decided it was time to disabuse Danny once and for all.
“Well, firstly, I don’t live with my father, that would be too weird for words; although there is the annex, we shack up there now and again.”
“We?” Danny asked, as casually as possible. He was leaning forward, resting his chin on his hand. Stephane threw a curve-ball.
Instantly, his words had the effect he was looking for, Danny’s skin flushing again. This time, though, Danny plucked up the courage to join in. “Which one?” he asked, his mouth curling upwards in a teasing smile. God, I’m flirting with Zeus, he thought; I’ve moved from the death cell to the death chamber.
They smiled at each other, eyes moving over cheekbones and lips. Slowly, the smile ebbed from Stephane's face, until he appeared solemn, considering the light mood between them.
“The most beautiful one, of course,” he murmured, and in that moment, when nothing else was said, and the burgeoning silence filtered between them, Stephane knew he was hopelessly, irrevocably, wholeheartedly, heart-stoppingly in trouble – of the deepest variety.
He was in love.
“You’re not so bad, yourself, Stephane,” Danny ventured, drinking a large gulp of wine to hide his embarrassment at his perceived clunkiness.
Ouch, he thought. Not so bad! Not so bad! How about…you are the most beautiful, stunning man I have ever seen; or what about…I just want to sit and look at you; and look at you, and look at you, and look at you until my eyeballs ache (I think I mean my eyeballs).
Before the silence became uncomfortable between them, Stephane asked Danny to tell him about painting; his, not the pre-Raphaelites.
“I paint landscapes,” Danny started. The waiter came, took away their plates, asked if they wanted the dessert menu. Stephane raised his eyebrows inquiringly, but Danny shook his head. The waiter left, Danny’s eyes following him, moving upwards to the clock above the bar; nearly half past eight. Outside, it had started to rain again, and the restaurant's atmosphere was intimate, comforting. The meal was nearly done. What now, his mind drifted; do I ask for another date, if date this actually is…will he kiss me, once we’re outside. That thought got Danny’s heart kabooming again, and he glanced back at Stephane, nervousness renewed.
“Er, I paint mainly from memory; you won’t see places you might readily recognize. It’s light that interests me, rather than shape and form. My grandmother took me to a Turner exhibition when I was seven years old. Before then, art was my favorite thing; but after that, seeing the way he used light, and color, I knew what I wanted to do. I saw a Matisse exhibition in the Tate, wandering around on my own, fourteen years old, and it was like walking in heaven.”
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. Looking at Stephane, Danny was relieved to see he at least appeared interested, his dark brows knitted together in concentration.
“So why did you become a barrister?” The question was broached gently, not with reproach. Danny stared at the linen tablecloth, and traced his fingers over the pattern of his napkin. Stephane’s fingers linked with his, and this time, they didn’t pull away. Instead, Danny rested his free hand over Stephane’s. “Perhaps that question wasn’t mine to ask,” offered Stephane gently, but Danny shook his head.
“Why not?” he asked, his eyes moving unashamedly now over Stephane’s face, allowing himself to drink in the masculine beauty of him.
Stephane considered for a moment. “I don’t think you like too many personal questions, Danny.”
“You think me guarded?”
“Hmm.”
“But I don’t know that much about you either, Stephane.”
Stephane leaned forward a little more, and stroked the back of Danny’s hand softly, almost an absent caress. He could see the effect it was having, Danny’s chest moving up and down that bit quicker to Stephane’s discerning eye. “Ask away,” Stephane invited, his eyes locking with Danny’s, his look as open, as inviting, as his words.
“Were you a waiter in Paris?” Danny asked quickly, making Stephane smile, shake his head slightly.
“I was a university lecturer.” Stephane watched for the familiar reaction, the one that denoted surprise that great looks usually meant minimal brain activity. But Danny remained relatively impassive, for him. There was a slight raising of his brows, that suggested interest, rather than surprise.
“Dr Clermont...that was right, then.”
“I didn’t say it was otherwise, Mr. Hastings; no, I taught French and English literature at the University of Paris.”
This just gets better and better, Danny was thinking. “So…why a waiter, in London?”
Stephane replenished their glasses, giving himself some thinking time. Outside, the rain was clattering at the window now. He liked the idea he was here, in the warmth, with a guy as pretty as a painting. He liked the idea he was with Danny. Stephane realized there was no way to go other than relate how it came to pass that his doctorate stood for nothing for him anymore, that he had been bored for years with his work; needed change. Big change.
