Less Than Three

by Jess Whitecroft

“—ohhh my God, stop. That’s horrific.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty gnarly,” I said. “And I’d had fractures before, so I knew what a broken arm felt like, but I was like ‘Oh no, that’s definitely not supposed to be there.’ I was screaming my head off. Must have been agony, but the funny thing is that I don’t really remember the pain. I remember that it hurt, but I don’t have that kind of sense memory of it, if you know what I mean.”

  “You were probably in shock,” said Rob.

  “I think I was. Everything was sort of swimmy and numb, but all the little details stand out clearly. Like the lady who owned the trampoline place – I’ll never forget the colour of her face. She was beyond white, poor woman. Beyond ashen. She was practically fucking green. I remember sitting in the back of her car with Simon, with my arm in a sling he’d made out of his jumper, and he was talking the whole time. Explaining to me that there were two bones in the forearm – the radius and the ulna – and that I’d probably broken both of them. And that he could see at least one of them.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yep. Just Simon being Simon, but you know what? If he’d panicked, I think I would have panicked that much more. As it was, him just being his slightly ghoulish self was the thing that reassured me. I remember when we got to the hospital this doctor was super impressed that he’d made a sling, and praised him for his calm bedside manner. He always said that was the moment he knew he wanted to be an orthopaedic surgeon.”

  “At ten years old?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Whatsmore, he knew how to spell it, diphthong and all. He was a weird little kid.”

  And here I was, stark naked in his ex-boyfriend’s bed. Rob must have seen the guilt in his eyes, because his smiled faded and he looked away, peering into the bottom of his empty glass.

  “Look, you broke up,” I said. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”

  It was half a truth and half a lie. He reached over me to set his glass down. The hair beneath his arm was damp with sweat, and the scent of it made something in my brain sit up and pay attention.

  “I know,” he said, lying back down, his lips on my shoulder. “And it would never have worked anyway. We were far too different.”

  I turned to him, running my hand over his side to his tiny, flat hip. I found his eyes more beautiful in every new configuration of light and dark. Right now they looked black, their darkness adding a deeper lustre to all the tints of gold in his hair and skin. “Sometimes it happens that way,” I said. “Two people take the…the scenic route to find one another.”

  “The scenic route? Is that what we’re calling it?”

  I shrugged. “Well, the views are breathtaking,” I said, and then he was in my arms once more.

  *

  He loved to fuck, and we fucked. We fucked mostly in his bed or on the couch, or ended up naked and panting on the bright red rug in his living room. One day we took a picnic to Nonsuch Park and ended up tangled up in the long grass, our eager hands stuffed down the front of one another’s jeans and our nerve endings on fire. We would meet up and take the Tube to his place, eyefucking one another across the narrow carriage, or sit squished thigh to thigh on the rough upholstery, both of us vibrating with anticipation.

  One time we were in such a hurry to cross that nightmare road near his place that he almost stepped out in front of a BMW, and I yanked him back just in time. The adrenaline was still roaring through my veins when we got back to the boat, and that’s maybe why I let him penetrate me. He had already whet my appetite by spreading my legs and cheeks and doing things with his tongue that made my knees and spine turn to jelly, but that day I hitched my knees even higher and said, “God, please – just fuck me. I’m going mad.” He fucked me face to face, with my feet on his shoulders and my arse on the edge of the couch, and all the way through he looked at me like he could hardly believe this was happening. I couldn’t either, especially when he made me come from the inside. It took me completely by surprise. There I was, with my mouth open and my eyes wide at all the exquisite commotion going on inside me, then his cock tripped a switch between my hips, and some corresponding switch deep in the centre of my brain, and I was gone, without so much as a finger on my dick. “Oh,” he said, seeing me suddenly spattered from navel to neck, and then, “Ohhh,” as my muscles squeezed tight around him.

  He turned me into a mad slut. I must have texted him five times a day, begging for his dick, and he reciprocated, sending me detailed descriptions of what he was going to do to me when he got his hands on me.

