...and another.
This one was requested by ninamalfoy - it's my OTP (Thierry Henry/Robert Pirès) in an AU where they're not actually footballers but met anyway. NC-17. And somewhat sappy and not just a little clichéd, you've been warned. Also the longest one yet, coming in at just over 3500 words.
***
They met in the Galleries Lafayette one afternoon in November, just after Robert turned 27. He was shopping for a gift for his new girlfriend's birthday - he was on his lunch break and he's spent too long on the metro to get there from his firm's office just off Avenue Foch; he'd dropped his Carte Orange in the carriage on his way to the doors and missed his stop, had to backtrack and that took time that he didn't really have. Three clients and a video conference with the Tokyo office awaited him after lunch and he'd just had to nip out to buy a present for someone he'd only known for three weeks. He kept muttering to himself under his breath. His secretary was off sick with the flu or he wouldn't even have had this problem.
He'd been thinking jewellery, not cheap but not too expensive, definitely not a ring, maybe a bracelet for that elegant wrist of hers or a necklace or a brooch or… well, anything, as long as it didn't give the wrong impression. After all, that was how he'd ended up married the first time, just through a bizarre sort of jewellery misunderstanding. Fabien at the office had suggested lingerie but he didn't want to give her that impression either. Marie-Louise had said books but he wasn't sure that she'd ever read one in her life. So there he was at a jewellery counter in a department store with a nagging feeling that he should've just gone to another Cartier because really the Champs Élysées would've been closer and… it happened. Suddenly he was covered in almost a whole cup of particularly warm espresso.
He yelped and turned and looked up into a face he was sure was familiar, and that combined with the sting of hot coffee soaking through his overly expensive shirt made him frown.
"Sorry," the guy said, looking just as flustered as Robert felt. A glance down from his face revealed why: his otherwise bright white Nike t-shirt was soaked through just above the waist of his jeans and he was trying to hold it away from his skin to drip onto the already somewhat slippery floor. "There's a bathroom over there, I think. God, I'm sorry." He made a face that almost made Robert smile in spite of himself as they headed for the door. "All this because it's my girlfriend's birthday."
The coincidence piqued his interest but he didn't actually get to speak - the guy could've talked for France from what Robert could tell and they stood there by the sinks not long after, trying to wash coffee stains from their clothing without actually taking anything off. Robert dabbed ineffectually at his shirt with a damp paper towel while the chatty guy who still hadn't seemed to draw breath had adopted a more direct approach, untucking his shirt and leaving his stomach bare as he leant over to run the stain under the hot tap.
"Look, I'm sorry," Robert said eventually, interrupting him mid-flow. "You look very familiar."
The guy nodded and smiled a little wryly. "Thierry Henry," he said, holding out one hand then thinking better of it when he realised it had just come out from under the tap. He looked like he was going to say something else but in the end he just sighed and shook his head.
"You played football."
"Yes."
"For Monaco."
Thierry nodded, wringing out water from his irrevocably stained white t-shirt. If anything, he'd made it worse. "Yes, Monaco."
"That's not going to come out."
Thierry smiled faintly at that, probably because Robert had left that particular topic so abruptly. "No, it isn't. It's my fault, I should've been looking where I was going." He paused." Look, can I buy you a drink to make up for this? I have a café. It's… not close, but I swear I won't tip another coffee over you."
Robert paused for a second then just smiled a little wryly, raising his brows. "I don't think it could make much of a difference now if you did," he said, indicating his ruined shirt, and Thierry managed to look an amused sort of sheepish.
"Sorry," he said again, but Robert just shook his head.
"Don't mention it."
He called the office on the way to the metro, got a co-worker's secretary to cancel his afternoon's appointments due to an utterly fabricated case of extremely swift-onset 24-hour flu ostensibly caught from his own secretary. They talked all the way back to Thierry's café, about nothing and everything, about their respective girlfriends and their birthdays, about Thierry's little café-bar somewhere lost in the streets of the Marais, about Robert's fancy law firm and how this was the first afternoon off he'd taken in just over four years, since he'd gone to work there in Paris. He couldn't bring himself to feel guilty.
There wasn't even guilt over his girlfriend's birthday. He called and arranged a late dinner, called and arranged flowers to be sent to her office, then spent the afternoon and into the evening sitting at the bar in his stained shirt in Thierry's café, talking. He could've stayed all night. Thierry invited him. He hated that he had to say no.
