eight days of luke
Something I wrote a long time ago, and never posted nor bothered doing anything with after that. I think it was mostly during camp, actually. I don't think it will ever be finished.
David was sure Luke was doing this to get back at him for Sunday.
On Sunday, David and Sigurd had played an enormous trick on Luke, involving butter tarts and the cooperation of a very amused Astrid, just to see if they could.
It worked beautifully. Luke had stood in the cold, covered in butter, shouting furiously up at the window from which David and Sigurd were grinning widely at him. Then the landlady had come out with her broom and chased him down the street. Later, of course, David had had to start thinking about what form Luke’s retribution would take, and began to accept everything Luke told him with a generous amount of suspicion.
But Luke had remained his ordinary cheerful self, without a hint of vengeful thoughts or actions, until Saturday. On Saturday, David had been forced to put on his school shirt and trousers, blazer and tie, to attend the graduation ceremony. Astrid had taken him out of his old boarding school and put him into Alan’s day school. Their rules about uniforms were much more relaxed. As a result, David had quite forgotten how to knot his tie. It hung unknotted around his neck while Astrid bustled around the apartment looking for her camera.
‘Astrid,’ said David desperately, ‘I can’t tie my tie.’
‘What?’ said Astrid, only her rear end visible from where she was looking into a cupboard. ‘Don’t be confusing, David. Haven’t you seen my camera?’
‘I can’t knot this tie!’ David insisted, holding up one end. It was a strip of expensive-looking cloth, striped blue and black in the school colours. He’d kept it in a messy knot all year and had been loosening and tightening it to wear it on formal school days. It usually resided comfortably in his pocket.
‘I can’t knot a tie,’ said Astrid impatiently. ‘I never wore one. Shouldn’t you be calling Luke by now? Sigurd will be here in a minute and you know Luke wanted to come with us tonight.’
‘It’s probably only because we’re going out for dinner afterwards,’ said David, but he struck a match anyway.
A knock sounded on the door. David opened it, and let Luke in.
‘Your camera’s in a shoebox,’ said Luke immediately. He wore a perfectly respectable dark green sweater and a pair of jeans that he appeared to have stolen from David.
Astrid’s head emerged from the cupboard, looking dishevelled but still pretty. ‘Oh my goodness! Is it really? How do you know?’ She snatched up a shoebox from where it had been collecting dust on the mantel.
‘You set it down in the shoebox when you were thanking Sigurd for dinner last week,’ said Luke. ‘He’s outside with the car, by the way.’
‘Thank you, Luke,’ said Astrid fervently, and put the camera into her bag. ‘You’re a marvel. If you’re still feeling helpful, you can help David with his uniform. How he can go twelve years in school and still not know how to knot a tie is really beyond me.’
Luke took David’s arm, unnatural warmth from five fingertips burning itself into the skin there, and pulled him into Astrid’s bedroom, where there was a full-length mirror. Luke pushed David in front of it, and stood behind him, reaching around to adjust his tie. He looped twice, let it drop all the way to David’s belt, and then began to thread one end into a knot.
‘This is a rather boring tie,’ he said, in that particular slow, dreamy voice he used when he was setting buildings on fire. ‘Couldn’t they have made it another colour? Or with different patterns.’
His skin was indecently hot where it touched David’s neck, just above his collar. ‘I saw one once with little Tasmanian devils all over it. I think it would have suited you, since you have horrible taste.’
He loosened the knot and started again, adjusting the length, arms sliding along David’s shoulders. To his horror, David felt a blush making its way up his neck. Luke was watching their reflections in the mirror with an absent-minded, entranced look. He threaded one end through the loop, and tightened David’s tie into a perfect square knot.
‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in a tie with Tasmanian devils on it,’ David began hotly, but stopped abruptly when Luke ran his palm down the length of David’s tie, straightening it out, and then smoothed the lapels of his school shirt.
Sparks ran down his skin, under the shirt and tie, following Luke’s fingers. He looked up to meet Luke’s rapt eyes in the mirror.
David’s blood won its struggle with decency and rushed up to flood his cheeks.
‘Let’s go,’ Luke said, releasing David and giving him a real, friendly smile. ‘Sigurd may be used to Astrid’s lateness, but you won’t want to miss your own graduation.’
‘David, you’re all pink,’ Astrid said, at the door of the school hall, half an hour later. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ said David, glaring at Luke, who seemed not to notice. If this was payback for Sunday, it was an excellent and unfair revenge.
* * *
The first time Luke made David blush happened when he was still living with Aunt Dot and Uncle Bernard.
Aunt Dot had ordered him to wear the penguin suit to dinner. Cousin Ronald was having some guests over, and the entire family seemed very anxious for David to make a good impression. Luke, of course, was invited, because Aunt Dot thought he was charming and would make a better impression.
‘None of that stuffing,’ Aunt Dot had said to David, ‘as if we starved you. And no complaining. In fact, it would be best if you didn’t say anything during dinner, David.’
So David struggled into the penguin suit, stiff and prickly though it was, and Luke sat on his bed, laughing at him. He reached for the tie that lay draped across his pillow and looped it around his neck.
‘Ridiculous things, ties,’ said Luke, and David agreed with him wholeheartedly. ‘I can’t imagine having to wear one at school every day.’
‘I usually take it off when I’m away from classes,’ said David, threading the fat end through the loop. ‘Or I just loosen it a bit and unbutton my collar. If you pull the knot up high enough, the masters don’t notice.’ He pulled it into a large, messy knot. ‘Haven’t you ever had to wear one?’
‘No, actually,’ said Luke, gazing out of the window. ‘Although I have had to wear some unpleasant things -- David, who’s that coming along the street?’
His voice had taken on a tone of unnatural urgency. David climbed up onto the bed to look out. He saw a tall couple with fair hair making their way up to his house. They both seemed very beautiful, although the determined looks on their faces made him rather curious.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen them before. They must be the visitors that are coming for dinner.’ He looked at Luke, and started violently. Luke had a white, sick expression on his face that David had never seen before.
‘David, I have to get away from the house. Now. I can’t let them see me.’
‘Are you sure?’ said David, casting about. There was no way they could escape through the back door, with Mrs. Thirsk in the kitchen, and Aunt Dot was sure to notice if they tried anything through the front.
Luke nodded fervently.
‘All right. All right. Down the creeper?’
They opened the window, and Luke began to make his way down the creeper, which looked very precarious now that it was burnt as well as detached from the wall. David waved encouragingly at him, bit his lip and shut the window again.
