Tea, page 13
In the end, he’d gone for his nicest jeans, a well-fitted, plain white T-shirt with long sleeves to hide most of the ink, and a decent jacket thrown over the top. There was nothing he could do about his neck tattoo, not in a restaurant serving hot food, but at least it was reasonably inoffensive. Just some mountains. Who could get upset by some mountains?
“You look great,” Nora had said before shooing him out of the door so she could claim the flat for her and Raj. “You are definitely going back to his place for the night. So, go and knock ’em dead.”
John felt more like dropping dead, rather than knocking anybody else dead.
But the car clock hit five to, and he forced himself out.
The restaurant was decently busy, but he caught sight of Chris’s curls immediately. He was sitting with two black girls and a white girl with sandy fair hair and wearing a band T-shirt. Swallowing his nerves, John waved away the waiter and strode over—only for Gina, when he got within about twenty feet, to suddenly spot him.
“Oh my God,” she said and beamed. “Chris, I thought you were joking!”
John coughed awkwardly.
“About what?” Chris asked.
“That your new boyfriend was this guy! Hi.” She stuck a hand up to shake his. “I’m Gina. I saw you at Whirlow Hall Farm, didn’t I? I thought Chris was kidding that you were a serious thing though!”
John’s enormous paw completely enveloped her hand. “John, and, uh, no. He’s not kidding.”
She beamed as though he’d announced his intention to propose.
“Excuse me. Priorities,” Chris said tartly and tapped his cheek.
John laughed, a sliver of relief making itself known, and stooped to kiss him. He went for the mouth, obviously, and caught Chris in a long, slow kiss that gave his usually blank eyes a sexy glazed look.
“Hi.”
“Um. Hi,” Chris murmured back.
John pulled out the last chair and sat down.
And finally looked at these friends.
Gina looked nothing like the wellie-wearing girl from the farm fair. She was dressed to impress for the occasion: her hair formed a perfect halo around her head in an Afro; her earrings glittered in the bright light. She was enormously pretty, and the transfixed look from the girl at her side distinctly mapped out that relationship. That girl turned out to be Jemma. From the slightly blank introduction, John guessed she was as new to this tradition as he was.
The sandy-haired girl turned out, in fact, to be Luke. John immediately grasped why he and Chris were gym buddies. Luke didn’t pass whatsoever, but his handshake was firm, and he instantly homed in on the neck tattoo, showing off a mountainscape in dotwork on his own upper arm. He was friendly enough, and John relaxed a little as Luke asked after bodybuilding tips, and Chris—apparently wholly uninterested in the conversation—casually slid an arm through John’s, wound their fingers together, rested his head on John’s shoulder, and talked to the girls about a TV show.
This…this was fine.
It was…nice, even. It had been a long time—a very long time—since John had gone to dinner with friends and a boyfriend at the same time. But Chris’s friends had either been forewarned or genuinely didn’t care about this far older, back-end-of-a-bus ugly bloke that their mate had started sleeping with. Luke wanted to talk ink and gyms, and John figured they’d probably get along all right. Jemma was absorbed in her seemingly new girlfriend, so not in the least bit interested, and Gina even seemed to think he was a catch. Her amazement was apparently rooted in her bad gaydar; she’d taken him for closeted and had been insisting it wouldn’t last. But his presence at their tradition seemed to have changed her mind, and she gawped at him like it was the first time they’d met.
“Talk about tall,” she said, more than once. “Chris, I think it’s incredible you can even walk.”
John felt himself going red then, which led her to decide he was shy, and therefore sweet.
And it felt—
Good.
Their approval—perhaps not as clear as approval, but their acceptance, or tolerance at the very least—was warming. They hadn’t given Chris, or each other, those urgent looks of, oh my God, is this for real? that John had come to fear. They hadn’t started those awful interrogations of what he did, what he saw in Chris, what his history was. They just smiled, and talked about normal stuff, and acted like he was part of the group. He even dared to filch what Chris didn’t want to finish off his plate, and when they made fun of how much he ate, it didn’t feel cruel or judgemental. He found himself laughing instead.
It was fine.
Jesus, had it really always been this easy?
Perhaps if Chris’s family disapproved, John could use this moment, and these people, to buy himself more time. Maybe if he hung out with Chris’s friends more often, then he could lean on their approval a little to help prove to Chris’s parents he wasn’t—
He choked off the thought.
He wasn’t.
Christ, what was he trying so desperately to prove? He knew full well he wasn’t dangerous. And Chris did too. He’d even inadvertently proved it, by his mistake the other morning.
John told himself to relax and tuned back into the conversation.
They stayed quite late. The girls left first, but Chris and Luke wanted to talk about some idiot personal trainer at the gym who Luke couldn’t stand, so it was gone ten o’clock before Luke waved for the bill, and John casually batted Chris’s hand away from his jacket pocket.
“I’ve got this,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
Chris’s fingers tightened a little on his wrist.
“You can get breakfast on Boxing Day,” John said, and the grip relaxed.
