Footsteps in the Dark

by Josh Lanyon

  “I’m sorry too, Cal,” Adam said, unexpectedly. “I shouldn’t have tried to interfere with your choices. Maybe I should have been a better friend.”

  Calum’s gaze shot back to his. “I’m…” He was appalled to realize that tears were gathering in his eyes, though he hadn’t cried for a very long time. Not since the day he’d destroyed his relationship with Adam.

  He swallowed again, but his emotions wouldn’t obey him.

  “Do you want to come upstairs?” Adam asked, frowning. “Maybe have some tea? Talk some more about the case? Though maybe you should go home. You look exhausted.”

  The genuine concern in his expression defeated any apprehension Calum would have felt just that morning.

  It seemed ridiculous now. Adam had let go of him long ago.

  So Calum said, “I’d like to talk some more,” and followed Adam to the lift, and up to his third-floor room.

  Twin lamps were glowing on either side of the double divan bed when they entered. The curtains, orange and flowery to match the chronic bedspread, were closed against the night.

  Adam went at once to a tray with a kettle on it, set on a long shelf fixed to the wall. He flipped the kettle switch, and it began a familiar hum.

  Calum sat on the end of the bed.

  “Have you eaten?” Adam asked. “I can get room service.” He opened a large leather-bound book of hotel information and began to flip through it. “Maybe a sandwich or something?”

  Calum shook his head.

  He was eighteen again. Overwhelmed by his first sight of Adam strolling into his History lecture. The first time they’d talked…Calum tongue-tied, starstruck by Adam and his English accent and his easy, friendly charm; not understanding what he was feeling or why. Or how the need to see him could become more intense with time, the need for his company submerging every other relationship. He’d hidden from himself for almost two years before Adam had finally forced his eyes open. And then, after their stay on Lewis, he’d deliberately closed them again.

  “I’m not hungry,” he managed. This was something he’d made himself forget first. How kind Adam was.

  Adam looked up from the leather book. Something in Calum’s tone seemed to sharpen his gaze. His tone was cautious. “You used to say you wouldn’t come back here unless you had to. Not until you’d lived a life and your parents couldn’t do without you anymore.”

  When Calum had said that, he’d imagined Adam eventually coming back here with him. Like a child would.

  He wanted to tell Adam he’d come back because a romance with a girl had gone wrong—like he’d told his parents. Or maybe he wanted to tell Adam about the pregnancy scare that had at first thrilled him, because he’d have no escape left after that, and he’d be what his parents needed him to be. And then, how it had terrified and appalled him so much that he’d gone to the first gay bar he could find, and got himself ecstatically sucked off by an anonymous man in the toilets. Not that he hadn’t had the odd slip before that.

  He wanted to tell Adam how he’d finally accepted, when the pregnancy had proved a false alarm, that he couldn’t trust himself to kill this part of him if the possibilities were always there.

  And that now it felt as if, when he’d finally made the decision to remove himself for good and seal himself into the life he was meant to live, his greatest temptation had been forcibly shoved in front of his nose again.

  But he said, “They need me.” And that was also true.

  “You love them very much,” Adam said.

  Calum’s throat worked around the stubborn lump of pain lodged there.

  “I can’t break their hearts.” The simple truth at last. “They need me to be their Calum.”

  Adam’s expression crumpled into sympathy. He moved a step closer and crouched in front of him, reaching up to touch his cheek in comfort. Calum closed his eyes, to feel it.

  “You poor bastard,” Adam said.

  Calum’s face twisted, and his eyes sprang open. “You don’t get to pity me.”

  Adam shook his head and leaned forward until his forehead rested against Calum’s.

  Their eyes were open. It felt indescribably intimate—understanding and solidarity—and yet also the most sensual moment of Calum’s life, feeling Adam’s breath again.

  His hand rose without thought and tangled in that glorious hair.

  Adam’s eyes closed.

  It was Calum’s decision what to do then. Except it never had been.

  When Adam was near him, he was always the most important thing.

  He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Adam’s, holding it there, still and breathless, as if he were touching something holy.

  “It can only be this once,” he whispered when he pulled back an inch or two. Not, he knew, that Adam would want more. It was a moment in time. Maybe, a chance to cauterize the open wound of their old love affair.

