(no subject)
3: to make a friend
72° East
They pass through Margoa and on. It feels like they’ve been on the train forever, but at least it’s air-conditioned and Nate sits with one foot hooked between Brad’s ankles. Opposite him, Brad’s sleeping. He reads a battered copy of Herodotus. With a stub of pencil, he underlines circumstances rules men; men do not rule circumstances. With his knee resting against Brad’s, it’s never felt truer.
In the sultry heat, Brad’s stripped down to cargo shorts and a wife-beater. On his leg, there’s a tattoo of a fat bird, wings spread. On his bicep, there’s the words ‘Semper Fidelis’. Nate leans forward, reaches out and brushes it with his fingers.
“I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” he says, thumb pressed against the warmth of Brad’s skin. Brad pushes his Oakleys up onto the top of his head and opens his eyes. He leans his head against the seat and looks at Nate for a long moment. The expression in his pale eyes is unreadable but soft; a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.
“What would you get?” he asks.
Nate’s actually known the answer to this question for a while. In the corner of the compartment, there’s a kid with his head nodding, hat pulled low, headphones firmly in place.
“Look,” says Nate, pointing him out. He waits until Brad’s following his eye-line. “I read a book once that said that the only reason that people wear headphones is so they don’t miss having conversations. We’re fucking terrified of being on our own in the world.” He shrugs.
It’s like a perfect metaphor for their time together so far.
He idly sketches it on a blank page in the back of his book as they roll onwards. The headphones, the wire to coil around his bicep and the words written in strong, neat capitals. No chance of them being misread.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
*
They fuck in a rickety bed that rocks and hits the wall with every thrust, every rock of his hips. Nate pushes his fingers into Brad’s hair and tugs, turns his head and sucks up a mark just under his jaw. Brad moans and he feels the way that Brad’s hips jerk forward. Nate’s heel digs into the back of Brad’s thigh hard enough to bruise. His back arches and his fingers press into Brad’s broad shoulders and he moans loud enough that he knows that they have to be able to hear it in the hallway, maybe in the small walled garden too. He doesn’t give a shit. He can’t care. He only feels like this while he’s fucking Brad, feels on the edge of something that he doesn’t quite comprehend. He feels a laugh trying to bubble its way past his lips.
Coming, he presses a kiss against that bruise on Brad’s jaw.
Clinging, he’s so dazed that he barely registers when Brad turns his head away and doesn’t kiss him back.
Afterwards, Brad stands at the mirror and examines, probing. He frowns.
“Why would you do that?” he asks.
Lying naked in tangled sheets, Nate feels strange and loose, dizzy and un-rooted in the thickness of the heat. There’s come and sweat drying on his skin and he feels beautiful and flying apart, all at once.
He lifts his head and looks at the bruise on Brad’s jaw, feels a twinge, a memory of excitement, in his belly.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he asks. “If we’re together, we’re together, and you don’t give a shit. If we’re not…” He lets his head fall back against the pillow and closes his eyes rather than look at Brad through the open door. “Well, then, there’s no fucking point, is there, Brad?”
And Brad had sounded like he was enjoying it at the time.
“It’s something kids do,” says Brad, still studying the bruise in the mirror. “Kids mark each other up to show the whole wide world that somebody fucking wants them.”
And then he goes to take a shower.
A tiny bit at a time, Nate feels less beautiful.
He rolls out of bed without looking at Brad, tugs on jeans with no underwear, a t-shirt without showering first. He pushes his fingers back through his hair and snags his wallet, his watch. He deliberately leaves his cell-phone half tucked under the pillow. He sits on the edge of the bed to tug on his sneakers.
He leaves without another word. He brings Herodotus with him.
*
At first, he doesn’t want to look but then he finds that he can’t look away. He finds the way that blood and ink smears fascinating. The sensation is weird, a scratch and then a bone deep ache, somehow both more or less more painful that he was expecting it to be.
His heart races. There’s a pulsing throb in the pit of his belly and, linked, there’s the image of Brad’s body above him in the bed, the long lines of Brad’s muscles, the flicker of a smile in the corner of his mouth when he moaned.
And Nate doesn’t want to think about him. There’s an embarrassed blush in his cheeks just remembering the way Brad spoke to him.