***
It was lunch the next day when he saw him again; it turned out that Robert had left his briefcase by the bar and he went back for it, realising he would've gone back even without that good a reason. Thierry smiled over broadly as he walked in to the sound of the bell that dangled from the doorway. He went over and sat down. The first thing Thierry did was serve him a strong black coffee. The second was to slide a pair of tickets over in front of him, on the countertop.
"PSG at the Parc," he said. "Tonight. If you want to go."
"With you?" he asked, though the answer was perfectly obvious and he hated himself for asking.
"Yes, with me." Thierry smiled wryly. "My girlfriend dropped out."
Robert found himself nodding. He didn't really know why. He was supposed to be having dinner with his ex-wife and her new partner, and when he thought about it, the Coupe de France match at the Parc des Princes sounded infinitely preferable in a multitude of ways.
So they went and that was it, the two were barely apart from that night on. Robert has often thought it makes no sense, but he always decided that those things just don't have to.
He broke up with his girlfriend in the February of the following year; Thierry sat him down and made him pasta, and told him it wasn't exactly the end of the world since honestly, he hadn't liked her anyway. When Thierry said it, he was inclined to believe without question.
Thierry lost his café four months later, and his girlfriend with it. So Robert just bought the place outright, determined not to hear it when Thierry said he'd never be able to repay him because as far as he was concerned, he had already. Almost five hectic years in a busy law firm and he'd been beginning to lose what little joie de vivre he'd had left. Apparently all it had taken was an over-hot splash of coffee and a smile to bring it all flooding back.
Two months after that, two months of coffee and homemade meals and nights out watching the football, Thierry finally talked about Monaco. About the injury that ended his career so very prematurely. He didn't seem to mind so much that the ligament in his knee had never quite healed the way it should have, about the way it ached on the really cold days so badly he couldn't walk without a limp so pronounced he just couldn't hide it. What hurt was that he'd missed the World Cup by a whisker. He could've been there when they'd won and not in some American sports injury centre with his knee strapped up to twice its normal size. Robert didn't tell him until two weeks later that he'd been at the final. That he'd been there on the Champs Élysées and seen the sign they'd projected onto the Arc de Triomphe, merci, Zizou. Thierry didn't have to tell him that he'd known Zinedine Zidane himself.
A month. Two. Thierry's birthday - he turned 24 and Robert started to feel vaguely old. They went away for the weekend, not the first time they'd done so but the first time unrelated to football in some way - they'd spent a couple of midweeks in Barcelona and Madrid, one in Manchester, two weekends in Bordeaux and Marseilles. This time they tried Nice, by train, a hotel Thierry couldn't really afford and still insisted on paying for though Robert tried to say it was just his treat for his birthday. They lounged on the beach and kicked a ball around by the water, Thierry making fun of Robert's absurdly stripy shorts though his own weren't much better. They went out at night, dressed to impress, though in the end they just ended up walking down by the seafront, leaning against each other not just to keep their balance. They went and sat on the sand in the dark, not caring about the states their suits would be in, talking about the future in the sort of expansive terms that only the drunk or the young can take seriously. When Thierry said, nonchalant, that he couldn't imagine a future without him, that was the first time Robert was conscious that he wanted more than this with him. He wanted to kiss him. There was a moment, tense and charged, looking at each other, when he thought maybe he would, but that moment passed. They went back to their twin beds in their twin room and slept it off.
It was two months before anything actually happened, Robert's 28th birthday. They stayed in Paris - he was preparing a big case and working late, hadn't seen Thierry in a week or more and smarted for it. Thierry turned up, unannounced, had security bring him up to the sixth floor conference room where Robert was working; he waved security away and couldn't help but smile even as Thierry tried to say he hoped he wasn't interrupting - he was, of course, and meant to, but Robert really didn't care; it didn't matter that Thierry standing there in his jeans and trainers and scruffy combat-green parka looked sort of incongruous in the expensive wood-panelled office, or that suddenly his work and private life had met in such an unexpected way. He just closed his notebook and waved him over. Thierry perched on the table just to the side of where Robert was sitting and put a bag down next to him, gesturing at it.