  Adam’s eyes remained closed. But he didn’t move away. So Calum leaned forward again.

  Their kiss flashed to hunger. Six years of it, about to be satisfied; a brief moment of relief.

  Adam took charge, as he always used to—as Calum wanted him to—and slid off Calum’s jacket. Then he pushed both hands into Calum’s hair to hold his head steady. Adam’s tongue was hot, liquid velvet, juniper berries and citrus, and Calum moaned his pleasure into the ravenous kiss. He knew he’d been wanting it from the moment he’d seen Adam in the station reception. He’d been wanting it from the last time they kissed.

  Maybe in his weakest moments over the years, he’d let himself remember how it felt, but none of his faded, muted memories had come close to doing it justice.

  He let Adam strip him with deft efficiency, docile under his hands. His phone was taken from him, put on Silent, and dropped onto a bedside table.

  Adam was far more adept now than he’d been as a student who’d only ever slept with one other man. Now he must have quite a scorecard. Like Calum had, except nearly all Calum’s lovers had been female. His few men had been desperate, furtive, groping shame.

  But it didn’t feel shameful being with Adam. Despite everything, it felt pure.

  Calum let himself be laid back, naked and hugely aroused, on the flowery coverlet, and allowed Adam to look at him. To take in the marks of adulthood; of a life driven by denial, to discipline.

  Calum’s body had been honed by extra hours in the gym and pointless runs to tire himself out. But as Adam stroked a reverent hand down his smooth, muscled chest, it felt almost as if he’d been working for this. For Adam’s admiration.

  “You look…” Adam’s mouth twisted. “Beautiful. You always have been.”

  Calum shook his head restlessly against the pillow, because that was Adam.

  “No. You wouldn’t see it,” Adam said. “But you are. The loveliest man I ever met. Those cheekbones. Those eyes. Those fucking eyelashes. God. Couldn’t you have grown a big moustache? Got nose hair?”

  The perfect echo of Calum’s earlier thoughts, and it made him laugh out loud. Adam laughed back, eyes full of light, teeth showing this time, even and white.

  Then slowly, their amusement faded. They regarded each other in growing melancholy, and Calum could feel the madness seeping away, though he tried so hard to cling to it. Reality was just outside those flowery curtains. What was the point of digging this open again?

  His erection began to wilt.

  “Don’t,” Adam said. He put the palm of one hand on the soft vulnerability of Calum’s stomach. “Don’t think. Let’s just…” He grimaced and stood. “Watch me.”

  He pulled his black jumper up his body to reveal a taut, tanned stomach, and then up and over his head to drop on the floor. Then he began to tackle his belt, heeling off his boots at the same time.

  There was nothing deliberately erotic about it; he was just stripping off. But Calum was hard again in seconds.

  “You’ve been working out too,” he managed, breathless, because grown-up Adam was just as well-muscled as Calum was
now, and that was a surprise. They had the same basic build, tall, broad-shouldered and naturally slim, but Adam had never been a gym bunny.

  “No option, past twenty-five on the scene,” he said with a playful flex of a bicep. “It’s kill or be killed.”

  Calum blinked and looked away. And thought about what that meant.

  “What about your…partner? The actor?” How had he forgotten that? He felt more vulnerable than he could remember since his last times with Adam, stupidly close to tears again.

  Adam gave a little sheepish grimace. “Well, I, uh…I might have overstated…” Then he sighed. “He won’t mind.”

  Calum looked back at him, uncomprehending, and he felt suddenly the full gulf of the years between them. The understanding that this Adam wasn’t his. He was a stranger. And his life was alien to Calum.

  “I would mind,” he said.

  Adam sighed. “I know.” He pushed down his jeans and underpants together in one movement, freeing his big, bobbing erection. Then he climbed, naked, onto the bottom of the bed, and crawled up until he crouched over Calum’s still form, studying his upturned face as if he were mapping it. “If it were you…” he said, “I would too.”

  He leaned down carefully and brushed his lips over Calum’s. Their cocks touched too. Calum hissed and arched, as if he’d taken a burn.

