Footy

A VISIT TO SYDNEY (22)

Three days later, Will bounced into Sean’s flat, grabbed him and danced him around, his face wreathed with smiles.

Sean couldn’t help smiling back. He found Will in good mood irresistible. “What?”

“I’m going up to Sydney to see clients. Would you like to come too? I’ll pay.”

“I can pay.” Sean was offended.

He light died out of Will’s face.

Sean felt beastly. He cursed his own instinctive reactions. But he didn’t want to rely on Will for any money, to use Will’s obvious prosperity for himself. He was absolutely determined to maintain his independence.

“They pay my expenses,” Will said, crestfallen. “The hotel, food, taxis, everything. And I have frequent flyer points to cover your air ticket. We could stay the weekend, and swim. The sea is still warm there at this time of the year.”

“It’s like deceiving your firm.”

“No, we will stay in a cheap motel away from the city center, which will cost half what a room in a downtown five-star hotel would cost. I usually stay at the Sheraton, and that costs a couple of hundred a night.”

“What will I do all day, while you are at meetings?”

“Go sightseeing. Have you ever been to Sydney?”

“No.”

“We can fuck all night.” Will did something with his eyebrows that Sean always found both endearing and sexy.

“OK.” He paused, his eyes locked on Will’s. “But only if you promise to do me every night.” He was silent for a few heartbeats. Then he said, his voice showing how much he meant it. “That was so good, Will.”

Will knew that this was the closest Sean would ever come to saying I love you.

I love you too, Seanie. Oh God, I love you. Will didn’t say it aloud. There was magic happening now, some temple floor in a purple twilight, where the Gods were immanent, and a doorway to paradise opened. Silently, he savored the moment. All he said out loud was, “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” But his hands as they caressed the other man’s body spoke stronger than words.

****

The motel was about a K from the beach. They were given a room with three beds, one double and two single. They had barely put down their bags before they were kissing. Will looked down into Sean’s blue-grey eyes, dark with lust, at the curls damp against his forehead, and knew without doubt that he was in love. He had tried so hard not to let this happen. It was too late. His heart was engaged. But instead of being afraid or regretful he was jubilant. A fierce joy – and a chill terror – filled his being.

They went out for a meal afterwards, and wandered along the Bondi beach front. It was warm, much warmer than it had been in Melbourne.

“They’re all bundled up,” Sean said softly to Will.

“They’re not used to the cold, poor things,” answered Will.

They didn’t hold each others’ hands. Will didn’t even try. He knew how Sean would react. Yet he was also completely confident that Sean loved him. He wanted Sean to say it out loud, but he knew he never would. He had to read it from his body language, from the way his eyes shone when they met, from the quirky smile that seemed so erotic and endearing on that hard face.

After they went back to the hotel, they didn’t make love again. Sean snuggled up to Will, and put his arms round him. This was the first whole night they had spent together. In the middle of the night, Sean drifted out of sleep, the unfamiliar weight of Will’s body next to him deeply comforting and right. He spooned up closer, and sighed, unable to express what he felt, but conscious that he was perilously happy. He knew from bitter experience that happiness didn’t last.

The next day, Will dressed in his suit and took a cab downtown. Sean wanted to kiss Will as he left, but he contented himself with a small tug on his tie. “See you later, hot stuff.”

“Have fun sightseeing!”

Will’s smile made Sean’s stomach flutter and his cock harden. “Come home soon,” he said, meaning it.

He put on his board shorts and a t-shirt and went walking all the way up the beach to the north, and then back along south. He went into the famous surf, and found that though it was a lot warmer than it would have been in Melbourne, it was chilly enough to not stay in too long. He covertly admired some of the lifesavers in their skin-tight red swim briefs, and decided that on the whole, he much preferred Will. The lifesavers were tasty. But Will was perfect.

Towards midday, he walked to the Bondi Junction station and caught a train into the city. He asked someone at the station how he could get to the Harbor Bridge, and was surprised to discover that there was train which went right over the Bridge. He took the next train and sat upstairs. Through the large curved window, Sean could see the harbor far below, the Opera house, and the skyscrapers of the downtown area. White and green ferries were crisscrossing the harbor water. He took the train back across the Harbor Bridge and sauntered through The Rocks, the complex network of streets on the spit of land below the on-ramp to the bridge.