He focuses on the tattooist instead. He introduced himself as Ray. He’s lithe and rangy, tight muscles in his bare arms and dark hair slicked back to leave the lines of his face spare and beautiful. In a black wife-beater, his tattoos are obviously, tightly muscled arms spangled with jewel-like colours. A wrist full of black rubber bangles. A silver Hamsa pendant. Latex gloves. He swabs the half-done tattoo, takes a good look at his work and shifts his weight on his stool. He flashes a nervous-energy grin.
“Cool design, man,” he says. “It’s going to look fucking great.”
Nate grins.
“I always wanted one.”
“You’ll never stop at one, Homes,” says Ray, needle buzzing as he leans in again. “They’re worse than Junk.”
There’s a Buddha tattooed on Ray’s right shoulder, fat and happy. Even though she’s Catholic, Nate’s mom has one in the kitchen. Nate remembers doing homework for AP English at the counter, watching her reach out and rub its little round belly before she slid bread dough into the oven.
Without thinking about it, he reaches out and grazes the tips of his fingers against Ray’s smooth tan skin.
When the tattoo is done, Ray tapes Saran Wrap into place, Nate stands at the counter, aware of the fine tremble in his hands as he watches Ray handwrite a receipt on carbon paper. He wraps it around a tube of cream and secures it with an elastic band.
“How long’re you in Goa?” asks Ray, leaning his weight back against the counter, making the muscles in his arms stand out and Nate is distracted by how much he wants his mouth on the lines of Ray’s tattoos. He wants to know if Ray tastes of sweat or something else and he could blame it on Brad, on how careless and cool he can be, but, really, he thinks it’s because Ray’s tattoos are beautiful but not as beautiful as his dark eyes and, when he smiles, his whole face changes.
“I don’t know,” he says, honest. “I could just be passing through.”
“Well,” says Ray, turning to rummage through a sheaf of papers behind the counter. “If you manage to last the night, Homes, you should definitely think about coming by.”
He holds the flyer out to Nate.
It’s a Full Moon Party, naming a beach that Nate thinks isn’t too far away.
It might feel good to be out of his head for a while, to dance and feel his feet sinking into the wet, warm sand.
“Are you going to be there?” he asks, feeling redundant because of course Ray’s going to be there. Of course he is. Because Nate’s old enough and he’s been wanted often enough that he can recognise that look in somebody else’s face.
“Fuck yes, I’ll be there,” says Ray and, when Nate actually takes the flyer, their fingers brush and he feels an answering throb in his cock.
*
The music has a pulse, a fucking heartbeat and his head is spinning, his arms up over his head, his fingers flexing for the sky. The thin stuff of his t-shirt is stuck across his chest and shoulders, his hair pushed back. He grazes shoulders and elbows. He can’t remember the last time he saw Brad in the press. His heels sink into the damp sand and he dances and he dances and, overhead, the moon is heavy and full.
Somebody takes hold of him by the hips and it’s a moment before they press in close against his back.
Without even looking, he knows that it’s not Brad. This body is smaller, skinnier, hotter and closer and the hands on his hips waste no time in slipping under his t-shirt, fingertips grazing against his bare belly. He reaches back with one hand, touches longer hair swept back, shaved down to a bristle behind the delicate curl of an ear.
“Ray,” he says, and the music’s still throbbing, still pulsing, and Ray’s hips moves to it and he pulls Nate with him when he goes.
“Told you I’d be here,” says Ray, his chin against Nate’s shoulder as they sway and Nate finds himself swaying. Maybe it’s the pills in his system or the alcohol or the moon, left over adrenaline from the tattooing or the fact that he’s hear, he’s fucking here, on a beach in Goa and this was never supposed to be his life.
But here he is.
It’s not quite dancing, what they’re doing. They move in time. Nate pulls away but only enough to turn. Ray’s tattoos are showing through the slashed, ragged fabric of his t-shirt. His skin is tan and smooth. Nate curls his arms around Ray’s neck, holding him close and one of Ray’s hands stays on his hip but the other pushes upwards, under the sweaty layer of his shirt, following the line of his spine.
“What did you take?” asks Ray, and Nate can’t quite remember but it was small and white and it filled his blood with sparks. He doesn’t answer; he can’t answer. He sways in and kisses Ray, off-centre and sloppy but Ray turns his head and it instantly becomes surer, truer, the kind of kiss that he’s wanted with Brad but hasn’t ever had because anything he wants always gets lost in the noise of his heart the minute that Brad comes near.
With Ray, somehow, he can hear himself think.
And what he’s thinking is things like now and yes I will Yes.
