Pansies

by Alexis Hall

  Fen tattooed him afresh, his mouth moving softly over ink, and Alfie made the sort of sounds no needle in the world could have drawn from him, gasps and half-swallowed groans, and raw, rough-edged whimpers. He should probably have been embarrassed, but he was finding it hard to hold on to anything that wasn’t the pleasure uncurling inside him like a flower opening, sticky-bright and bold.

  At least until he became vaguely aware of Fen groping around by the side of the bed. And then much less vaguely aware of him sitting up, tossing hair coltishly away from his face, and holding a bottle of luxury German lube. A really large bottle.

  Alfie tried not to look at it.

  But the squelch of liquid seemed fart-in-a-cathedral loud. And it was impossible for Alfie to ignore just how . . . how spread out and undignified and vulnerable he was. And how much he wasn’t entirely okay with it.

  Finally came that inquisitive, possessive touch. Cool, lube-slippery fingers pressing against him. Into him. He forced himself to relax. Hissed a bit.

  Fen leaned over him, coming down onto an elbow, closing the distance between them, and bringing their bodies together once more. His other hand was jammed awkwardly between them, but Alfie infinitely preferred that to being spread-eagled and exposed like the virgin sacrifice in a Hammer horror. The tips of Fen’s hair brushed a little sharply over his chest.

  “This isn’t,” he heard himself say, “revenge, right?”

  “Um.” Fen’s eyes widened, his fingers sort of freezing half in and half out of Alfie. “You think I want to have sex with you out of revenge?”

  Okay. That sounded bad. “No, I mean. You know. Me like . . . and you like . . .”

  Fen’s eyes got even wider. “Jesus, Alfie, it’s not a punishment. Generally, I want to put my dick in people because I like them.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  A pause.

  “Did someone hurt you?” Fen had gone all gentle again, which made Alfie feel pretty much the opposite of everything he wanted to be.

  “What? No.” He took a deep breath. Forced his body to release its stranglehold on Fen’s fingers. “It’s fine. Carry on.”

  “‘It’s fine, carry on’?” Fen repeated, in incredulous tones.

  “What’re you expecting? ‘Oh God, fuck me harder.’ This isn’t porn, man.” Except, ironically that was exactly what Alfie himself expected (and very much appreciated) when it was the other way round. He had no idea why it was so hard to say it back. Why even thinking about it made him feel slightly sick.

  “We really don’t have to—”

  Fen would have pulled away, but Alfie caught his wrist. “No,” he said, urgency and anxiety combining to turn his voice hoarse and raspy. “I want it.” Because he did. He really did. “Please?” he tried. “I loved it when you were touching me and stuff. I’m just nervous like.”

  A shifting of the mattress and a kiss to the side of his knee signified Fen getting back into position. Except now he was between Alfie’s legs and watching his own fingers as they got all up close and personal with Alfie’s arse, which was probably supposed to be sexy. And maybe would have been sexy if Alfie didn’t feel so wet and stared at.

  Except then Fen was staring at his face instead, a worried line between his brows. “You’ve got nothing to prove here. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “It’s not that.” Alfie wished his heart would stop thundering. He could barely hear himself think. Which might have been why he blurted out the scariest truth of all. “It’s just . . . I dunno . . . will you see me differently after?”

  “Differently how?”

  “Less . . . y’know . . . less.”

  “Oh, Alfie.” Fen fell upon him, covering him and kissing him hard. “Nothing could make you less.”

  “Uh, okay.” It was the best Alfie could manage. But he thought it contained multitudes. Gratitude and relief, embarrassment that he’d needed to hear it, and a touch of longing for Fen’s assurance. Maybe Fen wouldn’t think less of him, but sometimes Alfie wasn’t so forgiving of himself.

  Fen moved his mouth to Alfie’s ear. “My strong, gorgeous man. Let me fuck you.”

  Alfie shuddered, at the praise and possession both. And, just then, it didn’t feel weak to say . . . “Yeah.”

  The sound Fen made at that was somewhere between a purr and a growl, his tongue pushing eagerly between Alfie’s lips, his cock hardening against Alfie’s thigh. Kind of amazing, the power of one little word, unravelling Fen just as sweetly as Alfie’s hands on his wrists. And, honestly, Fen didn’t seem too interested in control, or the lack of it. The more Alfie surrendered, opening his mouth to Fen’s kisses, his body to Fen’s hands, the wilder Fen got, moans falling against his skin like rain.