Five seconds later, there was a loud thump from the bottom of the wall.
David wasted no time in struggling down the creeper in his suit.
He found Luke lying, half-stunned, in the middle of a flattened patch, and knelt beside him frantically. ‘Luke! Luke. Are you hurt? The Frys will be here any minute. You’d better hide somewhere.’
Then he heard the creak as Mrs. Thirsk opened the door to the Frys, and pushed Luke into the hole he had created in the rosebushes. After a moment, he crawled in after him.
It was prickly and scratchy and painful; David hoped it hadn’t hurt Luke. He could hear Aunt Dot’s sharp voice telling the Frys that David would be right down once he had got properly dressed. He started imagining the hole they had created in the flowerbed, and Cousin Ronald’s wrath when he discovered them. Of course, it would be useless trying to convince anyone that he hadn’t done it.
Suddenly there were fingers in his hair. Luke was picking leaves out of it and chuckling to himself. ‘What’s so funny?’ David hissed. ‘Aunt Dot will be out here in two minutes, and when she finds out what we’ve done to the roses, I’ll be in for it.’
‘I’ll get round her later if you like,’ whispered Luke. ‘You go on and have dinner with the - with the Frys.’ His face, scored with tiny lines from falling into a rosebush, was scrunched up in its usual mischievous smile. David wondered why he had been so white and scared only five minutes ago, and began to smile back. ‘How did you get down here without banging into them, anyway? You must be cleverer than I thought.’
‘Down the creeper.’
‘Down the - what? David. You can’t go into the house looking like that, you know.’
‘Like what?’ David said, alarmed. Luke was still picking things out of his hair.
‘Like someone threw you into a rosebush,’ said Luke, ‘or did something indecent with you. The knot on your tie is halfway round your neck.’ He smoothed out the shoulders of David’s suit and took his wrists to button the cuffs. ‘Come here.’
David endured half a minute of this; it was exactly like being dressed by Astrid. He shivered absently as Luke pulled his tie around to the front and tightened it for him, smoothing it with his palm. ‘There now,’ said Luke, in a curious voice that made David swivel round a bit to look at him properly. It was a strange, dreamy sort of voice that contrasted sharply with the look in his eyes: intent and fierce and suddenly a deep shade of brown, as though all the red had been swallowed up.
‘What?’ said David.
‘Thank you,’ said Luke, curling his fingers around David’s tie and tugging it toward him until they were almost nose to nose.
‘It’s all right,’ said David stupidly.
‘No it isn’t,’ said Luke, ‘because you didn’t have to climb down a creeper for me. In a suit.’
‘I was scared. I thought you might have fallen and broken your neck,’ David said in a rush. For some reason, it was becoming rather difficult to think properly.
‘I would have been fine,’ said Luke, clearly delighted, and leaned over to kiss him on the mouth.
David couldn’t think, or breathe. Luke tasted like pepper and something sweet, and he’d never been kissed before but he liked it, and his mouth was oddly hot, and Luke was threading his fingers through his hair and tightening the other hand around his tie, and it was making him shiver again, and he couldn’t think.
Luke pulled away, fingers still curled around his tie, and surveyed David with interest. David could feel a blush creeping up around his ears.
‘All right?’ Luke said softly.
‘Luke. Why?’ David stuttered. Heat was creeping down around his neck to where Luke held on to him, hand resting against his shirt.
‘I forgot how young you still are,’ Luke said finally, letting go of him. A wry smile curled up the corners of his mouth. ‘Maybe in a couple of years.’
‘We’re the same age.’
‘No, David, we aren’t,’ said Luke, and David thought his voice sounded just a little sad, even though the smile didn’t falter. ‘Go on. Aunt Dot will find us here in a bit. You’d better go in through the back.’
Surprisingly, things weren’t very weird after that, because neither of them ever made any mention of it again. Finding out that Luke was really so much more than he’d seemed to be was much stranger, really. David thought of Luke as his best friend; so did Astrid, and so did Alan, not without a certain amount of wistful envy.
Luke never changed except to grow older and taller at exactly David’s pace. He wore nearly the same clothes as David did, and he had the same growth spurts, and his hair grew suspiciously at the same rate, seeming to go shorter or longer according to David’s sporadic visits to the hairdresser’s.
Soon David was beginning to wonder if he had not imagined the whole incident. Or dreamed it. But then he would remember that odd feeling of heat and spice and sweetness, and he would think firmly to himself that he couldn’t have imagined something like that.
* * *
Then, of course, there was the time Luke did it again at his fifteenth birthday party.
There had been a large, wobbly cake, made by Astrid with a cake-mix package from Sainsbury’s. Mr. Wedding had been there, and the ravens, and the Frys, who still didn’t like Luke very much, although they certainly didn’t terrorise him like before. Sigurd had been there, looking admiringly at Astrid’s loose, fair hair and bright blue eyes (they hadn’t been going out then). Luke had set all the candles aflame by winking at David and then sending a steady stream of air through his lips, directly over the wicks. Alan, grown tall and stocky now, had stood next to David with a shy smile for Astrid’s camera.
Click. Whirr. Luke took his hand, looking a little strange, when Astrid finished taking the fifteenth picture of David and Alan with the cake-knife, and led David away into the bedroom and shut the door.
They both slid down onto the floor next to the bed.
‘What’s up?’ said David cheerfully. He was thinking about the present Luke had somehow managed to get him: a Nintendo GameBoy, better than the one Alan had, and cartridges for Tetris and three versions of Mario and Super Adventure Island. ‘Listen, your present was awesome. Wonderful. Amazing. Splendiferous.’
‘I know,’ said Luke. ‘I have something I want to tell you.’
‘What?’
Luke looked at him, and David began to recognise the look. It was his look of intense concentration, the one that was both fierce and gentle at the same time, and it was a little unnerving to find it directed at him.
‘I still.’ He looked unfocused for a moment, casting about for the right word. ‘I like you.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t be dense,’ said Luke affectionately. ‘You know what I mean.’
David’s breath escaped abruptly as Luke leaned close and touched their lips together. It wasn’t like the last time, when David had tasted tropical sweetness and spice and almost gotten his mouth burnt. This was just a brush of skin, not enough for David to lose all ability to think, but apparently enough to make him lean forward a little when Luke pulled away.
‘I kissed Alan yesterday night,’ David said in a rush, and felt himself flushing pink. Again. ‘After the movie.’