He took a ferry back across the harbor and looked up at the steel girders and bridge above as the ferry lurched its way through the choppy water underneath. He wondered what it be like to take the ferry every day to and from work and whether it would eventually become boring. At one small stop on the north shore, he got off, wandered through the leafy suburbs, looking at the houses and the blocks of flats of the super rich who lived there, right on the water’s edge. There was a brilliant blue swimming pool next to the path, between the land and the sea. He took off his boots and dangled his feet in the water. He didn’t swim—he hadn’t brought a towel. The sun was warm on his back.

Eventually he got bored. Although he was used to being alone, he wished that Will was with him. Will was fun to be with, and knew interesting things. Sean walked back along the path until he came to the ferry stop. He took the ferry back across the water, and caught a train home to Bondi.

On his walk from the station to the motel he found a second-hand bookshop. He spent the rest of the afternoon there. He found a book about two men in love. He hadn't known that there were books like this. It was odd, when he had thought about his differences with other people, he had never thought that this would be one of them. He had always assumed that what would differentiate him from others would be his poverty, his parents’ drugging and drinking, his periods in boys’ homes. He knew their family hadn’t been like other boys’ families. As if the horrors of his family hadn’t been enough, he had also felt deeply ashamed of being other, of having a family like theirs.

He had never ever wondered whether he would like having sex with men. As he thought about it, the thing that struck him even more strongly wasn’t the fact that he wanted to screw Will all the time, or even that he wanted Will to screw him. It was just how much he felt for Will. In the space of a few weeks, Will had come to be the most important factor in his life. Sean didn’t even think the words ‘in love’. Yet deep inside himself, he knew with absolute certainty what it was.

He read the gay book, lying next to the motel swimming pool in the late autumn sun. It didn’t seem to have much to do with the life he and Will led. Will and he never went to gay bars, once they had started with each other. They didn’t take dope or other drugs. Well, he’d used to smoke a joint or two when he watched Katy Submits, but he didn’t seem to need dope any more. He didn’t think the book was particularly well written either. For a moment, that insight amused him. He wondered when Sean the tearaway had become Sean the discriminating intellectual. He was interested in the feelings of the men for each other, and the author didn’t talk about that. Sean took it for granted that as a man, he wanted to have lots of sex. Now that he had tried it, the sex with another man was just as good at getting his rocks off as sex with a woman. It was the way he connected to Will that was different. He tried to tease out what and why and gave up, content just to accept that it was, for now. He wasn’t used to dissecting his emotions.

He’d found a Dorothy Sayers he hadn’t read yet, The Nine Tailors, and gave himself up to the pleasure of a winter’s evening, with a snowstorm, and the Reverend Venables’s buttered crumpets and tea.

The sun sets early in Sydney in winter, and as it slid down the sky, the shadows crept across the pool area until it became chilly. He went for a walk along the beach front again, enjoying the magical twilight, the sounds of the sea, the cormorants and seagulls, the evening surfers in their wetsuits.

His mobile rang. It was Will. “I’m on my way home.”

Sean smiled as he put the phone away. Home. Where the heart was.

Will had spent the whole day thinking of Sean. Even during his presentations to clients, he had found his thoughts drifting away.

“You seem very well,” his clients said, recognizing that something was different, but not what.

He longed to get back to Sean, not just because he wanted sex, but because it felt entirely right to be with him. Will used to watch for the smile that softened the hard lines of Sean’s face. He used to try and provoke it. But the best time was when Sean was making love, and his eyes were locked on Will’s, and Will could see in them just how strongly Sean cared for him. He yearned for Sean to say it. But to know that he did love him, even though Sean would never bring himself to say the words, was almost good enough.

They went for dinner to one of the beach-front cafés.

“What are your brothers like?” Will’s eyes were warm in the subdued lighting of the restaurant.