"Happy birthday," he said, and smiled.
The gift was a tie with footballs on it, that made him roll his eyes good-naturedly. Thierry pulled an American-style muffin from another bag, stuck a candle in it and struck a match to light it.
"Make a wish," he said. So he did.
Thierry didn't stay for long after that, just long enough to wolf down half of the muffin and get crumbs all over the ridiculously shiny tabletop then try to arrange the new tie around Robert's neck. His fingers brushed his jaw as he tied it and Robert shivered; Thierry looked up. His gaze flickered down to Robert's mouth and from there it was inevitable. Thierry leaned in and pressed his mouth to his, his fingers still lingering at the novelty tie around his neck. Robert held his breath and couldn't move. Thierry left without saying a single word more.
Robert didn't go after him, at least not straight away. He reopened his notebook in a sort of stunned silence and worked for two more hours. He spent half an hour in the company library on the next floor up, reading the same three lines over and over before he gave up and tried to work some more. Then he left, stepped out into the rain and cursed under his breath before ploughing on, jogging to the metro station with his coat hitched up over his head. He dripped by the doors all the way across Paris and made a dash through the streets once he got there, huddling into himself by the door to Thierry's flat, ringing the bell as he realised it was almost 1am.
Thierry came down from the little flat above the café in sweats and an oversized dressing gown, not looking like he'd slept at all. He paused for a moment then tugged Robert inside by the lapels of his soaked coat and nudged the door shut with the outside of one foot.
"You're wet through," he said, frowning as he stated the obvious.
Robert nodded, realised it probably wasn't distinguishable from the way he was shivering, and said, "I know."
Then he kissed him, shaking, and not just from the cold.
***
They made love the next morning, when they were both quite sure Robert was in no danger from pneumonia. He woke, warm and content in a bed that wasn't his own, an arm lying heavily across his chest that shifted up to trace his prickly, unshaven jaw before Thierry kissed him good morning. He pulled him closer; Thierry didn't protest. From the way they pressed against each other, the way they touched, it was obvious that they both wanted the same thing.
They talked about it first, the lawyer in Robert wanting to get things straight between them before they went any further though he was the one that blushed at that conversation, definitely not Thierry. The fact was he'd never done this before, but somehow Thierry made it okay. The way he rubbed lightly at Robert's stomach as he moved in close and told him what he was going to do, lowly and in no uncertain terms, probably helped.
Robert was nervous. He couldn't lie still, not as Thierry looked down at him as he lay there naked in his bed and definitely not when he touched him. He was already hard by then, painfully, his cock lying flat to his stomach as Thierry brushed the back of his hand over it, curled his fingers around it, made Robert's hips jerk so Thierry laugher. Robert was just embarrassed by how much he wanted this, lying there with a death-grip on the sheets as Thierry's palms glided up over his thighs, parting them so he could kneel between. He was embarrassingly tense as Thierry took his hand and brought it to his cock, encouraging him to hold it, feel its weight and thickness before he'd feel it inside him. He couldn't see how it was going to fit, he admitted before he had a chance to rethink that particular statement, and Thierry just laughed and kissed him, then assured him that it would.
Lube wasn't an entirely new experience but there it was. Thierry's slick fingers brushed over the tight muscle between his cheeks and he gasped at it as Thierry's free hand stroked at his stomach, his thigh, as he told him to relax. He tried but it took time and Thierry seemed prepared to wait, working one finger inside him so slowly, bit by bit, giving him all the time he needed and more to adjust to the feeling. It was strange but not bad strange and he couldn't deny that he wanted more; it could have been ten minutes or more, Thierry's forefinger shifting and thrusting and twisting inside him, before he added a second and Robert tensed again, hard, embarrassed at his lack of self-control. Thierry didn't mind. He just took it slowly, inching his fingers into him with seemingly infinite patience, talking him through it in a low voice, his free hand stroking over his thighs and his stomach and his cock and his balls, every intimate place he could teach to show him he could trust him. He didn't. He couldn't not. He wanted him inside him.
Eventually, Thierry pulled back. He slicked himself and Robert watched, propping himself up on his forearms so he could see the way Thierry touched himself, knowing what was to come. Then Thierry moved forward and Robert dropped back; Thierry eased up Robert's knees, hitched one of them up further and then leaned in to kiss him quickly before pulling back with a smile. Logically, Robert knew he had nothing to fear, but then Thierry guided himself into position, the head of his cock pressing blunt and hot to the opening Robert was convinced was too tight. And he pressed forward.
