The Guardian Angel

by Liam Livings

  He nodded, finished his mouthful, then said, “What about Amy? I want to meet her,”

  “I think she’d be okay to leave us alone this weekend.”

  “But when we’re back, I want to meet her.”

  “You will, my darling man, you definitely will.” I smiled at him.

  He smiled back at me, a perfect white grin of a smile, before returning to his nachos and TV.

  There he was in my bed, my perfect image of a man, brought to life for me. I pinched myself a few times, and every time I left a mark, and he remained in my bed, just as perfect, each time trying a new food taste with the joy and enthusiasm of a child.

  The next day, we did actually leave the hotel. About midday we dragged ourselves out of bed and into the shower together. He stood opposite me, and we took it in turns to wash each other. I noticed how much he was enjoying this as his erection grew and I said, “Don’t you ever stop? You’re like a teenager. I can’t keep up. I’m sore in parts I didn’t even know could get sore. You’re an animal. If I had a white flag, I’d fly it. Can we get dressed and see some of Brighton first?”

  He smiled and dropped to his knees, the water splashing over his face. “But it’s so much fun, I don’t want to stop. I could do this all day and all night. I can’t believe how different it is to be able to feel things, touch things. It’s nothing like I imagined.” He began to tease my cock with his lips and mouth.

  “Ow,” I cried. “Seriously, I can’t. I’m sore. Can we just dress and get some air?” I lifted his head back to my level and kissed him. “My cock’s not going anywhere. It’ll still be there when we come back this afternoon.”

  He nodded as he brought his head back from the kiss.

  I stood next to him, looking at the mirror over the sink, and taught him how to shave. I stroked his cheek. “This is called stubble. It’s pretty sexy on you. Suits the frame of your face.”

  He rubbed it. “It itches. How can I stop it?”

  I held a razor and can of shaving gel. “You shave it off.”

  “How? Does it hurt?”

  After washing his face in warm water, I massaged some shaving foam into one side of his face, and he did the same for the other side.

  He looked at me, his face comically covered in foam. “Now what?”

  I took the razor, with a new blade on it. “Even if you’re sharing a bed with someone, you don’t share a razor. Hygiene reasons.” I stood behind him as it was easier for me, more like shaving my own face, and gently in one smooth movement, I brought the razor down from near his right ear along the side of his jaw.

  He pulled back slightly.

  “Did I cut you?” I couldn’t see any blood but wanted to be sure.

  He shook his head. “It feels funny. Like my skin’s coming off. And this is every day, is it?”

  “Every day, or every few days, depends how thick it comes through and if you want to be beardy in between times.”

  He raised his eyes and nodded for me to continue.

  I rinsed the razor in the hot water. “You have to keep the blade clean and clear of hair, or it rips out the hairs and that really does hurt. And never shave against the direction of the hairs.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  I put his hand on my cheek and stroked it downwards. “The hairs grow in that direction, so you shave downwards too.”

  He nodded. “What about mine?” He let me feel which way they grew on his face, before we put the foam on. Another smooth movement next to the previous one, this time, and Sky’s hand rested on mine so he could feel how I did it. Rinse. I handed him the blade. “Now your turn. Next bit around.” I pointed to where he should move to next.

  After a few shaky goes, he got into his stride and soon had a smooth face, with only a few small nicks around his neck and chin. I handed him the after-shave balm, and he smoothed it around his face, smiling as it did its job.

  “What about these?” He pointed to the nicks.

  “That’s always the hardest part to get right. Took me years. Chin and the neck. Just put a bit of toilet paper on it, and it’ll stop.” I handed him some.

  He put a huge piece against his chin, where it stuck.

  Suppressing a laugh, I said, “Not the whole bit—a little bit, look.” I tore off a small piece and pressed it onto his neck gently.

  He leant forward and kissed me. He smelt of aftershave balm and soap. He pushed forward into me, and I felt his erection inside his trousers. He walked me backwards out of the bathroom and pushed me onto the bed. “If it’s like that every time, I’ll shave every day.” He smiled and leant forward to undo my trousers.

  We walked around the Lanes, holding hands, perusing the kitsch arty ware in every shop. I had a hard time explaining to him the point of some of the stuff they sold, and ended up settling on “Because some people like that sort of thing, so they buy it.”

  He asked, “But does it have a use, a purpose?”

  “Not everything in life does. Life would be very dull if we only did things we had to and bought things we needed, and if everything had a specific purpose. A very grey world, that would be.”

  “I’ll take one.” He picked up the fluffy, small pink cat with enormous eyes and took it to the till.

  As the cashier told him the price, he started to leave.

  I stopped him. “Normally they like it if you pay!” I handed the cashier some money.

  “I always did wonder what that stuff was.”

  The cashier smiled and rolled her eyes as she put the cat into a paper bag and handed it to me. I passed it to Sky, and we left the shop. “I think you’ve still got a lot to learn….” I put my hand in his.

  Walking along the pier together, he squeezed my hand tight as we approached a candyfloss stall that was surrounded by excited children asking for some.