  “You’re not helping with the whole sex monster thing, you know,” he said, one day when we were sprawled half-naked on the rug, catching our breaths after what passed for a greeting these days. He wore nothing but a smile and a t-shirt shoved up to his nipples.

  “Don’t care,” I said, leaning down to kiss him. “I love the sex monster.”

  He looked up at me, his wide eyes bright blue against the red background of the rug. I knew I had the same deer-in-the-headlights look as him, because I’d stumbled headlong into it. The thing I hadn’t said yet. The thing that I think we both knew was coming by that point. “I can’t believe how much I want you,” I said.

  Rob reached up, his fingers running through my hair. “You don’t think I’m desperate?”

  “I think you’re beautiful. And sexy. And silly. And hilarious.”

  He was so lovely. “You say the sweetest things,” he said, and we kissed again, slow and soft, with the sounds of wet tongues echoing in my ears and a fire still burning in my balls, despite the fact that my come hadn’t even finished drying on his belly. There was only one thing left to say, and it was on the tip of my tongue when his stomach made a loud gurgling noise, making us both laugh.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Super romantic, I know.”

  “Would this be a good time to ask if you’d had any thoughts about dinner?”

  “Cheese,” he said. “I’ve got some incredibly smelly French camembert. Fresh bread. A little salad. Cabernet Sauvignon.”

  “You spoil me.”

  “I told you. I get desperate. I always end up trying too hard.”

  “You don’t have to try,” I said. “You’re perfect.”

  He glowed up at me. I couldn’t stop gazing at him – the white tips of his lashes, his pink mouth, his big blue eyes. Even the end of his nose was exquisite.

  His stomach rumbled: it seemed determined not to let me have this. He laughed and got up from the rug, smoothing down his crumpled t-shirt and making me groan with disappointment as his body disappeared from view. I watched him bend to pick up his shorts. The rug had left nap marks on his little bare bum. The very sight of him made me ache these days, and although I tried I could never seem to pinpoint the exact moment I’d first known that I was in love with him. It had all unfurled so slowly between us that it had become a normal – if delirious – state of affairs to me. I was in love with a man.

  “Stop looking at me,” he said. “You’re making me shy.”

  “You? Shy?” That was a laugh.

  “Go and turn off my laptop, will you? I need the dining table.”

  “God, I love it when you’re bossy,” I said. Me on all fours, my thigh still stinging from a playful slap, and him leaning forward, his soft Ulster growl in my ear. Head down, lift your arse up…oh yeah…you love it…

  I went into the wheelhouse. His laptop was open on the table. A blank document. A blinking cursor.

  “You need me to save anything before I shut this down?” I said.

  “Nah. Nothing to save.”

  I took the laptop into the living room and wandered into the tiny galley, where Rob was slicing French bread. There was barely room to join him in there, but I tried anyway. I couldn’t seem to stop touching him lately.

  “Still you versus the cursor, then?” I said, kissing the back of his shoulder through his t-shirt.

  “Yeah. It’s very judgemental. Unforgiving.”

  “Bad cursor. Want me
to have words with it?”

  He wriggled free and reached for a plastic container on the side. “What are you going to do? Appeal to its sense of empathy?”

  “If I have to,” I said, reeling back as he opened the lid. “Good lord. That cheese really does stink.”

  “It’s supposed to. If a Camembert doesn’t smell it’s usually tasteless. Pass me the tomatoes, would you?”

  We went to bed straight after dinner. I liked that the summer heat kept giving us an excuse to take all our clothes off, because I loved being naked with him. His body was a little blond wisp, but he was wiry and hard, and his cock – straight as a baton when erect – was large and satisfyingly thick. The hair that clustered around the root was bright gold, to match the sparse patch above his heart. I was fascinated by the bare patches on his shins, where tight jeans had worn away the hair, and in love with the pale, delicate peach fuzz that grew on his thighs and gilded the way between the cheeks of his arse. He allowed me to indulge my curiosity, the same one that boys learn to conceal very early on, when we were all sprouting into puberty and every communal shower came with the urge to peek and compare. But you never looked. Those were the rules. You never stared. All the comparisons had to be done in the space of a stolen glance, in case anyone suspected there was something sexual in it.