They had never spoken much of their families, their lives apart from each other. Will had not said much before because he had sensed Sean’s reserve. He was afraid to transgress, to disturb the sleeping belligerence.

Sean might once have resented the question. He felt that Will’s life was so different to his own that what they had together, when they were together, was all they had in common. He knew Will had much more money than he did. Will owned a million-dollar house in a trendy and expensive trendy inner-city suburb. He drove a pricey yuppie car. Sean was just a chauffeur, with no education, from a seriously dysfunctional family, from the wrong suburb, the wrong school. He also sensed that Will had a private life he didn’t want to share. Sometimes he was angry at Will’s obvious unwillingness to let him into the rest of his life. But he said nothing. His need for Will was so acute he didn’t want to jeopardize their bond.

“They’re called Patrick and Damian... ”

“ ....good Irish names!”

Sean smiled. Even Will’s feeble jokes sent a shiver of happiness through him.

“Patrick is the middle one. Damian the youngest. He still seems like my little brother. Even though he’s eighteen.”

“Do they look like you?”

“Yeah. A lot. Now that we are all grown up we look more like twins. Triplets.”

“A handsome family, obviously.” Will was pleased that he had found a way to obliquely compliment Sean.

“My dad was good looking.” Sean tried not to let any of his hatred for his father show.

But Will picked it up. “You didn’t get on?”

“You could say that. He used to beat us with his fists when he was drunk or drugged up. I was covered with bruises all my childhood. They took me to a home a couple of times, after one of his beatin’s.” The bare recital of the facts didn’t do the reality justice.

Sean didn’t want to meet Will’s eyes, afraid of what he might see there. So he forced himself to look up. Instead of contempt he saw compassion and love. His heart filled with gratitude and tenderness. “My mother was a druggie,” he said. “She died of an overdose. I found her body. I was fourteen.” This time, he was quite unable to bring himself to look at Will. He stared out through the plate glass windows at the dark sea. He felt Will’s hand cover his.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Seanie.” Will had never called him that to his face before.

Reluctantly, Sean met Will’s eyes. Will’s face was filled with pity and sorrow and love. All at once, Sean knew that the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with was right here in front of him. He’d always had a vague plan to get married, one day, and have a family. But the dreams were fuzzy, the spaces between the outlines unfilled. And memories of his own parents’ marriage kept on intruding. It was true – they did seem to have had a lot of sex. And perhaps, once, they had loved each other. But when he had gotten a more adult awareness of sexual love, he had looked in vain for some sort of affection between them. He hadn’t realised what a hole that had left in him till now.

He had kept on hoping his family would become ordinary – his parents going off to work each day, and coming home and having supper, and going on outings and camping trips. His ideas of what constituted a happy marriage were constructed out of the thin rubbish purveyed by TV, by the shiny women’s magazines his mother would buy when she got the welfare cheque before she shot up, she as mesmerized by the glossy falsehoods as he had been.

He had never truly believed he would find someone he wanted to marry. He smiled at himself—as usual, Sean MacDonald was being different. He wondered how his brothers would take it. And then, with a pang, he wondered whether Will wanted him that way.

On their route back to the motel, Will wanted to hold Sean’s hand, to sling his arm round his shoulders, but he resisted the impulse. He contented himself with putting his hand on Sean’s shoulder as they went into their room.

“Bed,” he said.

“Old man!” said Sean, grinning.

“Who said anything about sleep?” countered Will, his eyes warm toffee.

They went into the shower together, and started soaping each other up. Will ran his suds-slippery hands over Sean’s butt, and Sean pulled his head close and kissed him deeply. He turned round and braced himself against the wall, bending at the knees and pushing his bum out. “Do me,” he said, his voice rough with need. With the warm water running over their skins, Will pressed himself into Sean, and his hands cupped Sean’s cock. Their sex was hard and fervent. It hurt Sean, but the hurt mixed with the pleasure, and as Will yelled while he squirted into Sean, he himself climaxed into the wet warmth of the falling water flowing over Will’s hand.

In bed, Sean and Will cuddled, their faces only a few inches apart.

“What about your promise?” Sean was smiling.

Will was certain his panic was clearly visible.