‘Oh,’ Luke said softly, and then he laughed. ‘I knew there was a reason I didn’t like him much.’
* * *
David had been trying not to think of ties, or the deft, nimble fingers that could tie them, all week. It wasn’t working too well. Luke would keep walking around the flat, and coming whenever he was called, and doing whatever Astrid asked him to do. He also kept taking David out on their usual rambles through the neighbourhood without saying one gloating word about how he had got David back for the butter tarts.
Sigurd had no theories either. David had refused point-blank to say anything about what Luke had done to get back at him, so he was avoiding the both of them somewhat.
The milk was getting warm from where David had been clutching it in his hand for five minutes. He set it down on the counter with a clink and searched in the kitchen cupboards for an acceptable cereal box. He liked chocolate cereal, but Astrid would only eat bran flakes.
‘Hullo, David,’ said Luke, wandering in with a box of chocolate rice cereal in his left hand and a spoon in his right. ‘Are you hungry?’
David jumped. His sleeve caught the milk bottle and it shattered on the floor with a crunch of broken glass.
‘Bit clumsy today, aren’t you?’ said Luke easily. He took the bowl David had set out on the counter and poured cereal into it. David got down on his hands and knees to clear up the spilt milk. He was rather glad of the interruption, because this way he wouldn’t have to look directly at Luke for at least five minutes.
But when he stood up, Luke was sneakily drinking milk straight from one of the new bottles. David stared for a long moment at the smooth line of his moving throat and chest, dressed in a slouchy green sweater identical to David’s own.
‘Sorry. Don’t tell Astrid,’ Luke implored, seemingly ignorant of David’s inability to speak. ‘She always thinks it’s you that does it.’
* * *
‘Luke is obviously going to get back at you,’ said Alan.
They were sitting on the park bench, watching some young boys tossing coins to form separate cricket teams. Alan had a Styrofoam cup of coffee between his palms and was rolling it between them precariously, much to David’s discomfort. He liked this particular pair of jeans, and didn’t think a coffee stain would improve them much.
‘How?’
‘I dunno. But you know he will. I’ve read stories.’
‘Luke’s not always like he is in the stories,’ said David defensively. ‘Maybe he’s forgiven us.’ He hadn’t mentioned to Alan, either, that Luke was already deep into the process of getting back at him.
‘Fat chance,’ said Alan, and passed him the coffee. ‘Want some?’
‘Remember when we used to play cricket every day?’ said David, in between sips. It was hot. ‘You and me always on the same team.’
They’d been together for exactly a year; got together on David’s fifteenth birthday, and broken up on his sixteenth. For reasons that only David could understand, Luke found that extremely funny.
Their break-up was caused by a highly embarrassing incident with the headmaster of their school, an unlocked classroom, and a piece of chocolate cake. After this, they had just decided that it was too awkward to talk about, think about or even dream about ever again, and Alan had started seeing girls as well as boys, while David became captain of the cricket team and stopped seeing anyone at all.
‘Yes. And remember the time when we got the classroom door open to --’
‘Alan?’
‘What?’
‘No.’
‘Right.’
They sat in silence, passing the coffee cup back and forth. That was the thing about him and Alan, David thought; despite the painfully embarrassing incident leading to their break-up, they had remained such close friends that they were comfortable enough to sit together in perfect silence. No one felt the need to break the quiet by making awkward attempts at conversation when there was nothing to say.
‘He’s going to notice sooner or later, you know,’ said Alan suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Luke. He’s going to notice the way you stare at him. And he isn’t stupid. I’ve read stories.’
‘I do not stare at him,’ David exclaimed. ‘What are you on about?’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Alan easily. ‘Maybe we’d better be getting on home. Come for dinner with me tomorrow? It’s Anna’s birthday party and I need someone my own age who isn’t a girl.’ He handed David the cup, enough left for a last gulp. It was a gesture typical of Alan, who could be nice even to his own dim-witted sisters, whom David could barely stand.
Luke would not have given him the cup. He would have waited for David to say ‘Come on, hand it over,’ and then stood on the park bench, grinning his madcap grin, and dared David to take it from him without spilling coffee over the both of them.
‘Soccer is on at eight,’ said Alan, as they walked down the street to the shouts of the boys at their game.
‘I don’t like soccer much,’ said David.
‘You realise we’re not going to be playing cricket ever again,’ said Alan, ‘so you might as well start taking an interest in other sports.’
They had reached David’s flat, where Astrid and Luke were lifting bags of groceries out of the back of Sigurd’s battered Volkswagen. David’s eyes drifted to the slide of Luke’s long, lean arms, freckles standing out against the green of his shirtsleeves and the fairness of his skin after the spring. Luke turned and gave an odd little wave with his head because both his arms were full of groceries.
‘’Bye, David,’ said Alan loudly, giving him a sly little dig in the ribs. ‘See you tomorrow at dinner.’
* * *
David was unable to watch soccer at eight, because Astrid had marked out the date of Sixteen Candles on the calendar that hung on the kitchen wall, and that was tonight. She and David and Luke sat on the floor in front of the couch until after the movie was done, simply because they were too lazy to get up, and ate three bags of crisps between them.
‘I wish I’d had a sixteenth birthday,’ said Luke suddenly, drawing surprised looks from David and Astrid, who sat on either side of him.
‘Trust me,’ said David, ‘you don’t want one. I wish I hadn’t had one.’
Luke laughed. ‘Oh yes. Yours was worse than Samantha’s.’
‘What happened on your sixteenth, David?’ said Astrid, ripping open a chocolate orange wrapper. ‘I thought you had rather a nice day. Remember, Alan got you that cake?’
Luke snorted.
‘I loved the film, though,’ said David hurriedly. ‘Didn’t you, Astrid?’
He didn’t manage to hear Astrid’s response, because Luke was stretching beside her like a cat, twisting his fingers together and reaching upward. David squeezed his eyes shut and bit into a chocolate orange slice.
‘My sixteenth was terrible, too,’ said Astrid, through a mouthful of her own. ‘I met Ronald. At my birthday party.’
‘Ugh,’ said David and Luke together.
‘Oh, he was handsome then, of course. He wasn’t half as well-built as he was when you came to live with us, David. And he was really very nice at the time.’ Astrid unwrapped another chocolate orange. ‘My parents had invited him because he was the son of a family friend - Bernard, you know - and they wanted to set us up. Of course, Ronald was being particularly charming, because he liked blonde girls. He got me so many presents. You wouldn’t have believed that he was miserly then. So many things.’ She paused. ‘Hair ribbons. Combs with little mirrors set into the handles. You know.’