  Excitement churned nauseously with uncertainty and jealousy. Trying not to imagine Adam with other men. Looking at them like this, as if he couldn’t wait to have them. But part of him couldn’t help it.

  Adam bent down again, but tentatively, as if he expected to be pushed away at any moment; then he stretched out fully, until Calum bore his weight. And they were touching everywhere. Hot skin on hot skin, indescribably wonderful.

  They lay still for a second or two before Adam leaned in and nuzzled below Calum’s ear. He’d learned a long time ago which buttons to press. Calum moaned loudly on cue, and Adam licked the skin he’d kissed. Calum gave another helpless liquid groan.

  “Cal,” Adam whispered against his skin. “God, I missed this.”

  He held his mouth hot against Calum’s neck and began a delicate circle of his hips, rubbing their tense abdominal muscles and swollen cocks against each other. An explosion of pleasure sparked up Calum’s spine, so intensely good it almost felt like pain. He pushed helplessly into it, head thrown back, pressing the crown into the pillow. His toes curled in the extremity of the sensation, his fingers digging into Adam’s rock-hard biceps, and all the time Adam licked and sucked, scalding at his neck, leaving marks probably. But Calum couldn’t care. He writhed underneath Adam’s muscular weight and he felt…perfect.

  “Can I fuck you?” Adam’s voice was barely audible, breathed into Calum’s ear, as if he were afraid for him to hear.

  It had been a thing between them once, how much Adam loved it, how much Calum fought it, because that one act had always felt too real for the illusion he’d been living. As if, every time he took Adam’s sex into his body, every time he surrendered to that raw, unmanning pleasure, it exposed him to the truth of who he was.

  But this would be the last time he’d ever be fucked.

  The realization burst in his mind like ripe, messy fruit hitting the ground.

  Never again.

  He’d made that choice already. And he’d held to it. But it had seemed reasonable when he’d believed Adam would never again be the one to do it. When the last time had been far in the past; a pale, unreal sense-memory. Not this blaze of need in his guts.

  The thought came from nowhere—what would the man in his unwanted emails have given for this choice?

  One last time.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  Adam pulled back and frowned down at him, searching his face. His tanned skin looked flushed, his eyes feverish. But he must have seen what he needed.

  He peeled himself off Calum’s body, rolling off the bed to stride to the room’s ensuite bathroom. The light flipped on, there was a sound of rummaging beneath the hum of the electric fan, and then the light and the fan went off and Adam was back, walking toward the bed in all his aroused masculine glory.

  He smiled down at Calum, and the soft happiness in it evaporated Calum’s last tenuous grip on his emotions. He reached up, grabbed Adam’s forearm, and yanked him back down on top of him; then he wrapped both arms around him in a tight, desperate hug.

  All that feeling he’d buried, and none of it had died obediently in the dark.

  “Do it,” he muttered. “Fuck me, Adam.” The words sounded alien coming from his mouth. Like lines written for someone else.

  Adam gave Calum one soft pecking kiss, then slid to his side and urged him over onto his belly, all practiced eagerness, stroking down Calum’s spine and into the small of his back, up the steep curve of his arse to take hold of the meaty part of one buttock, and spread him just enough to expose him. His long, teasing fingers, never too rough, never too tentative, slid inside Calum’s body with an exquisite burn—one, two, three—to stroke and cajole and press, seducing him to relax and let his body do this.

  The sensations were terrifyingly good when Calum gave himself permission to enjoy them—last time, no harm—the slippery push of someone else’s flesh inside him, where no one should go. First those expert fingers, before a thick, hard, latex-covered cock, pressing at his tender, nerve-rich anus, then sliding inside, inch by glorious inch.

  “Adam,” he panted, too full and not full enough. Why did it feel so good and right when it shouldn’t?

  “God, Cal,” Adam groaned. His hands felt ridiculously big on Calum’s back, stroking his sleek skin, grasping his narrow waist. “You feel fucking incredible.”

  He started to move, slow and smooth, then to thrust in earnest, and Calum knelt and took it, speechless with erotic sensation. His legs and arms trembled as they held him upright, compromised by the molten pleasure at his centre. And he acknowledged he had never felt anything that came close to it—to being fucked by Adam. A part of his mind remained clear even so, the part that would not allow him to forget what he was doing, kneeling in submission and letting a man mount him and have him. Yet somehow, this time, after so long, it just turned him on more.

