Bad Case of Loving You

by Laney Cairo

  Lin slipped her hand under his arm. “He’s teasing you,”

  she said to Nevins. “Ignore him, you’re only encouraging him.”

  I had to work at not laughing at Nevins’ look of confusion when she led him off. I knew the bloke was smart, he’d thrashed me in biochem, but he really seemed to not be awake half of the time.

  Of course, it could be that. Maybe he was desperately sleep-deprived.

  I was surprised that Andrew came to the pub, too, and didn’t head back into the hospital with most of the doctors. It seemed to me that someone who was so dedicated that they got up at three in the morning to do rounds would want to check that nothing had happened in his absence, but Andrew was leaning against the bar, drinking hard with the young woman who had seconded his motion at the meeting.

  I thought about going over to stand with him, but it felt like it would just be too conspicuous in front of Lin and Nevins so I stayed with them, listening to tales of horror from a brand new resident who had had four hours sleep since Friday afternoon.

  She was too tired to sleep, she explained, as she downed glasses of Kahlua and Coke as fast as the barman could make them.

  I was drinking lager with whiskey shooters, since Dr.

  Seagate had held up a credit card when we’d walked in and announced the drinks were on him. Free booze was too good a thing to turn down, and Lin and Nevins were getting stuck into it, too.

  I was engrossed in conversation with the resident, who I was beginning to suspect was trying to pick me up, when Lin and Nevins disappeared. I looked up from dodging yet another flutter of eyelashes against skin so dark from lack of sleep the woman might just as well be wearing goth eyeliner, and they’d gone.

  I was sure they hadn’t left the bar, because Lin’s backpack was where she had abandoned it under the table. The resident, whose name was Tracey, or so she kept telling me, nodded at the loos. “Think they’ve gone off for a shag.” I groaned mentally.

  That was my fault. The bar was completely full of doctors, and they were shagging within earshot of actual and potential supervisors, assessors, and tutors. Hardly prudent.

  Then I looked up to find Andrew watching me across the crowded bar, and I felt myself colour bright red. Yeah, that was right, there was no moral high ground on this one, and Andrew had a lot more to lose than either Lin or Nevins, like his job.

  Tracey obviously took my flush as proof of interest and groped me under the table, squeezing my thigh inexpertly.

  What was it about doctors? Did they all have absolutely no idea about sex?

  Andrew had his back to me, leaning against the bar in the way that totally drunk people do, and he looked damned hot.

  God, last night had been good, but it hadn’t been enough.

  I fended off Tracey’s hand, picked up my lager and walked through the crowd to stand beside Andrew.

  He turned around and smiled crookedly at me. I didn’t know him well, but something was wrong—or right, perhaps?

  “I was just going to come looking for you,” he said. “Ready to leave? Want to go round up Lin and Nevins?”

  Dr. Seagate slung his arm around Andrew’s shoulders. “I called the taxi company.”

  Andrew pecked Dr. Seagate on the cheek quickly and said,

  “Okay, quack,” and they both dissolved into laughter.

  I stood in front of the loo doors. There was only two options, they had to be behind one of the doors, so I pushed the women’s loo door open and called out, “Lin, Nevins, we’re leaving. If you want to come along, hurry up.”

  The woman fixing her make-up in the mirror glared at me so I shrugged at her and left to repeat the process in the gent’s loo.

  I didn’t hang around to find out which one they had been in.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  F had been feeding Clarissa and me whiskey in vast quantities, presumably expunging his guilt at having started this whole mess off, when he wasn’t ducking out of the bar to stand on the pavement with his cell phone and conduct top secret negotiations to try to get both Clarissa and me jobs at London.

  Clarissa was completely drunk, clinging onto me in an attempt to stand up, and I led her out of the bar to the bus stop outside and sat her on the seat, hoping she wasn’t planning on throwing up in the taxi.

  “Sorry,” I said to the couple making out in the bus shelter.

  “Alcohol-induced emergency here.”

  Clarissa leaned sideways against the shelter and I looked at the couple beside me again.