  So Alfie gave himself permission to stop worrying about how he was supposed to be, or what this meant, or if it was okay, and let Fen . . . have him, take him, make him feel good. And it wasn’t so scary. It was just being with someone. He spread his legs, canting up his hips to let Fen settle there, cradled, pressed up against him as intimate as could be.

  “Oh, Alfie, Alfie.” Fen moved against him, breathless, sweat-damp and utterly lovely. “You put every fantasy I’ve ever had about you to shame.”

  “I’m all yours.”

  Alfie actually felt the shiver reach Fen’s cock. He gave another one of his little moans, all helpless and unravelled and desperate, sliding slickly, and then somewhat stickily, between and against Alfie’s thighs. “God, I really need to— What the fuck did I do with the condom?”

  “Uh. Over there, I think?” Alfie flailed usefully.

  “Fuck.” Fen groped across the sheet and then began fumbling about on the floor. “It was right here.”

  Staring at the ceiling, as Fen wriggled against his knees, Alfie wondered what was the polite thing to do. Was he supposed to pretend this wasn’t happening? Keep up a friendly flow of small—or worse—dirty talk? When he was rubbish at both. He sat up, rolled over, and tried to help.

  Somewhere in the mess of books and clothes, their hands got tangled, and suddenly Fen was laughing, his face flushed, his hair falling crazily forward into his eyes. And he looked so beautiful, so ridiculous, this gold and silver man, that Alfie just had to kiss him, all his laughing, and they slithered slowly off the futon into a pile of Fen’s socks and underwear, knotted up together, mouths and legs and hands.

  “Please don’t say I have to go to Asda and buy more,” said Alfie, when he was able to speak.

  “No, it’s okay. I’ve got a box. Somewhere.”

  Alfie’s fingers closed around something cool and smooth and curved. “Uh.” A button at the base made it buzz. “Is this a vibrator?”

  “It’s a gentleman’s massager.”

  It was kind of weirdly classy looking, dark blue and ergonomic, almost like it could be some kind of executive toy.

  “Can you stop staring at it, please? It’s not a grenade.”

  “Sorry . . . it’s just . . .”

  Fen slanted him a prim sideways look. “If I’m on my own, I like the option of having something inside me.”

  Alfie’s mouth fell open and his brain exploded. Fen. With that. Between his legs. Disappearing inside him. His other hand on his cock, all shiny with pre-come and flushed with excitement. His head thrown back, hair wild, the straining arch of his body as he fucked himself and lost himself. “Fuck, that’s hot.”

  “Yes. Well.” Fen looked flustered, actually flustered. But then he recovered. “If you’re very good, I might let you watch someday.”

  Holy shit. “I’m not sure I’d survive.”

  Fen lifted his brows wickedly. “But wouldn’t it be a wonderful way to go? Now, get your magnificent arse back on that bed.”

  He must have been getting used to having Fen looming over him, because it was a lot less loomy this time round. He didn’t even mind the businesslike brush of his fingers, checking Alfie was still slick and ready for him. Which he was pretty sure he was. There was no resistance, no anxious
pull, just that achy, needy feeling.

  “You know,” Fen murmured. “Next time it’s just me and my toys, this is what I’ll be thinking of.”

  Alfie blinked goofily.

  “You with me, giving me this, giving me you.”

  Alfie’s head tipped back against the pillow, his throat bare to Fen’s kisses, and all he said was “Yes.” “Yes,” as he heard the crackle of a condom wrapper. “Yes,” as Fen covered him, and breached him, and came into him.

  Stared down at him in a fierce kind of wonder.

  And it felt good, it felt so good. A warm stretch, and something wordless, neither pleasure nor pain, but simply, purely joining.

  “Alfie. My Alfie.”