“You know, to do me every night?”

Relief made Will sigh. He started to get hard again. He kissed Sean. “Doesn’t the shower count?”

“Nah. I want it nice and slow.” Sean’s eyes had darkened.

Will kissed Sean, and reached behind him for the lube on the bedside table.

As he was falling asleep, his cock still embedded within Sean, his stomach pressed up against Sean’s back, Will realised that for the first time they hadn’t used a condom. He was surprised to find he didn’t care.

In the morning, he woke to find himself sporting his usual morning boner, his dick snug within Sean’s arse. He gently bit the back of Sean’s neck, and began to move slowly in and out. When he reached round Sean, his hand closed round a rigid cock. In synch with his thrusts, he moved his hand up and down the fat fullness of Sean’s dick. Sean came all over the sheets, and as he did, the convulsive contractions of his ring pulled Will over the edge too. Will kissed the back of Sean’s neck, wanting urgently to say he loved him, and forcibly, reluctantly, preventing himself from doing it. “We’d better not shower together,” he said.

Sean lay in bed, smiling at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the shower, and the deep cadences of Will’s out-of-tune singing.

Will’s mobile rang. Sean ignored it. Who could want to talk to him at this time of the morning? He turned over and lay on Will’s pillows, breathing in his smell, and the wondrous rich odors of their lovemaking. He was entirely happy. He deliberately did not think of the future. He knew that happiness was to be carefully gathered, and not inspected too closely, in case like magic, it melted. The phone rang again. Grumbling to himself, he picked it up. “Will’s phone.” Oh God! he thought afterwards, again and again, why did I do something so stupid?

“Who is that?” The voice was sharp, feminine.

“Sean. I’m a friend of Will’s.”

“I need to talk to him, urgently.” Her voice was anxious, upper-class, used to being obeyed.

“He’s in the shower.” Sean only realised what that might imply after he’d said it.

There was a silence at the end of the line. Then the woman said, “Please tell him his wife, Emma, phoned. Can you ask him to phone me back?” It was couched as a request.

“Yes,” whispered Sean, his heart thudding, his mind in disarray. He cut the connection. He felt paralyzed. He heard the shower stop, and the door open.

He looked directly into Will’s eyes. “Your wife called. She says to call her back.” He wanted to be angry, but all he could feel were the hammer-blows of grief.

He saw the shock and sorrow and guilt surge into Will’s face. Will licked his lips. Sean wanted to throw the phone at him. He stood up from their tangled bedsheets in one smooth moment, glad that he could do it, glad that he hadn’t shamed himself by crying. He was Sean MacDonald, a survivor. He had survived his father, his mother, the bullies at school, the humiliations inflicted by those in charge – teachers, magistrates, prison officers. He would survive this.

He looked into Will’s eyes. The guilt there made him want to beat Will senseless. He clenched his fists. He raised them, his arms trembling with the need to inflict his pain on the cause of it. He looked at Will, and saw that Will was resigned to his punishment, his head bowed. A deep sorrow filled Sean’s heart, and he remembered his father’s beatings, and for the first time, he wondered what pain it was that his father had needed to take out on his hapless wife and children. He lowered his hands. He would not be like his father. He was not his father.

Will watched as Sean pulled on the boxers and jeans he’d been wearing the night before, and dragged on his t-shirt, inside out. He wanted to say something, to plead with him, to promise whatever was necessary to keep him. His lips were trembling so much he couldn’t speak. He watched in complete silence as Sean packed his bags.

At the door, Sean turned and looked at him. Behind the anger, Will could see horrible pain. Sean gave a small nod, as if satisfied with what he was doing. Then he slipped out of the door, closing it gently behind him.

Will gave a great gulping sob as soon as Sean was out of earshot. He buried his head in his pillow, trying vainly to muffle his lament.

When the grief had turned to mere agony, and his tears had dried up, he picked up his mobile and dialled his wife’s number. “Hello, darling,” he said. “I think I must be getting a cold. My throat is so scratchy.”

<<Chapter 21

© 2009 Nigel Puerasch. All rights reserved.
Romantic m2m novels and short stories