It came back, though, when Luke had gone and they were walking to the car, Chris’s arm tucked into John’s elbow. When the car beeped and unlocked, Chris stopped dead, and his cold fingers rose to find John’s face.
The kiss that followed them was sweet from a nonalcoholic cocktail and tingled lightly from the remnants of a spice John didn’t know.
“Thank you?”
“See?” Chris murmured, beaming brightly. “Wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It…was actually okay.”
“They liked you.”
John bit his lip a little, trying to hide the smile. “Good?”
“Wouldn’t matter if they didn’t.”
“No?”
“Nope. I don’t think you’ve figured that part out yet.”
“What part?”
“The part where I’m a snotty little shit, and I don’t do as I’m told.”
John laughed. “Jesus.”
“I don’t care what other people think you are, John. I care what I think you are. And so far, I think you’re a sweet, sexy son of a bitch.”
John cupped the back of his neck and leaned down to kiss him.
Without Chris stretching up, the kiss was oddly a little more open. The angle made his jaw lax and his lips passive. John nipped once at that lip ring before sinking deeper. Chris sagged against him and simply allowed it. Clutched at the front of his jacket, and submitted. Even when John’s hand slid down from neck to the small of Chris’s back to pull him closer, Chris made no move to take back control.
And when John broke the kiss, to press his forehead to Chris’s and smile, those bright blue eyes were closed. He looked blissfully serene, and John couldn’t resist kissing that gleaming lip ring once more.
“Mine’s busy,” he murmured. “Want to go back to yours?”
“Hotel would be closer,” came the reply, along with a hand toying with John’s belt buckle.
“Hotel costs money.”
“Can’t stay at mine for free, you know.”
“No?”
“Nope.”
“Mm. Okay. How much does half your bed cost?”
“Half?”
“All right, two thirds.”
“For the whole night?”
“Yep.”
Chris pressed his nose to John’s cheek. John felt the wide smile.
“For you? Special rate.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. Only two orgasms per night.”
“Yeah? I can do tha—”
“Both mine.”
“YOU OWE ME another one.”
The whisper was devious. John stretched but couldn’t find the warmth. And when he grumbled and rubbed the sleep from his face, the room was full of light.
“Morning.”
“Get b’ck here…”
“Can’t. It’s morning.”
“Can. Can’t pay the room charge if you’re not here…”
A laugh. The mattress dipped and the sheets rustled, and then a kiss was being pressed to his cheek, clumsy and off-centre.
John grabbed.
He caught an arm, and Chris came crashing down on top of him with a yell and a laugh. He was wearing a dressing gown, and it made the juncture of his neck and shoulder, when John buried his face there, even warmer than usual.
“Merry Christmas,” he mumbled and contracted all four limbs around Chris’s wriggling body. “I’m going to stay here for it.”
“You can’t,” Chris said but shivered in a way that completely betrayed him when John gnawed lightly on his neck.
“Still owe you that orgasm though.”
“Mhmm, you do.”
“And I have a confession to make.”
“What’s that?”
John kissed the mark he’d left with his teeth. “Been so caught up, I didn’t get you a present.”
“You got me that leather thing at the fair.”
“That’s a trinket. That’s not a proper present.”
“Ooh, bad boyfriending, then.”
“Did you get me one?”
“Nope.”
“Well, then, we have a situation here.”
“Yes,” Chris said, hooking a leg over the back of John’s thigh. “You’re on top of me, but you’re not doing anything about paying the room charge. It’s serious.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Mm. Might have to call a lawyer.”
“Only if he’s fit,” John bargained and propped himself up on his elbows, resting them either side of Chris’s shoulders. “What d’you want for Christmas, then, beautiful?”
“You know exactly what I want.”
“Which is?”
“You. Inside. Me.”
John laughed and shook his head against Chris’s. “Nope. Too much hurt.”
Chris whined, and John bit the sound away.
“Tell you what though,” he murmured. “Got a whole week at the coast to build up to it.”
“Mm, okay.”
“So, what do you want for Christmas?”
Fingers knitted together behind his head, dragging him in for a kiss. A hungry, aggressive, plundering kiss that had John struggling to keep his weight from dropping, all twenty stone of it, onto Chris’s slender frame.
“I know,” Chris whispered against John’s lips, “that you want to worship my arse.”
John’s dick, despite the early hour, twitched.
“Maybe.”
“So, get one of my vibrators out of my top drawer,” Chris murmured, rocking his hips up again. “And fuck me with it while you’re paying homage. Sound good?”
John didn’t even bother to remove the dressing gown. Just untangled himself, turned Chris over, and bunched it up above his waist.
“Top drawer?”
“Mm.”
John pressed a kiss to the small of his back and got up off the bed.
“When d’you have to go to your parents’ for Christmas dinner?” Chris murmured.
John turned back from the drawer, the largest vibrator in hand, and swallowed.
Just—Chris.
Stretched out. Naked from the waist down. Eyes closed peacefully. Arms folded around the pillow, his dark curls spilling across it in a tangle.
Gorgeous.
Absolutely bloody gorgeous.
“Not for ages,” John said and switched the vibrator on. “Got any lube?”