  Braced as he was, the tendons were standing out on Fen’s forearms, just like they did when Alfie held him down. Except this time he could touch them. And he did, running his palms up and down those lean, strong muscles, over the taut skin and silky curls, dizzied on the everyday miracle of a human body, two human bodies, and all the ways they could come together. The things they could make each other feel. Fen’s hips nudged forward, and the angle was suddenly right—very right—and Alfie . . . sort of yelped, and jerked, and maybe had a bit of a heart attack. The nice kind. Hands and legs death-clenched around Fen.

  Who grinned down at him, all bright eyes and gleaming skin, pulled back a bit, and did it again. So that Alfie just fell apart. Shattered into joy. Because he’d somehow forgotten it was amazing being touched this deeply, like there was a splinter of light inside him, and Fen was making him shine. And his cock, which had sort of flagged a bit, was suddenly right back there, painfully hard and dripping onto his stomach.

  “Oh God. Fuck me.” He grabbed the sleek, perfect curve of Fen’s arse, wanting more, more of everything, the sweet, smooth glide, the way their bodies met, the stretch in his thighs and ache in his hips, the sharpness of Fen’s pelvis and the hard length of his cock, the crazy electric bliss it sparked as it thrust into him. “Fuck me harder.”

  Fen grinned—he was probably allowed to be a little impish—and gave Alfie exactly what he’d asked for. Reducing himself to gasps, raw moans, and sweat, straining against Alfie, fucking him as wild and rough as he needed, his whole body given over to it, to Alfie and to pleasure. Alfie couldn’t keep his eyes open, so he had to have him in pieces: the jut and roll of his shoulder blades, the thrust of his hips, the tormented crease between his brows, the way his mouth looked so helpless, so naked, occasionally forming the shape of Alfie’s name.

  Fen reared back onto his knees, gleaming in the half-light, pushed Alfie’s legs even further apart, and drove in so hard and deep it made Alfie cry out, a shattered, shameless sound. And he didn’t care. Let Fen have that too. All his rapture. Another bit of sea glass, for Fen to keep and look at sometimes.

  A rough hand, tight on his cock, and a few strokes was all it took. His back arched. Hands clawed into Fen’s hips. And Alfie came all over himself. It seemed to last forever, tumbling him into the sort of ecstasy that felt either like drowning, or flying, or maybe both, and he was half sobbing at the sheer, beautiful release of it. Some lost part of himself dragged into the light, where it neither flinched nor faded.

  Fen threw back his head, his neck a glistening line of tension and anticipation, drops of sweat caught on his pale stubble. His lips curled into a snarl, and he looked gloriously savage for a moment, a creature on the brink of bliss.

  Weirdly, it filled Alfie with tenderness. “Come in me. I wanna see you.”

  “Oh God . . . Alfie . . . yes . . .” A series of violent shudders ripped through Fen’s body. A few ragged, rocking thrusts, and he was done, shaking and babbling, and safe within the circle of Alfie’s arms. And Alfie had a moment to really hate the condom because he wanted that too, Fen’s pleasure inside him.

  “Unnh,” muttered Fen, a few minutes later. He was still collapsed, draped over Alfie like seaweed. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was that . . . That was good for you, right?”

  Now that his brain was sort of working and the happy madness of sex was fading, it took everything Alfie had not to flinch. “Yeah. It was.” He cleared his throat. “Just not all the time, maybe?”

  Fen made a soft, drowsy noise that was probably a laugh. “Only when you want.”

  Well, that would never happen. Nope.

  It wasn’t so much that Alfie wouldn’t want Fen to fuck him again. It was more that he couldn’t imagine initiating it. Except once he’d got over himself, it had been . . . bloody incredible. He’d loved seeing Fen all lust-feral. And wouldn’t it be kind of cool to be that comfortable? As comfortable as Fen. His desires all open doors.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal.”

  Silence fell gently over them. After a moment or two, Fen pushed gingerly away and got rid of the condom, before flopping at Alfie’s side, nuzzling into the crook of his arm. Alfie stared down at him and thought stupid things about how beautiful he was, how funny and sweet and sharp, and how much he just wanted to be with him. Have this be their life.

  Which was selfish and awful because Fen was only here because of his mum. All his hopes and dreams belonged somewhere else. To someone else. Probably the main reason he was with Alfie now was because he felt alone and Alfie was a link to the lost. As soon as he found his feet again, he’d be off. And that . . . that was a good thing, right? Fen deserved to be happy.