It hurt a little but not a lot and only for a moment, as Thierry sank forward, pushing down into him. It was a tight fit, made both of them gasp, made Robert feel so full it defied belief and so turned on it made no sense at all. He looked up at Thierry, tried to fathom by what logic it felt so good to have him inside him and came up with nothing close to an answer because then Thierry moved. Just a little but enough to make Robert yelp at the sharp, curious pleasure of it.
It seemed to last forever. The pale winter morning light filtered in through the blinds so Robert could watch as Thierry moved, biting down at his full bottom lip to keep from moaning out loud. The pleasure of it struck him in waved, making him shiver even before he reached down between them to his own cock, stroking roughly. It wasn't perfect, their movements weren't exactly synchronised and sometimes the angles were off but that didn't seem to change the way it felt. And they didn't come together either, but by the time it happened it didn't seem to matter at all. Robert's muscled tingled and ached sort of pleasantly, so much he didn't care what a sticky mess they were left in after. Thierry flopped down beside him, kissing him quickly then tried to catch his breath.
"Well, there goes the friendship," Thierry said lightly, breathlessly, not meaning it at all.
Robert just chuckled. In the end, it just brought them closer.
***
About a month later, Thierry asked him to join his local football team. They played in a Sunday league that was still only in its third season, a league made up essentially of Parisian immigrants from all over the world. Thierry's parents were from Guadeloupe and Martinique and he played in a bizarre team of Senegalese and Moroccan café workers and street vendors with a second striker from Brazil. Robert went along one Wednesday after work, somewhat apprehensively, and they kicked the ball about for half an hour while their randomly-recruited gnarled old ex-history teacher of a coach tried to curtail their fun and get them to play as a team.
Robert fit right in somehow, even considering his occupation and his Paris 8 address. He went to the left wing and it felt good, like it always had; he played his first game with them a week later against a team of Czech waiters and they won 3-1, two goals from Thierry and one from their Brazilian whose name Robert couldn't pronounce correctly to save his life. He went back to Thierry's place after, still grinning from ear to ear with the win, and they shared a bottle of wine in the kitchen while Thierry cooked. And he finally admitted that once upon a time he'd played for the youth team of FC Metz. Thierry didn't seem surprised at all.
They ate an excellent chicken in white wine sauce from Thierry's chipped china on the sofa in front of the Champions League highlights. Robert rubbed at Thierry's knee when he mentioned that it ached with the cold. And he stayed the night. He'd been doing that a lot.
They moved in together six months later, in an apartment roughly halfway between Robert's old place and the café, a sort of compromise between the two of them. The kitchen was bigger than Robert thought anyone could ever need but Thierry loved it and there was room for all of Robert's large, heavy, work-related books in a room into which Thierry just didn't like to go. Robert started to come home on time, so he'd be there when Thierry got in half an hour later. He couldn't believe things were going so well.
Then a rumour spread at work. Robert Pirès, one of the guys up for partnership in the firm, was apparently gay, shacked up with a guy somewhere in Montmartre. All he could really find fault with in that was the fact they lived six streets south of the Seine and nowhere near Montmartre, but it pissed him off all the same. So he told them all that it was true. And when the annual company recognition dinner came around, he asked Thierry to go with him instead of the female friend that he'd planned.
He half expected to be fired, had a discrimination suit planned in his head. He was made a partner by the time he was thirty. Thierry's never brought him anything but luck.
***
Thierry bought a restaurant last year, a small but elegant place not far from their apartment in the 6ème where he sells good food fairly cheaply. Robert was handed the firm's second biggest account and a pay rise that he didn't really need. They spent the summer watching France's campaign at the Germany World Cup and topped their own league last season. Thierry's mother can't stop sending Robert batched of weird little cakes that seem to taste like nothing else in the world because she's convinced he's too thin from working. They're spending Christmas in Reims.
He looks up from a copy of France Football as the apartment door opens; Thierry comes in with a bag full of leftover fruit from the restaurant and a smile on his face that Robert can't help but return. He tosses him a piece of fruit that Robert bites into as Thierry leaves the bag in the kitchen and pulls off his big winter coat; when he joins him on the couch, the kiss tastes sweet with apple.