  Obviously I was drunk, too, because I’d failed to notice that the man was achrondoplastic and was actually standing on the bus stop seat to reach the young woman he was kissing.

  Only he wasn’t achrondoplastic, at least not the common version. Judging by his hands, currently groping the woman’s ass, and his narrow torso, and the shape of his mouth when he’d said, “No problems,” he had EVC syndrome.

  Elis-van Creveld. Now there was a rare autosomal recessive syndrome, and I wondered how someone of Old Order Amish descent had wound up making out in a London bus shelter.

  Clarissa said, “I don’t feel very well, Andrew,” so I helped her to her feet and took her to the gutter to throw up.

  A strong and inspiring start to the evening.

  The taxis began to arrive and after putting Clarissa into one, with an open window beside her, I looked around for Matthew. There were about thirty of us, by the look of it, all trying to get into the five taxis F had ordered, and I grabbed Matthew’s hand and pulled him into the same taxi as me.

  If I was going to be squashed into a car with too many drunken doctors, I was going to do it with Matthew pushed up against me.

  Lin and Nevins appeared at the door of the pub and rushed into the same taxi as us, piling in just as the first taxi took off.

  “All set?” the driver asked, and he turned his indicator on and pulled out into the traffic without waiting for an answer, or for Lin to close the door.

  There were too many of us in the cab and Matthew was half across my knees so I pulled him properly into my lap, giving Jilly, one of the psych registrars, room to sit. Jilly was six months pregnant, so she needed the extra space.

  “Thanks, Andrew,” she said, grinning at me and patting her belly.

  Matthew was tense on my lap, not that Lin and Nevins were paying any attention to us. They were sitting on the floor of the cab and Nevins had his arm around Lin. They were obviously wrapped up in each other, so I stroked Matthew’s arm and smiled at him when he turned to look at me curiously in the flickering of the passing streetlights.

  I wanted to tell him that I’d been fired, that it was all okay, but this wasn’t the time, not with everyone listening.

  There would just be too much explaining to do.

  The taxis pulled up outside F’s place and Matthew scrambled out of my lap so I concentrated on helping Jilly out of the taxi.

  Matthew was standing stock still in F’s living room, gazing around. I guess I’d got used to F’s conspicuous consumption, but Matthew’s surprise made me look at it through fresh eyes. F’d told me once how much the view he had of the Thames had cost him, but it hurt to think about, even as drunk as I was.

  Lena, F’s girlfriend, hadn’t been at the pub, so I’d assumed she’d been working, but she was waiting for us at F’s apartment, and she took Clarissa away, holding tightly on her arm, presumably to put her to bed.

  When I stood beside Matthew, he said, “There’s a bong on the coffee table, just like my place.”

  “There always is at F’s,” I explained. “Though when I’ve brought Henry over to fight with his kids, he’s always put it away.” I looked at the plump cream sofas, with luxuriant deep blue throw rugs over them, and the gleaming wooden floors, and said, “No beer can tower though.”

  F said, “What don’t I have?” as he walked put to put the ornately carved box that he kept his stash in beside the bong.

  “A beer can tower,” I said, and F chuckled.


  “God, no. I haven’t had one of them for years. I’m embarrassed enough about the number of empty wine bottles I put out every week.”

  “You could make a wine bottle tower,” Matthew suggested, much to my surprise. I had no idea he was acquainted enough with F to joke with him.

  F chortled beside me. “Hell, yes. With the coloured bottles alternating with clear, all held together with Transpore. It’ll be a tribute to my misspent youth, may it last forever.” F raised his glass and said, “Fuck, you two need a drink. Booze is in the kitchen.”

  There were platters of food in the kitchen, sandwiches and little pastries and the inevitable samosas, all covered with clear plastic and bearing the name of a large catering company. That was typical F, too, throwing money around, or rather debt.

  I pulled Matthew into my arms when he opened overhead cupboards in search of glasses, and he settled back against me as I nuzzled his neck. “Mmm,” he said. “Aren’t you worried someone will walk in? And make trouble for you at work?”

  I took a step back so I was leaning against a counter, the polished granite digging into my back, pulling Matthew with me so he was pressed against me firmly, his ass available and inviting against my groin.