  No such anxiety with Rob. I could not only look, but also touch. He lay on his stomach with his thighs apart, reading something in Italian, but he didn’t tell me to stop when I ran my fingers over the thin skin at the backs of his knees. He was already used to me playing with him.

  I couldn’t remember if I’d ever kissed the backs of his knees, so I kissed them, one after the other. I pushed them apart and he responded by pressing his knees harder into the mattress, lifting his hips. This was a game I already loved: he’d feign lazy indifference while I messed around with him, but all the while he’d be getting harder and hotter. He spread his legs wider and didn’t make a sound as I licked the insides of his thighs, so I splayed my hands on the cheeks of his arse and spread him wide open. His breath trembled, but he went right on reading.

  He was dark pink down there, the pursed edges the same lewd, lovely shade as the head of his cock at full mast. I hadn’t fucked him, but I wanted to. And I was burning to ask why he’d apparently been on the bottom with my brother but on top with me. I pressed my thumbs into the flesh of his cheeks and pulled them apart, opening the dark little hole to my filthy-minded gaze. I could feel my pulse beating steadily in my balls. He shivered and I couldn’t resist; I stretched out on top of him, my cock resting in the cleft of his arse.

  “I thought you were learning your lines?” he said.

  “Nope,” I said, humping gently as I kissed the back of his shoulder. “I’m word perfect by now. You’ll be happy to know I’ll have a lot more spare time to spend playing with your bottom.”

  “Ah. Is that what you’re doing back there?”

  “Mmhm.” He was silky and sweaty and I was burning to be inside him. “I think you’ve fucked me enough. It must be your turn to have a dick inside you.”

  “Depends,” he said. “Are you really word perfect?”

  “Of course I am. Test me. Pick a scene. Any scene.”

  “Three.”

  Scene three. Valmont’s in bed with Emilie, a courtesan. “I say ‘I thought the Dutch were supposed to be famous for their capacity for alcohol,’ then she says ‘Three bottles of burgundy and a bottle of cognac would finish anybody,’ and I say ‘Did he drink that much?’ and she says—”

  “—‘You were pouring.’”

  “You know it better than I do,” I said, moving to let him up.

  He turned over beneath me. He was as hard as I was and his kiss was hungry, but he was still playing. Still teasing.

  “Is that the scene where you end up using that girl’s bum as a writing desk?” he said.

  “Yep.”

  Rob peered up at me with mock seriousness. “And have you done that in rehearsals?”

  “What? Written things on a girl’s bottom? Yes. Well, I’ve tried. It turns out that bottoms make for very poor writing desks. Maybe it worked better back when they used quills, but ballpoints just go straight through the paper.” I kissed him again and he moaned softly. “Why aren’t we having sex right now?”

  He ignored the question and wrapped a leg around the back of mine. “Maybe that’s what I need to do,” he said.

  “What? Have sex with me? Yes, you do. You need to do that right now.”

  He laughed. “No. Pick up a pen. Write it out longhand. Get away from that judgemental cursor.”

  I buried my face in his neck and groaned. “Now, Rob? Now you come up with a solution to writer’s block?”

  His lips found mine. “Humour me a minute,” he said. “And then you can stick it anywhere you like. How does that sound?”

  It sounded so good that I forgot how to talk for a moment. Next thing I knew he’d slithered out from under me and was rummaging in the bedside drawer for a pen. “I’ve been sitting in the wheelhouse,” he said. “Staring at that fucking cursor until my head bleeds. I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. Pen. Paper. No cursor. No distractions.”

  “Uh, does the horny naked man in your bed not count as a distraction?”

  He slapped me gently on the back of the thigh. “Hold still,” he said, and I felt the pressure of the ballpoint pen in the small of my back.

  “You’re writing on me?”