  The act couldn’t last long, because it was just too much…too much joy. Calum was desperate to grab his own swollen, bouncing cock, but he knew that would finish him at once. So he remained on his hands and knees and surrendered totally to Adam’s control. Each punishing stroke of Adam’s cock rubbed the tight, neglected bundle of nerves inside, and when he finally took mercy and reached down to cup Calum’s dangling, desperate balls, to stroke his aching prick, it was too much. Calum groaned, “Adam!” and began to come copiously all over the twee hotel bedspread. Somehow that image made his orgasm feel all the more gloriously erotic as he spurted and spurted, pushed higher still by the helpless clench of his body around Adam’s rigid, buried cock. And he was still coming when Adam muttered something garbled in his ear and with a juddering push, began to come too, hard, into the condom, moaning his name.

  When they finished, they collapsed together, quaking, onto the bed, Adam’s weight smearing Calum’s belly into the mess he’d made. But Calum couldn’t care. He hadn’t felt so physically relaxed for years, all his unacknowledged, repressed stress dissipating like fine mist in a breeze.

  But inevitably, the seconds ticked past and his mind jogged back into action.

  It’s done. Go. Leave now.

  “Don’t,” Adam slurred in his ear, as if he were inside his head. He sounded almost asleep. “Not yet. Stay the night with me.”

  Calum tensed, ready to refuse, because that was what he did. But he wanted to stay. Perhaps he was vulnerable in the aftermath of making love. The only time in his life he’d ever made love was with Adam. Perhaps he wasn’t quite ready to climb back inside his armor. Perhaps he wanted to give himself this, for a little longer.

  His muscles relaxed, and he let out a tired breath. Adam’s hand found his and entwined t
heir fingers. They didn’t need to say the words.

  Chapter Seven

  Daylight woke Calum, shining garishly orange through the unlined curtains.

  It took a moment to orientate himself. He still felt exhausted, and when he stretched, the bruised ache in his muscles brought it all back to him.

  He turned his head quickly on the pillow.

  Adam lay sleeping beside him. Well, he was hardly going to have left, given this was his hotel room. But still, Calum was aware of some irrational panic subsiding in his chest.

  They’d barely slept. They’d talked about all they’d done since Calum had finished them. How Adam got his prime placement at the British Museum. How difficult his boss could be. Why Calum had been drawn to the self-discipline and public service of a police career. How sexy he looked in the uniform. Why he was still called ‘Orlando Bloom’ when Adam agreed that he didn’t really look like him. “You’re so much prettier,” Adam teased.

  And they’d made love again. This time Calum took Adam, and as before, it was mysteriously, inexplicably better than with any woman he’d fucked. Then, after they dozed for a while, they’d woken in the early hours, showered together, and sucked each other off.

  Calum lay on his back and looked blindly at the ceiling, scrabbling for anything to divert him from the realization of the emotional price he’d have to pay for what they’d done. How had he ever thought this could close a wound so deep? Panic fluttered under his breastbone.

  He groped for his phone and turned it on. There were a lot of missed calls and texts, as he’d expect after going incommunicado, but he went straight to his email. It was there, as reliable as sunrise. “For Calum 6.”

  I have a grandson. They called him after his father of course, which means they called him after me, and my father. All these years, and nothing changes. I tried suggesting your name again, but my son would never challenge tradition. He’s very upright and proper. A bit of a prig, they’d have called him in the army. Perhaps it’s inevitable, being brought up in a house like this. I have not been a good father. Too stern. Too distant. Too angry. And Mairi is angry too. Seething with resentment. But…I’m a grandfather. I just truly understood I’m an old man now. All those empty days have passed without notice, and my skin is wrinkled, my hair is silver, my bones ache. Do you remember that last, first letter I wrote to you? How I mocked the public-school poets. I was very wrong. I read them now because they’re the only ones who understand what we were and what we are. ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.’ In my mind you are still young and beautiful, my darling. I hope if you’re watching me, you’ll forgive me my age, my ugliness. It brings me closer to you, every day.