  “No,” I said against his neck. “Read this while I grope you.” I stopped fondling him with one hand for long enough to pull my dismissal notice out of my trouser pocket and hand it to him, then went back to sucking on the tender skin of his neck while he read the letter.

  Someone walked in, said, “Oops,” and walked out again, and I had a really indulgent grind against Matthew, making him squirm and chuckle as he read.

  Then he stopped squirming and said, “Fuck! They fired you!”

  “Yep,” I said. “Not your tutor any more.”

  Matthew turned around in my arms, sliding one thigh between mine, giving the most heavenly pressure against my cock, and wrapped his arms around my neck. “Aren’t you angry? Or upset? Because they fired you?”

  “Too tired and horny to be angry,” I said, eyes fixed on Matthew’s lips. Fuck, he had stunning lips, just made for …

  “Ask me tomorrow after ten hours sleep and three fucks.”

  Okay, Matthew was grinding this time.

  F walked in, opened the fridge, and said over his shoulder,

  “You’ve got the spare room tonight, if we can stick Clarissa into a taxi without her puking. Save it for then.”

  God, I loved F at times, even if he had a seven-figure mortgage.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  It felt weird to have Andrew’s arms around me in front of people who weren’t drug-fucked engineering students. Maybe they were all drug-fucked doctors? Nevins had sprayed red wine across the coffee table when Andrew had decided he was too pissed to still stand up, and had sat down on one of the gorgeous couches and pulled me into his lap.

  Lin, on the other hand, had just looked smug, which made me wonder exactly how much she’d worked out for herself.

  The food was good, and the three of us med students were made conspicuous by the enthusiasm with which we stuffed ourselves with it. Free food was almost as good as free booze.

  Usually, if someone was passing around free buckets, I’d be in there, getting shit-faced, but I just passed the bong on to the giggling nurse beside me. I didn’t hand it to Andrew, whose lap I was still ensconced on, either. If he wanted three fucks, we were both going to have to sober up a little.

  Sometime during the evening, when it was completely dark and tiny lights were glittering on the Thames, more people began to arrive, nurses coming off afternoon shift, doctors who had been at the strike and had then gone to do rounds. I recognised some of them from the ward.

  Jane sat down wearily beside us, not even blinking at Andrew’s arm around my waist. She leaned her head back against the couch and groaned, then kicked her sneakers off and put her sock-clad feet up on the coffee table amongst the wine glasses and bottles.

  “Mrs. Silva died,” she said, and Andrew’s hand tightened around my waist.

  I remembered Mrs. Silva. Andrew had described her as a

  ’train wreck’, which apparently was the technical term for cascading multiple organ failure.

  “Who pronounced?” Andrew asked. “It should have been me, but I couldn’t.”

  “Jackie came in to do it when I rang him and explained you’d been fired,” Jane said, opening her eyes and taking the glass of wine that Dr. Seagate … F, I supposed I was allowed to call him now, handed her.

  “No problems?” Andrew said cautiously.

  “Nope.” She sighed as she drank her first mouthful of wine. “There’ll have to be a PM, but it’ll only be a perfunctory one. He took care of that. He also said to tell you to contact him, and he’ll write you the best damn reference anyone has ever seen.”

  Andrew’s fingers slid up my neck and into my curls and drew tiny circles. “Thanks.” I melted against him, resting my head on his shoulder.

  She glanced at me briefly, as though I was some kind of strange lizard she’d found under a rock, then turned her attention to the food on the table.

  I had to wait to get into the bathroom until the pregnant woman had finished, so it was a relief to finally get in there.

  The bathroom was just as opulent as the rest of the place, and I couldn’t resist having a snoop around. It would be useful to find some condoms and lube since I hadn’t brought my backpack with me today, and I hadn’t noticed Andrew carrying one either.

  There were condoms in the cupboard, amongst the detritus of equipment presumably nicked from the hospital, so I took a couple, along with some examination gloves. I hunted through the rolls of surgical tape, steristrips, and debriding scissors, and found sachets of lube, so I took a couple of them, too, stuffing them into my pocket.