***
***
They met in the Galleries Lafayette one afternoon in November, just after Robert turned 27. He was shopping for a gift for his new girlfriend's birthday - he was on his lunch break and he's spent too long on the metro to get there from his firm's office just off Avenue Foch; he'd dropped his Carte Orange in the carriage on his way to the doors and missed his stop, had to backtrack and that took time that he didn't really have. Three clients and a video conference with the Tokyo office awaited him after lunch and he'd just had to nip out to buy a present for someone he'd only known for three weeks. He kept muttering to himself under his breath. His secretary was off sick with the flu or he wouldn't even have had this problem.
He'd been thinking jewellery, not cheap but not too expensive, definitely not a ring, maybe a bracelet for that elegant wrist of hers or a necklace or a brooch or… well, anything, as long as it didn't give the wrong impression. After all, that was how he'd ended up married the first time, just through a bizarre sort of jewellery misunderstanding. Fabien at the office had suggested lingerie but he didn't want to give her that impression either. Marie-Louise had said books but he wasn't sure that she'd ever read one in her life. So there he was at a jewellery counter in a department store with a nagging feeling that he should've just gone to another Cartier because really the Champs Élysées would've been closer and… it happened. Suddenly he was covered in almost a whole cup of particularly warm espresso.
He yelped and turned and looked up into a face he was sure was familiar, and that combined with the sting of hot coffee soaking through his overly expensive shirt made him frown.
"Sorry," the guy said, looking just as flustered as Robert felt. A glance down from his face revealed why: his otherwise bright white Nike t-shirt was soaked through just above the waist of his jeans and he was trying to hold it away from his skin to drip onto the already somewhat slippery floor. "There's a bathroom over there, I think. God, I'm sorry." He made a face that almost made Robert smile in spite of himself as they headed for the door. "All this because it's my girlfriend's birthday."
The coincidence piqued his interest but he didn't actually get to speak - the guy could've talked for France from what Robert could tell and they stood there by the sinks not long after, trying to wash coffee stains from their clothing without actually taking anything off. Robert dabbed ineffectually at his shirt with a damp paper towel while the chatty guy who still hadn't seemed to draw breath had adopted a more direct approach, untucking his shirt and leaving his stomach bare as he leant over to run the stain under the hot tap.
"Look, I'm sorry," Robert said eventually, interrupting him mid-flow. "You look very familiar."
The guy nodded and smiled a little wryly. "Thierry Henry," he said, holding out one hand then thinking better of it when he realised it had just come out from under the tap. He looked like he was going to say something else but in the end he just sighed and shook his head.
"You played football."
"Yes."
"For Monaco."
Thierry nodded, wringing out water from his irrevocably stained white t-shirt. If anything, he'd made it worse. "Yes, Monaco."
"That's not going to come out."
Thierry smiled faintly at that, probably because Robert had left that particular topic so abruptly. "No, it isn't. It's my fault, I should've been looking where I was going." He paused." Look, can I buy you a drink to make up for this? I have a café. It's… not close, but I swear I won't tip another coffee over you."
Robert paused for a second then just smiled a little wryly, raising his brows. "I don't think it could make much of a difference now if you did," he said, indicating his ruined shirt, and Thierry managed to look an amused sort of sheepish.
"Sorry," he said again, but Robert just shook his head.
"Don't mention it."
He called the office on the way to the metro, got a co-worker's secretary to cancel his afternoon's appointments due to an utterly fabricated case of extremely swift-onset 24-hour flu ostensibly caught from his own secretary. They talked all the way back to Thierry's café, about nothing and everything, about their respective girlfriends and their birthdays, about Thierry's little café-bar somewhere lost in the streets of the Marais, about Robert's fancy law firm and how this was the first afternoon off he'd taken in just over four years, since he'd gone to work there in Paris. He couldn't bring himself to feel guilty.
There wasn't even guilt over his girlfriend's birthday. He called and arranged a late dinner, called and arranged flowers to be sent to her office, then spent the afternoon and into the evening sitting at the bar in his stained shirt in Thierry's café, talking. He could've stayed all night. Thierry invited him. He hated that he had to say no.