Chapter Eighteen
HE WAS LATE to Christmas dinner.
So late that when he finally texted Nora, saying he was on his way, he was tartly told that Raj wasn’t as useless as him and had given them all a lift.
Lucky you, John replied. Is Mum needling him about God again?
I didn’t say he was stupid enough to stay, Nora replied snottily.
Nora’s boyfriend, Raj, was a source of controversy in the family. John had never thought much of Nora’s ex-husband, Greg, so hadn’t been exactly put out when Nora ran off with Raj. Greg was a pompous arse whose every second sentence started with, “When I worked for the Prime Minister…”
Raj worked in his mum’s sandwich shop. And he thought football was for nancies. John liked him much better.
Mum, though, had been appalled. In theory, it was the Christian in her—whatever would she tell the vicar, it would be the talk of the village—but in reality, Mrs Halliday wasn’t so moralistic as all that. The Christian in her wasn’t the least bit perturbed by the gay son or the suspiciously short six-month gap between her own marriage and her eldest daughter being born. No, John’s mum’s God wasn’t that fussy. Mum was a pragmatic woman rather than a Bible-thumper, and everyone knew full well what the real problem was.
Greg had been raking in over seventy grand a year. Raj was lucky to make seventeen.
That was the problem.
And John sympathised to a tiny degree. He wasn’t the big dreamer that Fran was. He’d trained because he needed to find work, and he saved religiously to weather out the dry spells between jobs. But he’d rather have to count his pennies and take his holidays in drafty cottages on the British coast than put up with a stuffy, suit-wearing bore like Greg for the rest of his life.
Usually, Mum’s disapproval wasn’t really visible. She and Dad had gone off to France the split second Tasha left school, and they only came to visit at Christmas. Ignoring a frown and curt phone calls was easy if one simply didn’t answer the phone. But at Christmas, their opinions—or rather, Mum’s opinions—became inescapable.
For Nora. Sounded like Raj was smarter than that.
Sure enough, once John had wrestled the van round the icy, tight roads of Hathersage, he found the driveway empty. He lurched the van up into it and stamped his boots off on the mat before letting himself in through the kitchen door to the smells of roast potatoes, fir trees, and woodsmoke.
“There you are!”
The little cottage was packed. Two newspapers were held aloft in front of armchairs, John’s father and grandfather indistinguishable from behind their paper shields. Mum caught him inside the door before he could even take his boots off.
“Let me look at you!” she trilled.
John’s Mum didn’t look entirely unlike his grandmother, despite the lack of blood relation. She was similarly short and round, though her hair was still firmly blonde and cut practically short. A former nurse, she still walked everywhere in that rapid shuffle that wasn’t quite a run, left over from years of scurrying about hospital wards without sprinting and making the patients panic. She always smelled of the same perfume, and if the family joke was that John had been left on the doorstep due to his towering size, he’d at least inherited enough of her fair colouring to know it was a lie.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Got a bit sidetracked.”
“Hm. Doing what?”
He coloured. “Uh.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “So, Nora wasn’t telling fibs.”
“Um. Depends what she said?”
“Said you have a new squeeze. And spent the night with him.”
“Urgh, Mum.”
“Did you?”
“My new boyfriend. And yeah.”
“So?”
“…So?” John asked.
“Well! Where is he?”
“I don’t know. Probably his parents.”
“So, you didn’t bring him to meet us?”
“On Christmas Day?”
“It’s as good as any other,” she retorted.
“No, Mum. It’s not that serious yet.” He forked over the lie that usually pacified her.
Instead, she snorted. “Spending Christmas morning with him is serious enough. You’ll bring him over tomorrow. Your Dad and I don’t fly home until the day after.”
“Uh, if I can,” he hedged, immediately deciding they would have to set off for the coast first thing. It would have snowed on the moors by now. They’d have to go the long way around.
He was allowed to escape into the dining room to join the rest of his family. Nora was looking very mumsy in a fluffy jumper and her hair hanging down. Fran looked more like an elf had exploded on her, her blue hair done up in a bizarre basket-weaving project with a jaunty paper crown askew on the very top. Tasha, as always, was texting furiously. At her elbow, Daisy gurgled in her highchair and threw a plastic spoon at her mother with a wail when gurgling failed to get a response. Nan was flitting about with crockery and cutlery, scolding Mum when she tried to help. They must have been waiting for John, as he heard the creak of chairs, and Dad and Granddad shuffled in—a young fat version of the old thin version entering as though in procession.
“Were you with your boyfriend?” Fran sang.
“Yes. Shut up.”
“No. Didn’t you bring him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not much of a Christmas present, exposing him to you lot,” John sniped and got kicked under the table for it. “Ow!”
“Deserved it.”
“Did not!”
“Honestly,” Nan said, bustling in with the first of the plates. “Francesca, you are twenty-four years old. And John, you ought to set an example.”
“She’s twenty-four; she doesn’t need an example.”
“I’m your ickle baby sister and you luuuuurv me!” Fran said obnoxiously.
“You’re a pain in the arse, and Granddad said I could drown you in the duck pond last week, so watch yourself.”