  I picked up a roll of Microfoam tape and put that in the other pocket, grinning to myself in the mirror. Oh, yeah, I could use that tape.

  Andrew stood silently in the middle of the guest room while I dragged one of the removal boxes the room was stacked with across the door to stop anyone from barging in.

  I pulled the fancy bedcover off the bed and dumped that on the floor, then pulled the blankets down, too. If you were going to fuck in someone else’s bed, it was always a smart move to make sure the come only spread across the easily washable surfaces. That was a lesson I’d learnt the hard way.

  I unbuttoned his shirt slowly, and it felt like I was peeling the layers off him, layers of worry and stress and sadness, when I unbuttoned the cuffs and slid his arms out of the fabric.

  I didn’t look at his face, not at the moment when he exhaled slowly and deeply. I wanted to give him a moment to surrender first.

  When I did look up from unbuttoning his belt, his eyes were closed and his tongue was protruding slightly between his teeth, so I kissed his mouth gently, kissing away the tension that was creasing his face, taking us both back to the place we had found at his house.

  There was a stillness to this room now, more than an absence of motion, and it was this I wanted to give Andrew.

  “Hold out your hands,” I whispered. There was a distant surge of laughter from the lounge room, and a clink of glasses.

  Andrew lifted his hands for me, holding them out. I guided them together, turning his hands over so his wrists pressed together, then reached into my pocket for the surgical tape. I wound the tape gently around his wrists, binding them together, and Andrew whimpered.

  It was all I could do not to just drop to my knees then, and blow him, so I took a step back and nodded at the bed with my head, not trusting my voice at that moment.

  I knelt down and undid Andrew’s shoelaces and pulled his shoes off. They were scuffed at the toes and worn down at the heels. I pulled his socks off, circled my hands around his ankles, and slid my hands up to Andrew’s calves underneath his trousers.

  He moaned when I sucked on the skin of his ankle and whispered, “Please, Matthew.”

  I stood up and looked down at him,
then tossed the supplies on the bed. His eyes were huge when they looked up at me and I traced his lips with one finger, then unbuttoned my shirt and dropped it on the floor.

  I trod on the toe of each sock in turn, stepping out of them, then undid the top button of my fly. There was a lull in the background noise from the lounge room and my zip rasped loud in the room as I slid it down. I could hear Andrew’s breathing and my own.

  “Fuck,” he whispered as my trousers slid off. I stepped closer, leaving behind the trousers, and he leaned forward, hands between his knees, and pressed his mouth over where my cock was stretching my underwear tight.

  I ached; not just my cock, but all of me, ached for him.

  The feel of his mouth, the wetness of his breath through the fabric, was agonizingly good so I let him mouth me, biting gently, licking so his tongue rasped against the cotton.

  He looked up at me, mouth open, saliva stretching between his lips and I distantly heard the pop of a champagne cork and a cheer. I pushed my underwear slowly down and my cock bobbed out of confinement. Andrew leaned forward again in slow motion, taking the head of my cock into his mouth, sliding his tongue over the beads, pressing gently on them in a way that sent shivers through my entire body.

  I held my cock steady for him, since his hands weren’t free, and he began to suck me slowly and gently, every touch and slide and lick feeling so good that it made me want to scream. I probably was going to scream eventually, it was kind of inevitable, but hopefully not for a good long while yet.

  “Stop,” I whispered, and Andrew looked up at me, pausing with his mouth open, the head of my cock resting against his bottom lip.

  “Stand up,” I said, stepping back to give him room.

  He stood and I unbuckled his belt and undressed him. He looked painfully hard, the head of his cock deep red, but that was something I was going to fix for him.

  We kissed and he let me take the lead, then I stacked the pillows against the headboard for him to lean against and pointed for him to get on the bed.

  I knelt on the bed, too, pulled a pair of the scrounged gloves on, and carefully lubed up two of my fingers. I thought for a moment about lubing my whole hand but discarded the idea. For that, we needed more privacy, so that Andrew could scream the place down if he wanted to.