***
It was lunch the next day when he saw him again; it turned out that Robert had left his briefcase by the bar and he went back for it, realising he would've gone back even without that good a reason. Thierry smiled over broadly as he walked in to the sound of the bell that dangled from the doorway. He went over and sat down. The first thing Thierry did was serve him a strong black coffee. The second was to slide a pair of tickets over in front of him, on the countertop.
"PSG at the Parc," he said. "Tonight. If you want to go."
"With you?" he asked, though the answer was perfectly obvious and he hated himself for asking.
"Yes, with me." Thierry smiled wryly. "My girlfriend dropped out."
Robert found himself nodding. He didn't really know why. He was supposed to be having dinner with his ex-wife and her new partner, and when he thought about it, the Coupe de France match at the Parc des Princes sounded infinitely preferable in a multitude of ways.
So they went and that was it, the two were barely apart from that night on. Robert has often thought it makes no sense, but he always decided that those things just don't have to.
He broke up with his girlfriend in the February of the following year; Thierry sat him down and made him pasta, and told him it wasn't exactly the end of the world since honestly, he hadn't liked her anyway. When Thierry said it, he was inclined to believe without question.
Thierry lost his café four months later, and his girlfriend with it. So Robert just bought the place outright, determined not to hear it when Thierry said he'd never be able to repay him because as far as he was concerned, he had already. Almost five hectic years in a busy law firm and he'd been beginning to lose what little joie de vivre he'd had left. Apparently all it had taken was an over-hot splash of coffee and a smile to bring it all flooding back.
Two months after that, two months of coffee and homemade meals and nights out watching the football, Thierry finally talked about Monaco. About the injury that ended his career so very prematurely. He didn't seem to mind so much that the ligament in his knee had never quite healed the way it should have, about the way it ached on the really cold days so badly he couldn't walk without a limp so pronounced he just couldn't hide it. What hurt was that he'd missed the World Cup by a whisker. He could've been there when they'd won and not in some American sports injury centre with his knee strapped up to twice its normal size. Robert didn't tell him until two weeks later that he'd been at the final. That he'd been there on the Champs Élysées and seen the sign they'd projected onto the Arc de Triomphe, merci, Zizou. Thierry didn't have to tell him that he'd known Zinedine Zidane himself.
A month. Two. Thierry's birthday - he turned 24 and Robert started to feel vaguely old. They went away for the weekend, not the first time they'd done so but the first time unrelated to football in some way - they'd spent a couple of midweeks in Barcelona and Madrid, one in Manchester, two weekends in Bordeaux and Marseilles. This time they tried Nice, by train, a hotel Thierry couldn't really afford and still insisted on paying for though Robert tried to say it was just his treat for his birthday. They lounged on the beach and kicked a ball around by the water, Thierry making fun of Robert's absurdly stripy shorts though his own weren't much better. They went out at night, dressed to impress, though in the end they just ended up walking down by the seafront, leaning against each other not just to keep their balance. They went and sat on the sand in the dark, not caring about the states their suits would be in, talking about the future in the sort of expansive terms that only the drunk or the young can take seriously. When Thierry said, nonchalant, that he couldn't imagine a future without him, that was the first time Robert was conscious that he wanted more than this with him. He wanted to kiss him. There was a moment, tense and charged, looking at each other, when he thought maybe he would, but that moment passed. They went back to their twin beds in their twin room and slept it off.
It was two months before anything actually happened, Robert's 28th birthday. They stayed in Paris - he was preparing a big case and working late, hadn't seen Thierry in a week or more and smarted for it. Thierry turned up, unannounced, had security bring him up to the sixth floor conference room where Robert was working; he waved security away and couldn't help but smile even as Thierry tried to say he hoped he wasn't interrupting - he was, of course, and meant to, but Robert really didn't care; it didn't matter that Thierry standing there in his jeans and trainers and scruffy combat-green parka looked sort of incongruous in the expensive wood-panelled office, or that suddenly his work and private life had met in such an unexpected way. He just closed his notebook and waved him over. Thierry perched on the table just to the side of where Robert was sitting and put a bag down next to him, gesturing at it.
"Happy birthday," he said, and smiled.
The gift was a tie with footballs on it, that made him roll his eyes good-naturedly. Thierry pulled an American-style muffin from another bag, stuck a candle in it and struck a match to light it.
