Page 65 of Pansies

Maybe Alfie pushed him, or maybe he didn’t, maybe it was just Fen, but the next thing he knew the kiss was broken. And Fen was lying back against the bonnet between the closed vents, his body arched into explicit invitation by the curve of the car, one arm thrown carelessly behind him, the other still locked about Alfie’s shoulders. Alfie had meant to lean down and kiss him again. But, for a few seconds, all he could do was look.7

Fen in the moonlight, spread beneath him, suspended between giving and taking.

Remembering what he’d said in the hotel, Alfie reached for that outstretched hand, with its straining fingers and its vulnerable, exposed palm, and covered it with his own. Fen’s response was instant: a rough, tight clasp and a moan, equally harsh, flung to the sky. Alfie kissed his shuddering throat, smooth skin and nascent hair, the sharp-tender jut of his Adam’s apple.

And, again, remembering the hotel room, he found some words he could give, so Fen didn’t have to ask for them this time. “Fuck, you’re so gorgeous. I want you so much.”

Something that might have been a whimper. A roll of hipsthat made Alfie groan.

“More than anything.” He ran kisses to the unfastened top button of Fen’s shirt and slipped beneath to fresh new skin which shivered beneath his mouth. “And since you’re on my car, that’s a big fucking deal.”

Fen’s spare hand was suddenly covering his face. “Oh God, what are we doing?”

“Erm, making out?” He licked the tender dip between Fen’s collarbones. He tasted like starlight: cool and bright and impossible.

Fen made a frantic sound, this tangle of pleasure and reluctance, surrender and resistance. “Alfie, stop, please stop.”

He froze.

It was just like it used to be with the girls he’d brought here. Except Fen’s body wasn’t the Somme—a few miles of dirt he wanted to briefly occupy—it was some sort of…magical island he never wanted to leave.

But he stopped. Of course he fucking stopped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Fen didn’t move. Just lay where Alfie had left him, hiding behind his own arm. “I can’t do this.”

“You mean,” Alfie asked, with what he already knew to be the misplaced optimism of the incredibly horny,8 “on the bonnet of my car?”

“Anyof this.”

Turned out, it was way easier to be decent when you didn’t actually care. “So you’ll sleep with me when I don’t know who you are, but not when I do?”

At last, Fen sat up. His hair was a spill of brightness. “It wasn’t about you, then. It was for me.”

“What changed?”

“Everything, Alfie Bell. You must have known this would happen.”

Alfie hunkered down on the road, between Fen’s knees, looking up at him, trying to catch a glimpse of him through a tangle of fingers and hair. “I don’t understand.”

“All yourWe’ll talk, get to know each other. You must have known I’d end up liking you. You already knew how much I wanted you.”

“I didn’t know. I just hoped. I don’t see what’s so bad about that.”

“Because I’m not in any fit state to deal with it.” At last, Fen lifted his head and pushed his glasses out of the way so Alfie could see his eyes. Hard to read them in the dark, but it was a point of connection, a sort of touch. “I’m…I’m miserable, Alfie. My life’s a mess. And you’ve shown up like something I might have daydreamed when I was fourteen, all interested in making amends, suddenly caring about who I am.”

“So?”

“So where do you think this is going? We head back to mine, or yours, and tenderly make love, while staring deeply into each other’s eyes and feeling naked to our very souls. Then you think, well, isn’t closure nice, and go back to investment banking. And I… What do I do?” Fen’s voice rose, clotted with anger and pain. “What the fuck do I do? The years wasting away, while I’m still here in South Shields, where everyone has left me.”

“Oh Fen.” Alfie reached out to take his hand. There was a brief brush of skin, and then Fen was in his arms, almost knocking him over. They probably looked ridiculous, entangled on the muddy ground, but Alfie didn’t care. Just hugged him tight. And Fen hid his face against Alfie’s shoulders and smothered a noiseso full of sadness that Alfie wanted to cry for him.

Even though he never cried. Because a man didn’t, and that was that.

He would have, though. For Fen.

Just then, he would have done anything for him. Risked any hurt, borne any shame.

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