They’re still kissing and Ray’s thigh is pressing forward between his and, somehow, they’re still dancing. Nate’s so happy that he feels like he can’t breathe.
“I’m done,” he mumbles, so close that his mouth still smudges against Ray’s. Sharing breath.
Ray pulls back far enough to look him in the face, puzzled, both eyebrows raised, dark eyes quizzical but good humoured too.
“You’re done? I mean, shit, Homes, consent can be withdrawn at any time, but I was kind of hoping, you know?”
Nate laughs, low and breathless, and shakes his head.
“I’m done with dancing,” he says.
Ray leans in and steals another kiss, this one softer and slower, and he nudges forward with his hips. Nate’s smiling, his heart shooting off light in every direction and it’s got nothing to do with love but everything to do with being wanted without reservation.
Ray’s palm grazes against the back of Nate’s hand and their fingers thread together.
*
Ray’s place isn’t much to write home about: four walls, a shabby makeshift kitchen, a rumpled bed. Ray strips out of his shirt as soon as he’s through the door, drops it on the floor and leaves it in a heap, sweat-damp and unnecessary. He’s skinny and lithe, decorated with stark lines across arms and chest and jutting hip-bones. He’s fucking beautiful, but in a very different way to Brad. Nate traces his fingers against his still-healing tattoo. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s sensitive enough to make his breath catch.
“Do you want anything?” asks Ray, reaching out and touching his hip with one hand. “You want a drink.”
“No,” says Nate. He doesn’t want a drink. He turns to Ray and catches him with one hand by the back of his neck, pulling him in for the kind of kiss he wants to give Brad, wishes he’d given Brad, open mouthed and hungry, a little sloppy, off-centre but true.
He can’t help it. Brad is in his head and there are points of comparison here. Ray is skinnier than Brad but harder, no give in the muscles of his arms and chest. He tastes of weed and Indian beer. He kisses Nate like he’s trying to climb inside him, like he’s trying to dig through him to find something potentially new and exciting.
Nate desperately wants to be something new and exciting to somebody, anybody. He finds himself dying to be reborn.
And this is just sex, not something spiritual and important, but Ray is beautiful and, in this moment, Nate feels beautiful too.
Together, they fumble his shirt up over his head. His ass hits the rickety table and Ray’s grasping his thigh to bring it up higher and he’s pushing at Nate’s combats, getting the button undone. He didn’t wear underwear; his dick is swelling and ready. He feels light headed and stupid-happy, grinning all over his face as he palms Ray’s jaw one-handed and pulls him into a kiss. Ray’s got his fingers curled around Nate’s dick, jerking him off hard and quick, practised and deft. Nate catches his wrist with his free hand and squeezes.
“Not like this,” he says.
Ray’s grinning just as wide as Nate is, when he turns his head and catches the heel of Nate’s hand with a kiss.
“When was the last time you got fucked, Nate?”
But Nate just shakes his head; there’s no point of comparison here; this has nothing to do with Brad Colbert at all.
Now, they move with quiet purpose born of mutual agreement. Nate shucks his pants but stays on the table. Ray moves away but only for long enough to get out of his cut offs and come back with a tube of Astroglide in one hand and a condom between his teeth. Nate feels a flicker of nervousness. He’d never been a monk at Harvard, not close, but he had fucked people he’d gone on dates with, kissed with cautious care and eased himself backwards on a bed. On the table, he leans his back against the wall, knees up and legs spread. Ray leans with fingers already slick, one pressing against Nate’s asshole.
His breath catches.
He sucks on Ray’s bottom lip.
Ray fucks him with one finger and looks into his face the whole time. Nate feels flustered and young, finds he’s looking at Ray’s mouth, his tattoos, the line of his neck and, only finally, only when his hips are already squirming against the table top, does he manage to actually look Ray in the eye.
The corner of Ray’s mouth quirks.
“Hey,” he says, and eases a second finger inside.
The drugs in his system make him feel light and easy, make him feel like his skin is bleeding light. He’s ready, he’s so ready. He bites his lip against a whimper. He says something that he thinks sounds like please.
By the time Ray pushes into him, Nate feels like his whole body is painted in lines of light. His hips jerk. He squirms. He arches. He holds onto Ray with two hard hands.
"Oh fuck," he mumbles. "Oh, fuck me. C'mon. Fuck me. Please."
More than anything, he wants Ray to fuck his brains out.
He wants to feel anything but whole.
*
>> part 4