  “You said it yourself,” he said. “Biro goes straight through the paper.”

  “Rob, that had better not be a permanent marker.”

  “Shh. It’s working.”

  “What’s working?”

  He ignored me and went on scribbling on my back. It tickled and I struggled not to laugh or squirm. “Oh my God,” he said, lost in a world of his own. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner – all I had to do was reverse the orders of those chapters…”

  “Are you seriously planning your novel on my left buttock?”

  “Yeah. I think I am. This is genius. No more cursor, no more judgement.”

  “Oh dear. I knew you were too good to be true. There had to be something wrong with you, and now it turns out you’re insane.”

  He laughed and bent down to kiss the back of my shoulder. “You’re an actor. You don’t get to call anyone else mental, remember? Now, hold still.”

  “While you write two thirds of War And Peace on my arse?”

  I felt his weight shift and his lips on the small of my back. “What would you like me to write on your arse?” he said, his voice low and sexy. Aha. The game had shifted gear. I liked that.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Testimonials?”

  He giggled and I felt the scratch of the pen against my skin. “Five star Yelp review?” he said, and kept on writing, speaking slowly to keep pace with his words. “This…is…a…mag-nif-i-cent arse. Friendly. Hospitable. So…fucking…tight…”

  I breathed faster and arched into the touch of his pen.

  “Hot…” he said. “Sensitive. Opens like a flower when fucked.” He pushed my legs further apart and spread me open. “Warm, welcoming interior.” I felt the pen on the inside of my cheek and rocked against the mattress. He steadied me with a hand and I felt his beard brush the back of my hip. I didn’t know what I wanted more – to carry on letting him set me on fire slowly, or to roll over and demand attention.

  “Orgasm…comes on…slowly,” he said, words dragging as he wrote. “A deep tremor that you can’t help but reach for…with the head of your cock…”

  “…oh God…”

  “…loud, vocal encouragement…makes you want to fuck deeper and harder than you’ve ever fucked before.” I moaned and he kissed the small of my back and went on writing. “If I…could…give…six stars…to…this…bot-tom…” Another kiss, this time at the very top of the crease. A flicker of tongue. “…I would.”

  I wriggled underneath him, unable to stand it any l
onger. I turned over, practically shoving my cock in his face, and he laughed, like he was surprised by the success of our game. “Oh my word,” he said. “Look at you.”

  He put me in his mouth. His lips were soft and wet, his deep blue eyes full of naughtiness as he sucked and gazed up at me. I pushed my hand into his curls, and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “God, I love you.”

  Rob released me with a filthy sounding pop. His eyes were suddenly even brighter. “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Of course I’m sure. Look at the state of me. Isn’t it obvious?”

  He scrambled up over me. He was shaking and his kiss had a new fierceness that thrilled me down to the marrow, because I knew what it meant. “Say it again,” he said.

  “I love you,” I said, my hands full of his hair. “I love you, Robert Delaney. I love you.” His breath hitched. His cheek was hot under my hand and his eyes overflowed. “Don’t cry,” I said. “There’s no need to cry.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said. “I’m so happy. I’m so in love with you.”

  12

  I was checking my messages when Simon wandered into the kitchen. “Hello,” he said. “And who are you?”

  “Your brother,” I said, quickly concealing a bunch of horny texts from Rob. “Remember?”

  “Not exactly. You do look familiar, though.”

  Rob texted again. I want you so much that it’s making my bones ache. Can’t wait to get my hands on you. <3

  Yikes. Less than three. That always meant I was in for a wild time, because it meant he was too horny even to look for the appropriate emoji. I texted him back – <3 – and muted the phone.

  Simon went to pour out the kettle and the morning light caught the stubble on his jaw, illuminating bright white hairs that I’d never seen before. I was taken aback, because for some reason I’d always taken it for granted that we’d age at the same rate. As boys we’d hit our growth spurts at the exact same time, and our voices had begun to break within a few weeks of one another.

  I was used to him looking tired, but right now he looked older than the reflection I’d seen in the mirror that morning.