‘How boring,’ said Luke, making a face at her. ‘I’d have gotten you video games instead. Lots of Super Mario. I happen to think that is very romantic.’
David flushed.
‘I do have you to thank for my Mario addiction,’ said Astrid dryly. Really, David thought, she wasn’t joking. Astrid was the best Super Mario player in the house. She was even better than Luke. Luke often attributed it to her skills as a typist.
‘So what happened?’ said Luke.
‘What?’
‘How did he become the pathetic excuse for a husband that I was introduced to?’
David snickered. Astrid thought for a moment, and said, ‘I think he was like that all along. He was just hiding it to be charming, really. Not half as nice as Sigurd. Not as easy to boss around either.’ She gave the two of them an impish wink.
‘What have you bossed him into lately, then?’ David challenged. ‘Has he given you anything?’
Astrid tugged up the sleeve of her jumper. On her wrist, tiny and green, was a dragon tattoo.
‘No way!’ Luke exclaimed.
‘Well, Sigurd has one,’ Astrid said defensively. ‘And it didn’t hurt. Much. -- Right then,’ she said suddenly, cheeks rather pink, ‘I’m going to bed. ‘Night, Luke. ‘Night, David.’ She kissed David on the head and stood up, gathering the bags of crisps.
‘Astrid, don’t take the crisps! They’re not finished!’
‘I’m eating in bed,’ Astrid retorted.
David changed the channel to soccer. The match was almost over.
‘I don’t like soccer,’ Luke pointed out, and put a hand over David’s to take the remote from him.
Eventually, Luke fell asleep on his shoulder as the post-game commentators picked the match apart. It was like sleeping next to a radiator, only David wasn’t sleeping, just sitting as still as he could, trying not to move.
He spent half the night staring up into the blackness of his room, and the other half with his pants around his ankles, fire dancing behind his eyelids as he tried very desperately not to think of freckles, or heated, pale skin, or bright red-brown eyes.
This worked, in a way, but all he came up with in the end was an image of the whole, of Luke standing before him with an odd sideways grin, fingers upraised. A picture from last winter, when they’d been walking home together after dark, and David had complained of the cold.
He remembered being able to see his own breath in front of his nose, and snowflakes resting in Luke’s ridiculously long, pale eyelashes. Luke had snapped his fingers, and a column of green-blue flame had risen into the still, heavy air before sinking down into his palm and trickling away between his fingers into nothing.
David had felt a strange, subtle warmth sink through every cell as the flame died. It felt rather too intimate, a bit like having your personal space thoroughly invaded. He flushed deeply, and tried to hide it.
‘You see,’ Luke said in David’s head, never taking his deep brown eyes off David’s own, ‘I can be very useful.’
***
The next Sunday, David put on his good blue shirt to go to church with Astrid. After meeting Luke and Sigurd and Thor and Mr. Wedding, neither David nor Astrid saw much point in going to church, but on Friday the pastor had seen Astrid carrying a sack of emergency groceries and insisted on carrying them home for her. David had worn that shirt on special occasions for years. It was the only shirt he had that he was allowed to go out to dinner in.
As he pushed the front door open, a large tub of melted butter upended itself on his head.
***
‘Luke,’ David roared, a newly-lit match still burning in his fingers, ‘that was my good shirt!’
‘You’re turning into quite the pyromaniac,’ said Luke casually, leaning against the doorframe, and waved at Astrid, who had departed for the church without David. ‘Careful, you’ll burn your fingers.’ He reached out and pinched his fingers together on top of David’s. The flame went out.
‘Look,’ David said, holding out the ends of his shirt with two fingers, ‘it’s all over oil. You’ve already got me back for last Sunday! What have I done to deserve this?’ His hair was dripping, and he’d used the sleeve of his shirt to get the butter off his face, but there was still a lot all over his shoes.
Luke looked puzzled. ‘Already got you back? I’ve been sitting on this for two whole weeks. You have no idea how hard it is to balance that thing on top of the door.’ He gestured at the upturned tub. ‘And how hard it was to make sure you’d come out before Astrid.’
‘You have got me back!’ David howled. ‘With the… with the tie, and the inappropriate touching, and making me think about a lot of things I don’t want to be thinking about! That was worse than this!’
‘What?’
‘You know what I mean!’ David hauled off his shirt and wiped his face with it again. It was ruined, anyway. ‘It started on Saturday. The end of school.’
‘What did I do at the end of school?’ Luke inquired casually, but David could see a tiny spark in his eyes, as though he were beginning to understand what David meant. This only infuriated him further.
‘You - you tied my tie.’
‘I hardly see how that amounts to getting you back, David,’ Luke said dryly.
David made an inarticulate noise of frustration. ‘You know what I mean! You! You did it, you know, you were, you were kind of sexy. You were doing it on purpose. And you’ve been distracting me all week!’
‘You really think I’m sexy?’ said Luke. His voice was small and rather strained.
David glared at him. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘Oh yes it is,’ Luke declared suddenly, pushing him back into the house and shutting the door firmly behind them.
David rubbed nervously at the back of his neck, which was also covered in butter, and stared into Luke’s eyes, which were unnervingly close. They were also a lot darker than normal, as though all the brown had been swallowed up into his pupils. ‘It is?’
‘I didn’t do that to get back at you, David,’ said Luke quietly. ‘I did it because I like you, and I’ve been trying to get you to like me for years.’
A blush was definitely creeping up the back of his neck. ‘You have?’
‘I’ve been waiting for this for years,’ said Luke, tipping David’s chin up with his fingertips, and kissed him.
And there it was, that odd, sweet, spicy taste, and the familiar dizziness in David’s head, and he hadn’t realised but it was something he’d missed, something he’d been waiting for all along, ever since the first time Luke kissed him in Cousin Ronald’s rosebushes - no. If he was really honest with himself, ever since the time he had kicked down a wall with a curse and released a playmate with a mischievous grin and a constellation of freckles across his nose.
‘Stop thinking. I can hear you thinking,’ Luke mumbled against his mouth, and David kissed him back clumsily but fervently. Luke coaxed his mouth open and wound his fingers into the buttery hair at the nape of David’s neck.
Butter. David pushed at Luke’s chest, and tore his mouth away.