“Because I resigned…with the agreement of the University Board, and the student’s family, in exchange for their not pressing charges.”
It was the way Stephane said it, so matter of fact, that Danny blinked quickly, whilst giving his ears a while to adjust.
“What did you do?”
Stephane shrugged as casually as he could. Unawares, he was flexing his right hand, which had throbbed for a week after an attempt at reconstructive facial surgery the Clermont way. But Cedric Flavert hadn’t been the first to receive the dubious benefit of Stephane’s method of problem resolution...
Guillaume was a member of that illustrious club, back in their teens, when the brothers had settled their disputes without resort to the United Nations of Parents. They’d slugged it out through their teens, and into their early twenties, nothing major, if you can underplay brothers knocking ten shades of the brown stuff out of each other. A cut lip here, a few bruises around the eyes there, but by the time Stephane was in his mid-twenties, he and Guillaume had called a truce, and chose to sort out their differences through the tactic of keeping distance with each other. Only now, Stephane was living with Guillaume, and Annelise was ensuring the truce remained in fully operative mode.
“I broke the cheekbone of one of my students…he'd been spreading nasty little lies about me on his silly little Facebook page and the University’s forums, calling me a cheat, a plagiarist, and a pervert, just to make sure.”
“Christ.”
“He accused me of the worst thing any academic can be accused of; that I plagiarized my paper on Zola, for L’Etude, a paper I wrote which I had spent months researching, digging out anything I could on the great Emile that would bring a new perspective on Le Germinal – in my opinion, his greatest book. The deeper reason Flavert got so pissed off was because I wouldn’t suck his dick, and hell hath no fury than a rejected student scorned!”
Stephane waited for Mr. Hastings’ verdict. Danny had that face on again. The stern, barrister look, which was turning Stephane on. As he waited for the gavel to fall, he wondered what it would be like to make love to him, his lovely white body wearing the black robe. Stephane took a slug of wine.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Danny’s verdict, finally delivered, in a voice low, measured, careful.
“Didn’t what?” Stephane asked, knowing the answer.
“Suck his dick.” Danny lost his nerve then, and took refuge in his own wine glass, not meeting Stephane’s gaze.
“I’m choosy in my old age; I like to think my standards went through the roof a few days ago.”
The slow suffuse of color bloomed again from Danny's neck to his cheekbones. They fell into a curious little silence, Danny lifting his eyes to look at Stephane again. Stephane broke it. “Do I scare you?” he asked, quietly.
“A little,” Danny conceded.
Stephane nodded thoughtfully. “Does it help, that you scare me too?”
Danny drew in his breath slightly. “How?”
“Because you’re like no one I have ever known.”
“Me too, Stephane.” Danny’s voice was barely a whisper, the lump in his throat joining forces with his stomach to create knots that stifled any semblance of
free flowing communication.
“Can I get you anything else?” the waiter interjected, making both Danny and Stephane start slightly.
Stephane shook his head, not taking his eyes from Danny, who asked for the bill.
Danny moved his eyes away from that intense, smoke filled stare, to the rain running in slow rivulets against the windows. He felt Stephane’s eyes sifting his face, his features, and the feeling of his scrutiny gave Danny a steady, pulsing thrill in his groin. His erection would not be gainsaid. Danny crossed his legs, suppressing the cock-inspired imaginings of Stephane’s lips moving over his stiffness, petting, soothing, gentle at first, becoming more demanding with the rise of passion.
A slight gasp escaped Danny's mouth, and he wanted the earth to shift briefly on its tectonic plates, that he might be swallowed up and buried. Sure, he’d be dead, but definitely not embarrassed any more. Tough kind of pay-off.
“Come on,” Stephane said at last, getting up, pulling on his jacket again, “there’s a quietish bar nearby, I think we need to talk, don’t you?”
Stephane insisted on getting the bill, seeing as he had asked Danny to come out with him. Danny bought the drinks in the bar, then they found a couple of seats.
“I imagine I’m not your usual type,” Danny’s understatement of his opening gambit only made Stephane smile a little.
“You could say that.” Stephane’s voice was laced with affection, the intonation making Danny relax again, fold his arms and rest them on the little copper topped table. Leaning forward, he met Stephane’s eyes.
“What’s your type, then?”
“Not you,” confirmed Stephane.
They broke into broader smiles, Danny feeling heady from the alcohol; but mainly from Stephane's presence and encroaching charm. “Stephane, can I tell you something?” Danny’s heart started to judder against his ribs. Just be honest, he thought, cards on the table time. The encouraging nod made him continue.