"Make a wish," he said. So he did.
Thierry didn't stay for long after that, just long enough to wolf down half of the muffin and get crumbs all over the ridiculously shiny tabletop then try to arrange the new tie around Robert's neck. His fingers brushed his jaw as he tied it and Robert shivered; Thierry looked up. His gaze flickered down to Robert's mouth and from there it was inevitable. Thierry leaned in and pressed his mouth to his, his fingers still lingering at the novelty tie around his neck. Robert held his breath and couldn't move. Thierry left without saying a single word more.
Robert didn't go after him, at least not straight away. He reopened his notebook in a sort of stunned silence and worked for two more hours. He spent half an hour in the company library on the next floor up, reading the same three lines over and over before he gave up and tried to work some more. Then he left, stepped out into the rain and cursed under his breath before ploughing on, jogging to the metro station with his coat hitched up over his head. He dripped by the doors all the way across Paris and made a dash through the streets once he got there, huddling into himself by the door to Thierry's flat, ringing the bell as he realised it was almost 1am.
Thierry came down from the little flat above the café in sweats and an oversized dressing gown, not looking like he'd slept at all. He paused for a moment then tugged Robert inside by the lapels of his soaked coat and nudged the door shut with the outside of one foot.
"You're wet through," he said, frowning as he stated the obvious.
Robert nodded, realised it probably wasn't distinguishable from the way he was shivering, and said, "I know."
Then he kissed him, shaking, and not just from the cold.
***
They made love the next morning, when they were both quite sure Robert was in no danger from pneumonia. He woke, warm and content in a bed that wasn't his own, an arm lying heavily across his chest that shifted up to trace his prickly, unshaven jaw before Thierry kissed him good morning. He pulled him closer; Thierry didn't protest. From the way they pressed against each other, the way they touched, it was obvious that they both wanted the same thing.
They talked about it first, the lawyer in Robert wanting to get things straight between them before they went any further though he was the one that blushed at that conversation, definitely not Thierry. The fact was he'd never done this before, but somehow Thierry made it okay. The way he rubbed lightly at Robert's stomach as he moved in close and told him what he was going to do, lowly and in no uncertain terms, probably helped.
Robert was nervous. He couldn't lie still, not as Thierry looked down at him as he lay there naked in his bed and definitely not when he touched him. He was already hard by then, painfully, his cock lying flat to his stomach as Thierry brushed the back of his hand over it, curled his fingers around it, made Robert's hips jerk so Thierry laugher. Robert was just embarrassed by how much he wanted this, lying there with a death-grip on the sheets as Thierry's palms glided up over his thighs, parting them so he could kneel between. He was embarrassingly tense as Thierry took his hand and brought it to his cock, encouraging him to hold it, feel its weight and thickness before he'd feel it inside him. He couldn't see how it was going to fit, he admitted before he had a chance to rethink that particular statement, and Thierry just laughed and kissed him, then assured him that it would.
Lube wasn't an entirely new experience but there it was. Thierry's slick fingers brushed over the tight muscle between his cheeks and he gasped at it as Thierry's free hand stroked at his stomach, his thigh, as he told him to relax. He tried but it took time and Thierry seemed prepared to wait, working one finger inside him so slowly, bit by bit, giving him all the time he needed and more to adjust to the feeling. It was strange but not bad strange and he couldn't deny that he wanted more; it could have been ten minutes or more, Thierry's forefinger shifting and thrusting and twisting inside him, before he added a second and Robert tensed again, hard, embarrassed at his lack of self-control. Thierry didn't mind. He just took it slowly, inching his fingers into him with seemingly infinite patience, talking him through it in a low voice, his free hand stroking over his thighs and his stomach and his cock and his balls, every intimate place he could teach to show him he could trust him. He didn't. He couldn't not. He wanted him inside him.
Eventually, Thierry pulled back. He slicked himself and Robert watched, propping himself up on his forearms so he could see the way Thierry touched himself, knowing what was to come. Then Thierry moved forward and Robert dropped back; Thierry eased up Robert's knees, hitched one of them up further and then leaned in to kiss him quickly before pulling back with a smile. Logically, Robert knew he had nothing to fear, but then Thierry guided himself into position, the head of his cock pressing blunt and hot to the opening Robert was convinced was too tight. And he pressed forward.