‘I, I have to take a shower,’ he muttered, and fled upstairs into the bathroom.
David was sure Luke was doing this to get back at him for Sunday.
On Sunday, David and Sigurd had played an enormous trick on Luke, involving butter tarts and the cooperation of a very amused Astrid, just to see if they could.
It worked beautifully. Luke had stood in the cold, covered in butter, shouting furiously up at the window from which David and Sigurd were grinning widely at him. Then the landlady had come out with her broom and chased him down the street. Later, of course, David had had to start thinking about what form Luke’s retribution would take, and began to accept everything Luke told him with a generous amount of suspicion.
But Luke had remained his ordinary cheerful self, without a hint of vengeful thoughts or actions, until Saturday. On Saturday, David had been forced to put on his school shirt and trousers, blazer and tie, to attend the graduation ceremony. Astrid had taken him out of his old boarding school and put him into Alan’s day school. Their rules about uniforms were much more relaxed. As a result, David had quite forgotten how to knot his tie. It hung unknotted around his neck while Astrid bustled around the apartment looking for her camera.
‘Astrid,’ said David desperately, ‘I can’t tie my tie.’
‘What?’ said Astrid, only her rear end visible from where she was looking into a cupboard. ‘Don’t be confusing, David. Haven’t you seen my camera?’
‘I can’t knot this tie!’ David insisted, holding up one end. It was a strip of expensive-looking cloth, striped blue and black in the school colours. He’d kept it in a messy knot all year and had been loosening and tightening it to wear it on formal school days. It usually resided comfortably in his pocket.
‘I can’t knot a tie,’ said Astrid impatiently. ‘I never wore one. Shouldn’t you be calling Luke by now? Sigurd will be here in a minute and you know Luke wanted to come with us tonight.’
‘It’s probably only because we’re going out for dinner afterwards,’ said David, but he struck a match anyway.
A knock sounded on the door. David opened it, and let Luke in.
‘Your camera’s in a shoebox,’ said Luke immediately. He wore a perfectly respectable dark green sweater and a pair of jeans that he appeared to have stolen from David.
Astrid’s head emerged from the cupboard, looking dishevelled but still pretty. ‘Oh my goodness! Is it really? How do you know?’ She snatched up a shoebox from where it had been collecting dust on the mantel.
‘You set it down in the shoebox when you were thanking Sigurd for dinner last week,’ said Luke. ‘He’s outside with the car, by the way.’
‘Thank you, Luke,’ said Astrid fervently, and put the camera into her bag. ‘You’re a marvel. If you’re still feeling helpful, you can help David with his uniform. How he can go twelve years in school and still not know how to knot a tie is really beyond me.’
Luke took David’s arm, unnatural warmth from five fingertips burning itself into the skin there, and pulled him into Astrid’s bedroom, where there was a full-length mirror. Luke pushed David in front of it, and stood behind him, reaching around to adjust his tie. He looped twice, let it drop all the way to David’s belt, and then began to thread one end into a knot.
‘This is a rather boring tie,’ he said, in that particular slow, dreamy voice he used when he was setting buildings on fire. ‘Couldn’t they have made it another colour? Or with different patterns.’
His skin was indecently hot where it touched David’s neck, just above his collar. ‘I saw one once with little Tasmanian devils all over it. I think it would have suited you, since you have horrible taste.’
He loosened the knot and started again, adjusting the length, arms sliding along David’s shoulders. To his horror, David felt a blush making its way up his neck. Luke was watching their reflections in the mirror with an absent-minded, entranced look. He threaded one end through the loop, and tightened David’s tie into a perfect square knot.
‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in a tie with Tasmanian devils on it,’ David began hotly, but stopped abruptly when Luke ran his palm down the length of David’s tie, straightening it out, and then smoothed the lapels of his school shirt.
Sparks ran down his skin, under the shirt and tie, following Luke’s fingers. He looked up to meet Luke’s rapt eyes in the mirror.
David’s blood won its struggle with decency and rushed up to flood his cheeks.
‘Let’s go,’ Luke said, releasing David and giving him a real, friendly smile. ‘Sigurd may be used to Astrid’s lateness, but you won’t want to miss your own graduation.’
‘David, you’re all pink,’ Astrid said, at the door of the school hall, half an hour later. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ said David, glaring at Luke, who seemed not to notice. If this was payback for Sunday, it was an excellent and unfair revenge.
* * *
The first time Luke made David blush happened when he was still living with Aunt Dot and Uncle Bernard.
Aunt Dot had ordered him to wear the penguin suit to dinner. Cousin Ronald was having some guests over, and the entire family seemed very anxious for David to make a good impression. Luke, of course, was invited, because Aunt Dot thought he was charming and would make a better impression.
‘None of that stuffing,’ Aunt Dot had said to David, ‘as if we starved you. And no complaining. In fact, it would be best if you didn’t say anything during dinner, David.’
So David struggled into the penguin suit, stiff and prickly though it was, and Luke sat on his bed, laughing at him. He reached for the tie that lay draped across his pillow and looped it around his neck.
‘Ridiculous things, ties,’ said Luke, and David agreed with him wholeheartedly. ‘I can’t imagine having to wear one at school every day.’
‘I usually take it off when I’m away from classes,’ said David, threading the fat end through the loop. ‘Or I just loosen it a bit and unbutton my collar. If you pull the knot up high enough, the masters don’t notice.’ He pulled it into a large, messy knot. ‘Haven’t you ever had to wear one?’
‘No, actually,’ said Luke, gazing out of the window. ‘Although I have had to wear some unpleasant things -- David, who’s that coming along the street?’
His voice had taken on a tone of unnatural urgency. David climbed up onto the bed to look out. He saw a tall couple with fair hair making their way up to his house. They both seemed very beautiful, although the determined looks on their faces made him rather curious.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen them before. They must be the visitors that are coming for dinner.’ He looked at Luke, and started violently. Luke had a white, sick expression on his face that David had never seen before.
‘David, I have to get away from the house. Now. I can’t let them see me.’
‘Are you sure?’ said David, casting about. There was no way they could escape through the back door, with Mrs. Thirsk in the kitchen, and Aunt Dot was sure to notice if they tried anything through the front.
Luke nodded fervently.
‘All right. All right. Down the creeper?’
They opened the window, and Luke began to make his way down the creeper, which looked very precarious now that it was burnt as well as detached from the wall. David waved encouragingly at him, bit his lip and shut the window again.