  “What does it do?” he asked, wide-eyed.

  “It tastes nice.” I looked at the vendor and nodded. We exchanged money for candyfloss, and I handed it to Sky. “Take a bite.”

  He closed his eyes, eating it thoughtfully. “It’s like eating clouds, but they’re pink. What’s it made of?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Sugar, I suppose. That’s another thing you need to understand: some things in life you’re just not meant to understand, so it’s better not to worry too much about them. And candyfloss is one of them. Best not to think about how it’s made, just concentrate on how good it tastes.”

  He took another mouthful with his eyes closed and nodded.

  We walked to the end of the pier. Sky tried popcorn, sugared nuts, and ice cream along the way, until we reached the end, where a large Ferris wheel stood among other, smaller fairground rides.

  Sky stared at the sea below us, licking his ice cream. “What does it feel like?” He pointed to the sea.

  “A bit like a shower, but colder and salty.”

  “Can we go in?”

  “If you want.”

  He started to undress.

  I stopped him. “Not here. You can’t jump off the pier. Let’s go back to the beach—unless you want to go on that?” I nodded to the Ferris wheel, slowly turning above us at the end of the pier.

  “My stomach feels funny. I don’t know if that will help,” he replied, holding his stomach.

  “That’s probably all that crap you’ve just wolfed down.” I smiled, rubbing his back. “Let’s give that a miss and sit on the beach for a bit.”

  Once Sky’s stomach ache had subsided, he just sat on the beach, stroking the pebbles, digging his hands underneath them. “Who put this here?” He dropped pebbles into a pile between his crossed legs.

  “That’s another one of those things you don’t need to understand, at least not for now. Let’s just say they’ve been here a very long time, and they will still be here long after we’re gone. You gonna have a swim, then?”

  “Do I just take off my clothes and go into it?” He bit his lip.

  He was adorable. I wanted to eat him all up, but I didn’t�
�not on the beach, we’d done more than enough of that in the hotel room. “You won’t dissolve, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He was just about to take his underwear off, and I stopped him. “Have you got swimming shorts? Actually, you’d look pretty magnificent in Speedos, but needs must and all that.”

  “I arrived here to meet you. Have you seen me carrying a bag?”

  He only had the clothes I’d seen him in the day before. “Fair point. Well, you can’t go in naked, although if we were a bit farther up that way—” I pointed along the beach to Kemp Town, or Camp Town as it’s known locally, the gayer bit of Brighton. “—we’d be okay, but here, with families, I think you should keep your underpants on.”

  He shrugged, then walked towards the water. His perfect bum cheeks encased in white Calvin Klein underwear shone in the sunlight as he walked away.

  It was all I could do to stop myself running after him and biting one of those cheeks.

  He walked into the sea up to his waist, then dived in, moving gracefully with his head bobbing up and down in the water. Funny how he can swim, without me teaching him, but he didn’t know anything about sex.

  Maybe for him it’s like flying in the water, and I knew he was well used to flying as he’d told me all about how much he enjoyed it more than just appearing, like so many of his colleagues often did.

  I sat on the pebbles, watching him swim and occasionally wave at me. I could have watched him all day. I couldn’t believe he was here with me now—someone I could touch and talk to without everyone thinking I was losing my mind.

  After a while, he walked back to me. I enjoyed the view of him leaving the water, his perfect, sculpted body revealed from beneath the waves. As he neared me, I took in the lumps and bumps I was by now quite familiar with at close quarters. It was like my personal Daniel Craig as James Bond leaving the water moment, only Sky’s underpants were a bit more revealing, as they weren’t meant to be used for swimming. Realising this, as he stood next to me, I quickly handed him his trousers to cover himself up.

  He sat on the pebbly beach and turned to me. “I think I’m crying. Why?” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “We do it when we’re sad.”

  “I’m not sad. I think I know what sadness feels like, from when I was taken from you and couldn’t see you any longer. That was sad, I think. And I don’t feel that now.”

  “Sometimes we cry if we’re happy too.” I paused, thinking about how to explain happiness. I blinked quickly to prevent a tear rolling down my cheek. “It’s like a warm feeling inside that spreads around you.”

  He nodded. “What about when you feel not happy, not sad. Do you cry then?”

  “Not normally, that’s just not being bothered about stuff. But, some people might cry then, I suppose. It’s very complicated. People are very complicated. They didn’t put that in your Guardian Angel’s Handbook XP, did they?”

  Sky shook his head and rubbed a tear from my cheek, while staring directly into my eyes, smiling. He kissed me, holding me tight.

  I felt a warmth all through my body.

  Sky travelled back to London with me at the end of the weekend, holding a bag of clothes we’d bought together. He really had just appeared in the clothes he was wearing and nothing more.

  “Where are you meant to live? Surely, they don’t expect me to take you in out of necessity. We all know what happened the last time I did that.” I rolled my eyes at him, sitting opposite me on the train.

  He took the piece of paper from his pocket and started scanning through it. “Accommodation… right here it says they’ve set me up with a place in Brighton and paid a few months’ rent while I get myself a job. Says here something about my CV being at the back of the handover pack. What’s that?”