It hurt a little but not a lot and only for a moment, as Thierry sank forward, pushing down into him. It was a tight fit, made both of them gasp, made Robert feel so full it defied belief and so turned on it made no sense at all. He looked up at Thierry, tried to fathom by what logic it felt so good to have him inside him and came up with nothing close to an answer because then Thierry moved. Just a little but enough to make Robert yelp at the sharp, curious pleasure of it.
It seemed to last forever. The pale winter morning light filtered in through the blinds so Robert could watch as Thierry moved, biting down at his full bottom lip to keep from moaning out loud. The pleasure of it struck him in waved, making him shiver even before he reached down between them to his own cock, stroking roughly. It wasn't perfect, their movements weren't exactly synchronised and sometimes the angles were off but that didn't seem to change the way it felt. And they didn't come together either, but by the time it happened it didn't seem to matter at all. Robert's muscled tingled and ached sort of pleasantly, so much he didn't care what a sticky mess they were left in after. Thierry flopped down beside him, kissing him quickly then tried to catch his breath.
"Well, there goes the friendship," Thierry said lightly, breathlessly, not meaning it at all.
Robert just chuckled. In the end, it just brought them closer.
***
About a month later, Thierry asked him to join his local football team. They played in a Sunday league that was still only in its third season, a league made up essentially of Parisian immigrants from all over the world. Thierry's parents were from Guadeloupe and Martinique and he played in a bizarre team of Senegalese and Moroccan café workers and street vendors with a second striker from Brazil. Robert went along one Wednesday after work, somewhat apprehensively, and they kicked the ball about for half an hour while their randomly-recruited gnarled old ex-history teacher of a coach tried to curtail their fun and get them to play as a team.
Robert fit right in somehow, even considering his occupation and his Paris 8 address. He went to the left wing and it felt good, like it always had; he played his first game with them a week later against a team of Czech waiters and they won 3-1, two goals from Thierry and one from their Brazilian whose name Robert couldn't pronounce correctly to save his life. He went back to Thierry's place after, still grinning from ear to ear with the win, and they shared a bottle of wine in the kitchen while Thierry cooked. And he finally admitted that once upon a time he'd played for the youth team of FC Metz. Thierry didn't seem surprised at all.
They ate an excellent chicken in white wine sauce from Thierry's chipped china on the sofa in front of the Champions League highlights. Robert rubbed at Thierry's knee when he mentioned that it ached with the cold. And he stayed the night. He'd been doing that a lot.
They moved in together six months later, in an apartment roughly halfway between Robert's old place and the café, a sort of compromise between the two of them. The kitchen was bigger than Robert thought anyone could ever need but Thierry loved it and there was room for all of Robert's large, heavy, work-related books in a room into which Thierry just didn't like to go. Robert started to come home on time, so he'd be there when Thierry got in half an hour later. He couldn't believe things were going so well.
Then a rumour spread at work. Robert Pirès, one of the guys up for partnership in the firm, was apparently gay, shacked up with a guy somewhere in Montmartre. All he could really find fault with in that was the fact they lived six streets south of the Seine and nowhere near Montmartre, but it pissed him off all the same. So he told them all that it was true. And when the annual company recognition dinner came around, he asked Thierry to go with him instead of the female friend that he'd planned.
He half expected to be fired, had a discrimination suit planned in his head. He was made a partner by the time he was thirty. Thierry's never brought him anything but luck.
***
Thierry bought a restaurant last year, a small but elegant place not far from their apartment in the 6ème where he sells good food fairly cheaply. Robert was handed the firm's second biggest account and a pay rise that he didn't really need. They spent the summer watching France's campaign at the Germany World Cup and topped their own league last season. Thierry's mother can't stop sending Robert batched of weird little cakes that seem to taste like nothing else in the world because she's convinced he's too thin from working. They're spending Christmas in Reims.
He looks up from a copy of France Football as the apartment door opens; Thierry comes in with a bag full of leftover fruit from the restaurant and a smile on his face that Robert can't help but return. He tosses him a piece of fruit that Robert bites into as Thierry leaves the bag in the kitchen and pulls off his big winter coat; when he joins him on the couch, the kiss tastes sweet with apple.
***