Five seconds later, there was a loud thump from the bottom of the wall.
David wasted no time in struggling down the creeper in his suit.
He found Luke lying, half-stunned, in the middle of a flattened patch, and knelt beside him frantically. ‘Luke! Luke. Are you hurt? The Frys will be here any minute. You’d better hide somewhere.’
Then he heard the creak as Mrs. Thirsk opened the door to the Frys, and pushed Luke into the hole he had created in the rosebushes. After a moment, he crawled in after him.
It was prickly and scratchy and painful; David hoped it hadn’t hurt Luke. He could hear Aunt Dot’s sharp voice telling the Frys that David would be right down once he had got properly dressed. He started imagining the hole they had created in the flowerbed, and Cousin Ronald’s wrath when he discovered them. Of course, it would be useless trying to convince anyone that he hadn’t done it.
Suddenly there were fingers in his hair. Luke was picking leaves out of it and chuckling to himself. ‘What’s so funny?’ David hissed. ‘Aunt Dot will be out here in two minutes, and when she finds out what we’ve done to the roses, I’ll be in for it.’
‘I’ll get round her later if you like,’ whispered Luke. ‘You go on and have dinner with the - with the Frys.’ His face, scored with tiny lines from falling into a rosebush, was scrunched up in its usual mischievous smile. David wondered why he had been so white and scared only five minutes ago, and began to smile back. ‘How did you get down here without banging into them, anyway? You must be cleverer than I thought.’
‘Down the creeper.’
‘Down the - what? David. You can’t go into the house looking like that, you know.’
‘Like what?’ David said, alarmed. Luke was still picking things out of his hair.
‘Like someone threw you into a rosebush,’ said Luke, ‘or did something indecent with you. The knot on your tie is halfway round your neck.’ He smoothed out the shoulders of David’s suit and took his wrists to button the cuffs. ‘Come here.’
David endured half a minute of this; it was exactly like being dressed by Astrid. He shivered absently as Luke pulled his tie around to the front and tightened it for him, smoothing it with his palm. ‘There now,’ said Luke, in a curious voice that made David swivel round a bit to look at him properly. It was a strange, dreamy sort of voice that contrasted sharply with the look in his eyes: intent and fierce and suddenly a deep shade of brown, as though all the red had been swallowed up.
‘What?’ said David.
‘Thank you,’ said Luke, curling his fingers around David’s tie and tugging it toward him until they were almost nose to nose.
‘It’s all right,’ said David stupidly.
‘No it isn’t,’ said Luke, ‘because you didn’t have to climb down a creeper for me. In a suit.’
‘I was scared. I thought you might have fallen and broken your neck,’ David said in a rush. For some reason, it was becoming rather difficult to think properly.
‘I would have been fine,’ said Luke, clearly delighted, and leaned over to kiss him on the mouth.
David couldn’t think, or breathe. Luke tasted like pepper and something sweet, and he’d never been kissed before but he liked it, and his mouth was oddly hot, and Luke was threading his fingers through his hair and tightening the other hand around his tie, and it was making him shiver again, and he couldn’t think.
Luke pulled away, fingers still curled around his tie, and surveyed David with interest. David could feel a blush creeping up around his ears.
‘All right?’ Luke said softly.
‘Luke. Why?’ David stuttered. Heat was creeping down around his neck to where Luke held on to him, hand resting against his shirt.
‘I forgot how young you still are,’ Luke said finally, letting go of him. A wry smile curled up the corners of his mouth. ‘Maybe in a couple of years.’
‘We’re the same age.’
‘No, David, we aren’t,’ said Luke, and David thought his voice sounded just a little sad, even though the smile didn’t falter. ‘Go on. Aunt Dot will find us here in a bit. You’d better go in through the back.’
Surprisingly, things weren’t very weird after that, because neither of them ever made any mention of it again. Finding out that Luke was really so much more than he’d seemed to be was much stranger, really. David thought of Luke as his best friend; so did Astrid, and so did Alan, not without a certain amount of wistful envy.
Luke never changed except to grow older and taller at exactly David’s pace. He wore nearly the same clothes as David did, and he had the same growth spurts, and his hair grew suspiciously at the same rate, seeming to go shorter or longer according to David’s sporadic visits to the hairdresser’s.
Soon David was beginning to wonder if he had not imagined the whole incident. Or dreamed it. But then he would remember that odd feeling of heat and spice and sweetness, and he would think firmly to himself that he couldn’t have imagined something like that.
* * *
Then, of course, there was the time Luke did it again at his fifteenth birthday party.
There had been a large, wobbly cake, made by Astrid with a cake-mix package from Sainsbury’s. Mr. Wedding had been there, and the ravens, and the Frys, who still didn’t like Luke very much, although they certainly didn’t terrorise him like before. Sigurd had been there, looking admiringly at Astrid’s loose, fair hair and bright blue eyes (they hadn’t been going out then). Luke had set all the candles aflame by winking at David and then sending a steady stream of air through his lips, directly over the wicks. Alan, grown tall and stocky now, had stood next to David with a shy smile for Astrid’s camera.
Click. Whirr. Luke took his hand, looking a little strange, when Astrid finished taking the fifteenth picture of David and Alan with the cake-knife, and led David away into the bedroom and shut the door.
They both slid down onto the floor next to the bed.
‘What’s up?’ said David cheerfully. He was thinking about the present Luke had somehow managed to get him: a Nintendo GameBoy, better than the one Alan had, and cartridges for Tetris and three versions of Mario and Super Adventure Island. ‘Listen, your present was awesome. Wonderful. Amazing. Splendiferous.’
‘I know,’ said Luke. ‘I have something I want to tell you.’
‘What?’
Luke looked at him, and David began to recognise the look. It was his look of intense concentration, the one that was both fierce and gentle at the same time, and it was a little unnerving to find it directed at him.
‘I still.’ He looked unfocused for a moment, casting about for the right word. ‘I like you.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t be dense,’ said Luke affectionately. ‘You know what I mean.’
David’s breath escaped abruptly as Luke leaned close and touched their lips together. It wasn’t like the last time, when David had tasted tropical sweetness and spice and almost gotten his mouth burnt. This was just a brush of skin, not enough for David to lose all ability to think, but apparently enough to make him lean forward a little when Luke pulled away.
‘I kissed Alan yesterday night,’ David said in a rush, and felt himself flushing pink. Again. ‘After the movie.’