  Although, for that matter, so did Alfie. And there was no point worrying about this stuff now. Not when—given the past and the fact their lives had taken them in completely different directions—it was pretty fucking remarkable that they’d wound up together at all. This whole thing was fragile and unlikely and special: a moment of stillness in the middle of two turning worlds. Only difference was, when it was over, Fen would go back to being wherever he was supposed be and doing whatever he was supposed to do, and Alfie would go back to equity capital markets, his shitty sofa, and a sealess city he was pretty sure he hated.

  But at least he’d have this to take with him. A few days being gay in South Shields with his gorgeous flower shop boy. Maybe it was his gratitude for that, or because of the intimacy of what they’d just done, or perhaps it was because of Fen, the softness of his eyes just then, and the easy pliancy of his body fitted against Alfie’s, but words were welling up inside him and he wasn’t sure he could keep them back. Or if he even wanted to. He opened his mouth—

  “God,” said Fen fervently. “I’m starving.”

  And so Alfie was saved from making a complete fool of himself.

  It turned out Fen didn’t actually have any food, except for a loaf of bread that had gone mouldy round the crusts and a squishy tube of Primula cheese spread that had fallen down the back of the fridge. They weren’t in any state to put in an appearance at a restaurant, so Alfie drove them out to the McDonald’s at Towers Place. He could still remember when it first opened: South Shields’ first and probably still only drive-through, like a little piece of another world.

  He whooshed down John Reid Road, enjoying the emptiness of the cloudy dark. The tall ghosts of electricity pylons gathered on the horizon. “I feel like I’ve gone back in time.”

  Fen stared at his knees. “Oh God, you have no idea how much I wanted this: a hot boy with a car, a post-coital trip to the drive-through.” He looked up again, and his smile was a little sad. “And it was you, Alfie, it was always you.”

  Alfie winced. But it wasn’t guilt anymore. It was just a clean, bright pain for Fen’s loneliness and the stupid boy Alfie’d been. So stupid. So lost.

  “But you know something?” Fen went on.

  “What?”

  “I like this so much more.”

  If Alfie hadn’t been legally required to keep his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road, he’d have grabbed Fen. Kissed him. Kissed him and kissed him.

  At McDonald’s, they ordered everything, bags and bags of it, laughing and arguing and braving th
e You’ve just had sex, haven’t you? look from the woman behind the window. Then Alfie took them up Lizard Lane—carefully, this time—and parked in the make-out spot. A fat, yellowy moon had slipped from beneath the cloudbank and hung there carelessly, like the disc of an unravelled yo-yo. They sat under it, in Alfie’s Sagaris, and for a while there was nothing but the squeak of polystyrene and the rustle of paper, the clink of ice cubes and the bubble of liquid, and Fen licking the grease and salt crystals from his fingertips.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be a vegetarian?” Alfie asked.

  “I’m in remission.”

  At last, they were left with wrappings and a few weirdly coloured, deformed fries neither of them wanted to eat. He’d wound down the windows, but the car still reeked of cheap food, gherkins, and the faintest suggestion of sex.

  Fen looked half-asleep. Sated. In all the ways. “That was amazing. Disgusting. But also amazing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Almost but not quite entirely unlike food.”

  Alfie laughed. “Was that a Hitchhiker’s reference?”

  Fen nodded, blushing a little.

  “Think I’ve still got the whole of Hitchhiker’s on tape somewhere.”

  “Oh me too. It was thirty quid. A fortune. Also six cassettes, six whole cassettes.”

  “Man, Lord of the Rings was twelve or fourteen.”

  “Alfie—” Fen grinned at him “—are you secretly a geek?”

  “Maybe I just have a wide variety of interests.”

  “God, Alfie, you’re so much more than you pretended to be.”

  “Well. Aren’t we all?”

  Alfie usually liked being in cars with people, but right now it made him feel oddly distant. The high-mounted gearbox probably didn’t help. Just touching Fen’s hand would have been like reaching over a wall. He half wished for his crappy old Nova, Fen stretched out, hot and eager, on the backseat, not some semireluctant girl Alfie was doggedly trying to please. Fucking TVRs. No air bags, no antilock brakes, nowhere to grind and grope each other.