Page 13 of Pansies

Not everyone Alfie had casually sexed had left immediately afterwards. A few of them had stayed the night. But this felt different. It felt trusting, in a way nothing had for quite a while. He knew it was creepy to stare while Fen was sleeping, but there was something very…very enchanting about him just then, curled up against him like a pale comma in the half-light. He looked younger and gentler and, in a strange way, less pretty, the irregularities of his features pronounced. He was all points and planes, sharp bones and angles, a fairy creature stripped of glamour. And he had the longest lashes Alfie had ever seen. He wanted to touch them. To feel their softness, their tiny, spindle-needle points. He could still remember the faint taste of salt from when they had brushed against his lips.

He reached down and carefully drew the duvet over them both—well, mainly over Fen, who was so thin he looked like he needed all the warmth he could get. His body was such acollection of contradictions. Alfie didn’t know how he could be so skinny and so inviting at the same time. But then that was hardly Fen’s only mystery.

He eased a stray lock of hair away from where it had tangled over Fen’s eyes. Fussing. He was fussing over a sleeping stranger. But there was this sense of familiarity about him that was probably more about Alfie being back here than Fen himself. It made him sort of lonely for a past that had always maybe been a lie.

He must have moved or jostled him, because Fen startled into wakefulness. He gave a distressed little murmur—the sort of sound you made when you weren’t sure where you were—and half pulled away. “Oh God, I… I…”

“’S’okay.” Alfie drew him back down. Tried to soothe him with long strokes to all that lovely skin, rough and smooth and tender like Fen himself.

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“’S’okay,” said Alfie again. “I’ve got you.”

Fen snuffled, almost laughing maybe, and vanished under the covers, his very cold toes nudging their way between Alfie’s knees. His fingers swirled idly across Alfie’s arm and chest, crossing back and forth over the lines of his tattoo, before coming to rest over his heart. After a moment, he asked, “Are you okay?”

It was the first time Fen had shown him anything that wasn’t sex or anger. Alfie was so dazzled by the attention—by the unexpectedness and the sweetness of it—that he blurted out the truth. “Dunno. It’s weird being home with everybody knowing…knowing I’m, y’know, gay. And realising I can’t ever go back. To them or to me or to anything.” He shut his mouth with a snap. It was definitely long past time to stop saying things. “Just ignore me. I’m not making sense.”

“Saudade.”

“You what?”

“It’s the name of that feeling.”

“Are you sure? Because it sounds like one of those posh cabbages.”

Fen turned his face into Alfie’s shoulder, stifling a sound that was almost…no, definitely a giggle. “It’s Portuguese. It’s the intense longing for a place or a person or a time you know is probably gone forever.”

“Like nostalgia?”

“Nostalgia’s more sentimental, I think? Missing past happiness. Saudade can encompass a yearning for things that have never been.”

Alfie preferred to think of himself as a simple man. He liked his emotions, when he had to have them, to be unambiguous: anger, protectiveness, love, desire. But he got this. Found it surprisingly comforting to know there was a name for this restless, needy ache.

Fen seemed to have dozed off again while he was thinking. That was okay. He didn’t really want to talk, but he liked having a body tucked up next to him. Especially when the body in question was gorgeous and naked, and smelled of fresh sex, and you, and something sweet and slightly dusty. Like flowers. Maybe Fen reallywasmagical. And Alfie would wake up in the morning with fairy dust on his eyelids, and there’d be nothing left of Fen but petals and sea-foam.

He drew him in a little closer, not wanting to let him slip away just yet. Obviously Fen wasn’t going to vanish storybook-style, but he was still going to leave in the morning, and so was Alfie. That was kind of sad, really. It made him wonder what life could have been like if he’d stayed in South Shields. Met a nice boy andsettled down. Well, maybe not aniceboy. Someone like Fen, who was wicked and sexy and fearless, and about as far from nice as you could imagine.

No point thinking about it really. Building sandcastles in his head. Except he sort of was. All sorts of sandcastles, as he drifted slowly off to sleep, holding a stranger in his arms.

3

An instinct jarred Alfie awake again later. He still was under the covers, but there was only empty space beside him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was. He sat up, groped for the lamp on the nightstand, and flicked it on. “Fen?”

Fen, still naked from the waist up, whirled away from the door like a thief in, well, the night.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving. What do you think I’m doing?”

“Yes, but…why?”

Shit, he sounded pathetic. This was what happened after a hookup. One of you left. Except this hadn’t felt like a hookup. At least not to Alfie. And he couldn’t believe that was all it had been to Fen either, not after the way he’d trembled and moaned in Alfie’s arms and clung to him afterwards. Fallen asleep next to him. Told him weird words for the way he was feeling.

Fen pulled on his jumper, rolling the sleeves midway up his forearms, exposing those gorgeous, supple wrists and—oh no—a ring of bruises that looked like the imprint of Alfie’s fingers.

“Fuck, I hurt you.”

Fen shrugged. “I wanted it. At the time.”

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