‘Oh,’ Luke said softly, and then he laughed. ‘I knew there was a reason I didn’t like him much.’
* * *
David had been trying not to think of ties, or the deft, nimble fingers that could tie them, all week. It wasn’t working too well. Luke would keep walking around the flat, and coming whenever he was called, and doing whatever Astrid asked him to do. He also kept taking David out on their usual rambles through the neighbourhood without saying one gloating word about how he had got David back for the butter tarts.
Sigurd had no theories either. David had refused point-blank to say anything about what Luke had done to get back at him, so he was avoiding the both of them somewhat.
The milk was getting warm from where David had been clutching it in his hand for five minutes. He set it down on the counter with a clink and searched in the kitchen cupboards for an acceptable cereal box. He liked chocolate cereal, but Astrid would only eat bran flakes.
‘Hullo, David,’ said Luke, wandering in with a box of chocolate rice cereal in his left hand and a spoon in his right. ‘Are you hungry?’
David jumped. His sleeve caught the milk bottle and it shattered on the floor with a crunch of broken glass.
‘Bit clumsy today, aren’t you?’ said Luke easily. He took the bowl David had set out on the counter and poured cereal into it. David got down on his hands and knees to clear up the spilt milk. He was rather glad of the interruption, because this way he wouldn’t have to look directly at Luke for at least five minutes.
But when he stood up, Luke was sneakily drinking milk straight from one of the new bottles. David stared for a long moment at the smooth line of his moving throat and chest, dressed in a slouchy green sweater identical to David’s own.
‘Sorry. Don’t tell Astrid,’ Luke implored, seemingly ignorant of David’s inability to speak. ‘She always thinks it’s you that does it.’
* * *
‘Luke is obviously going to get back at you,’ said Alan.
They were sitting on the park bench, watching some young boys tossing coins to form separate cricket teams. Alan had a Styrofoam cup of coffee between his palms and was rolling it between them precariously, much to David’s discomfort. He liked this particular pair of jeans, and didn’t think a coffee stain would improve them much.
‘How?’
‘I dunno. But you know he will. I’ve read stories.’
‘Luke’s not always like he is in the stories,’ said David defensively. ‘Maybe he’s forgiven us.’ He hadn’t mentioned to Alan, either, that Luke was already deep into the process of getting back at him.
‘Fat chance,’ said Alan, and passed him the coffee. ‘Want some?’
‘Remember when we used to play cricket every day?’ said David, in between sips. It was hot. ‘You and me always on the same team.’
They’d been together for exactly a year; got together on David’s fifteenth birthday, and broken up on his sixteenth. For reasons that only David could understand, Luke found that extremely funny.
Their break-up was caused by a highly embarrassing incident with the headmaster of their school, an unlocked classroom, and a piece of chocolate cake. After this, they had just decided that it was too awkward to talk about, think about or even dream about ever again, and Alan had started seeing girls as well as boys, while David became captain of the cricket team and stopped seeing anyone at all.
‘Yes. And remember the time when we got the classroom door open to --’
‘Alan?’
‘What?’
‘No.’
‘Right.’
They sat in silence, passing the coffee cup back and forth. That was the thing about him and Alan, David thought; despite the painfully embarrassing incident leading to their break-up, they had remained such close friends that they were comfortable enough to sit together in perfect silence. No one felt the need to break the quiet by making awkward attempts at conversation when there was nothing to say.
‘He’s going to notice sooner or later, you know,’ said Alan suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Luke. He’s going to notice the way you stare at him. And he isn’t stupid. I’ve read stories.’
‘I do not stare at him,’ David exclaimed. ‘What are you on about?’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Alan easily. ‘Maybe we’d better be getting on home. Come for dinner with me tomorrow? It’s Anna’s birthday party and I need someone my own age who isn’t a girl.’ He handed David the cup, enough left for a last gulp. It was a gesture typical of Alan, who could be nice even to his own dim-witted sisters, whom David could barely stand.
Luke would not have given him the cup. He would have waited for David to say ‘Come on, hand it over,’ and then stood on the park bench, grinning his madcap grin, and dared David to take it from him without spilling coffee over the both of them.
‘Soccer is on at eight,’ said Alan, as they walked down the street to the shouts of the boys at their game.
‘I don’t like soccer much,’ said David.
‘You realise we’re not going to be playing cricket ever again,’ said Alan, ‘so you might as well start taking an interest in other sports.’
They had reached David’s flat, where Astrid and Luke were lifting bags of groceries out of the back of Sigurd’s battered Volkswagen. David’s eyes drifted to the slide of Luke’s long, lean arms, freckles standing out against the green of his shirtsleeves and the fairness of his skin after the spring. Luke turned and gave an odd little wave with his head because both his arms were full of groceries.
‘’Bye, David,’ said Alan loudly, giving him a sly little dig in the ribs. ‘See you tomorrow at dinner.’
* * *
David was unable to watch soccer at eight, because Astrid had marked out the date of Sixteen Candles on the calendar that hung on the kitchen wall, and that was tonight. She and David and Luke sat on the floor in front of the couch until after the movie was done, simply because they were too lazy to get up, and ate three bags of crisps between them.
‘I wish I’d had a sixteenth birthday,’ said Luke suddenly, drawing surprised looks from David and Astrid, who sat on either side of him.
‘Trust me,’ said David, ‘you don’t want one. I wish I hadn’t had one.’
Luke laughed. ‘Oh yes. Yours was worse than Samantha’s.’
‘What happened on your sixteenth, David?’ said Astrid, ripping open a chocolate orange wrapper. ‘I thought you had rather a nice day. Remember, Alan got you that cake?’
Luke snorted.
‘I loved the film, though,’ said David hurriedly. ‘Didn’t you, Astrid?’
He didn’t manage to hear Astrid’s response, because Luke was stretching beside her like a cat, twisting his fingers together and reaching upward. David squeezed his eyes shut and bit into a chocolate orange slice.
‘My sixteenth was terrible, too,’ said Astrid, through a mouthful of her own. ‘I met Ronald. At my birthday party.’
‘Ugh,’ said David and Luke together.
‘Oh, he was handsome then, of course. He wasn’t half as well-built as he was when you came to live with us, David. And he was really very nice at the time.’ Astrid unwrapped another chocolate orange. ‘My parents had invited him because he was the son of a family friend - Bernard, you know - and they wanted to set us up. Of course, Ronald was being particularly charming, because he liked blonde girls. He got me so many presents. You wouldn’t have believed that he was miserly then. So many things.’ She paused. ‘Hair ribbons. Combs with little mirrors set into the handles. You know.’