  I explained what a CV was and told him to check for it.

  He produced two more pieces of paper, this time stapled together. He handed them to me. “You’ll make more sense of it.”

  I read through. It made impressive reading. “They’ve not messed about with you, have they? You’ve got ten years’ experience in consultancy for business, developing customer-relationship systems, all that. Do you know what any of this means if you go for an interview?”

  “I couldn’t tell you if you asked me how I know it, but if you ask me a question, I’ll just know the answer. They told me about this. This is the only bit that is really cheating, but they couldn’t just drop me here with no work experience, or I’d end up on the street once the paid rent ended.”

  “So they’ve just sent you down full of all this business consultancy stuff?”

  He nodded. “Seems that way.”

  “Lucky bastard. Definitely cheating, though, but fair play to them for being so well organised. They’ve thought of everything.”

  “Think of it from their point of view. If it doesn’t work, they’ve got an ex-guardian angel living on the streets. Wouldn’t look too good for the Higher Ones, would it?”

  The next weekend I took him to the address of his flat. It was a little studio flat in a white mansion block that looked like a huge ocean liner, a few streets off the seafront in Brighton. As we arrived I said, “Handy, it’s just round the corner from the sea and the city centre, but quiet enough. And this block’s obviously well looked after.” I waved at the porter in his little room by the door as we walked into the main entrance, then turned to Sky. “Landed on your feet here haven’t you?” I pushed the button to summon the lift and watched the art deco light move from the sixth floor to the ground floor.

  We explored the sixth-floor flat together. It had its own small entrance hall, with a washing machine to one side. Straight ahead was a large L-shaped bathroom. To the right was the studio room, fully furnished, with a two-seater sofa and double bed, built-in wardrobe, and TV entertainment centre on the left-hand side. The opposite wall was all window, looking down onto the shared garden. We walked through the studio room and noticed a door. I opened it, revealing a tiny kitchen: only six large tiles covered the floor. It had an all-in-one sink, hob, and fridge unit, with a little oven perched on the work surface.

  “Very nice. I could get used to this.” I stared out the kitchen window at the courtyard garden.

  “Planning on coming round often, are you?” he asked, smiling.

  “Might be.”

  He kissed me in the kitchen and squeezed my bum. “Fancy checking if the bed’s any good?”

  I nodded, still kissing him.

  He walked us backwards, pushed me onto the bed, and landed on top of me, and we scrabbled at each other’s clothes.

  Afterwards I sat on his bed while he sat on the sofa, flicking through the channels. “I was expecting an empty flat. I had visions of us trooping around Ikea shopping for curtains and soft furnishings together. I thought you’d need some help settling in. But they really do seem to have everything sorted, don’t they?”

  “All part of the relocation package the Higher Ones told me about.”

  “We should invite Amy round. She’ll want to see you, now you’re, you know, actually here and not some image in a mirror, or whatever.”

  “We? Who’s this we? It’s my flat.” He winked.

  Chapter 33

  A while later, once we'd settled Sky into his Brighton flat, I left him alone, returning to London but he soon rang me, saying he was missing me and wanted to see more of the city, so we agreed for him to come to mine for the weekend. During a phone call about sight seeing in London it took a while for Sky to get his head around the fact that humans really couldn’t fly, except in planes, he realised we just had walking as an option to get around.

  “But that must take ages.”

  So I explained cars, trains, and other sorts of transport, and he listened, transfixed.

  “I'll show you when you're here,” I said.

  As we walked along the road near my flat, I pointed out the cars, adding that I didn’t have my own car because they were expensive. He’d jus
t about got the concept of money, and earning and spending, after a few attempts with my wallet and a game of shopkeepers in my flat.

  A red double-decker bus whooshed past, and he pointed at it and said, “Is that the same idea, with the wheels and the road, a bit like a car?”

  “It is. Why? Would you like to have a go on it?”

  He nodded quickly, a smile wide across his face, and his eyes twinkling and crinkled at the edges. The bus disappeared down the hill towards Central London. “But it’s gone. Shall we run to catch it?”

  I shook my head and led him by the hand to the bus stop, then explained a bus timetable and showed him the numbers which each corresponded to a different bus doing a different route. “There’s another one in a few minutes. Let’s get that one instead.” Mum had always told me, when I was a teenager: Never run after a bus or a girl. There’ll always be another one soon enough. Now I smiled at the memory.

  The bus soon arrived, and Sky jumped on at the front, walking straight past the driver, despite his shouts to the contrary.

  “He’s with me.” I smiled at the driver and paid for us both, joining Sky at the bottom of the stairs leading to the top deck.

  He looked back at me, his brow furrowed, holding on tightly with both hands.

  “Go on, one at a time.” I nodded for him to continue, and he obeyed.

  We sat at the front of the top deck. Sky pressed his hands against the window.

  When he pressed his face against it, I said, “Best if you don’t do that. It’s not very clean.” I patted the space on the seat next to me. “Do you want to sit here and I can answer any questions you have about the bus?”