‘How boring,’ said Luke, making a face at her. ‘I’d have gotten you video games instead. Lots of Super Mario. I happen to think that is very romantic.’
David flushed.
‘I do have you to thank for my Mario addiction,’ said Astrid dryly. Really, David thought, she wasn’t joking. Astrid was the best Super Mario player in the house. She was even better than Luke. Luke often attributed it to her skills as a typist.
‘So what happened?’ said Luke.
‘What?’
‘How did he become the pathetic excuse for a husband that I was introduced to?’
David snickered. Astrid thought for a moment, and said, ‘I think he was like that all along. He was just hiding it to be charming, really. Not half as nice as Sigurd. Not as easy to boss around either.’ She gave the two of them an impish wink.
‘What have you bossed him into lately, then?’ David challenged. ‘Has he given you anything?’
Astrid tugged up the sleeve of her jumper. On her wrist, tiny and green, was a dragon tattoo.
‘No way!’ Luke exclaimed.
‘Well, Sigurd has one,’ Astrid said defensively. ‘And it didn’t hurt. Much. -- Right then,’ she said suddenly, cheeks rather pink, ‘I’m going to bed. ‘Night, Luke. ‘Night, David.’ She kissed David on the head and stood up, gathering the bags of crisps.
‘Astrid, don’t take the crisps! They’re not finished!’
‘I’m eating in bed,’ Astrid retorted.
David changed the channel to soccer. The match was almost over.
‘I don’t like soccer,’ Luke pointed out, and put a hand over David’s to take the remote from him.
Eventually, Luke fell asleep on his shoulder as the post-game commentators picked the match apart. It was like sleeping next to a radiator, only David wasn’t sleeping, just sitting as still as he could, trying not to move.
He spent half the night staring up into the blackness of his room, and the other half with his pants around his ankles, fire dancing behind his eyelids as he tried very desperately not to think of freckles, or heated, pale skin, or bright red-brown eyes.
This worked, in a way, but all he came up with in the end was an image of the whole, of Luke standing before him with an odd sideways grin, fingers upraised. A picture from last winter, when they’d been walking home together after dark, and David had complained of the cold.
He remembered being able to see his own breath in front of his nose, and snowflakes resting in Luke’s ridiculously long, pale eyelashes. Luke had snapped his fingers, and a column of green-blue flame had risen into the still, heavy air before sinking down into his palm and trickling away between his fingers into nothing.
David had felt a strange, subtle warmth sink through every cell as the flame died. It felt rather too intimate, a bit like having your personal space thoroughly invaded. He flushed deeply, and tried to hide it.
‘You see,’ Luke said in David’s head, never taking his deep brown eyes off David’s own, ‘I can be very useful.’
***
The next Sunday, David put on his good blue shirt to go to church with Astrid. After meeting Luke and Sigurd and Thor and Mr. Wedding, neither David nor Astrid saw much point in going to church, but on Friday the pastor had seen Astrid carrying a sack of emergency groceries and insisted on carrying them home for her. David had worn that shirt on special occasions for years. It was the only shirt he had that he was allowed to go out to dinner in.
As he pushed the front door open, a large tub of melted butter upended itself on his head.
***
‘Luke,’ David roared, a newly-lit match still burning in his fingers, ‘that was my good shirt!’
‘You’re turning into quite the pyromaniac,’ said Luke casually, leaning against the doorframe, and waved at Astrid, who had departed for the church without David. ‘Careful, you’ll burn your fingers.’ He reached out and pinched his fingers together on top of David’s. The flame went out.
‘Look,’ David said, holding out the ends of his shirt with two fingers, ‘it’s all over oil. You’ve already got me back for last Sunday! What have I done to deserve this?’ His hair was dripping, and he’d used the sleeve of his shirt to get the butter off his face, but there was still a lot all over his shoes.
Luke looked puzzled. ‘Already got you back? I’ve been sitting on this for two whole weeks. You have no idea how hard it is to balance that thing on top of the door.’ He gestured at the upturned tub. ‘And how hard it was to make sure you’d come out before Astrid.’
‘You have got me back!’ David howled. ‘With the… with the tie, and the inappropriate touching, and making me think about a lot of things I don’t want to be thinking about! That was worse than this!’
‘What?’
‘You know what I mean!’ David hauled off his shirt and wiped his face with it again. It was ruined, anyway. ‘It started on Saturday. The end of school.’
‘What did I do at the end of school?’ Luke inquired casually, but David could see a tiny spark in his eyes, as though he were beginning to understand what David meant. This only infuriated him further.
‘You - you tied my tie.’
‘I hardly see how that amounts to getting you back, David,’ Luke said dryly.
David made an inarticulate noise of frustration. ‘You know what I mean! You! You did it, you know, you were, you were kind of sexy. You were doing it on purpose. And you’ve been distracting me all week!’
‘You really think I’m sexy?’ said Luke. His voice was small and rather strained.
David glared at him. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘Oh yes it is,’ Luke declared suddenly, pushing him back into the house and shutting the door firmly behind them.
David rubbed nervously at the back of his neck, which was also covered in butter, and stared into Luke’s eyes, which were unnervingly close. They were also a lot darker than normal, as though all the brown had been swallowed up into his pupils. ‘It is?’
‘I didn’t do that to get back at you, David,’ said Luke quietly. ‘I did it because I like you, and I’ve been trying to get you to like me for years.’
A blush was definitely creeping up the back of his neck. ‘You have?’
‘I’ve been waiting for this for years,’ said Luke, tipping David’s chin up with his fingertips, and kissed him.
And there it was, that odd, sweet, spicy taste, and the familiar dizziness in David’s head, and he hadn’t realised but it was something he’d missed, something he’d been waiting for all along, ever since the first time Luke kissed him in Cousin Ronald’s rosebushes - no. If he was really honest with himself, ever since the time he had kicked down a wall with a curse and released a playmate with a mischievous grin and a constellation of freckles across his nose.
‘Stop thinking. I can hear you thinking,’ Luke mumbled against his mouth, and David kissed him back clumsily but fervently. Luke coaxed his mouth open and wound his fingers into the buttery hair at the nape of David’s neck.
Butter. David pushed at Luke’s chest, and tore his mouth away.
‘I, I have to take a shower,’ he muttered, and fled upstairs into the bathroom.