Tea, page 17
“See? Love.”
“Passion!”
“Whatever,” John said, catching Chris’s head in both hands and kissing him flush on the lips. “Come on. Let’s get you some coffee and both of us a decent breakfast.”
The world outside, when they finally emerged, was quiet and chilly, but the sun was bright and the sea, though loud, not as violent as the night before. Chris tucked his hand into the crook of John’s elbow comfortably enough, and John was surprised by the indulgent smiles of a couple of elderly ladies outside a shop. He’d held hands with Aljaz here once, and they’d earned a number of dirty looks.
The café was down another narrow passage, dark and gloomy, but the interior was bright from the large windows facing the glittering sea. John led Chris to a table in prime sea-staring position, before doubling back to order the world-class fry-ups and squint at the coffee prices.
“What’s not instant?” he asked eventually, and the waitress blinked before glancing past him to Chris.
“Ah!” she said. “For your friend, I take it?”
“Yeah. I’m not a coffee drinker; all I know is that instant is apparently swill.”
“Extra fifty pence,” she said genially, “and I’ll bring out some ground for him, eh?”
“You’re a gem,” John told her. She tittered, despite being probably the same age as his mother, and noticeably didn’t charge him the extra fifty pence.
“It’s lovely,” she said, nodding at Chris and lowering her voice. “Too many folks can’t get out and about these days.”
John stared.
“Sorry?”
“You know.” Her voice dropped in volume a second time. “Disabled people.”
“Oh.”
John wasn’t sure what to make of it and retreated with his change. Once she was occupied, chattering away to an elderly local, he leaned across the table and asked Chris for an explanation.
To his surprise, Chris rolled his eyes.
“They think you’re my carer.”
“I—sorry, what?”
“Gina gets it a lot too. Isn’t it lovely she’s out with me, blah, blah, blah.” Chris pulled a face. “Hell, Luke gets it every single time we’re at the gym. I don’t have friends or boyfriends, just carers.”
“That’s fu—bloody stupid.”
Chris shrugged. “You should have heard them when I wanted to transition. What did it matter? Not like I was going to be having sex or relationships. Not like I could see myself to have dysphoria. Who cared?”
“What?”
“Not in so many words, but that was the gist of it.”
John stared, jaw slack. “That’s—that’s—”
Chris smirked. “Very exploitable, is what it is.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, short of actually kissing me, you could get very handsy, and they’d keep desperately passing it off as helping me out.”
The old ladies who’d smiled, John realised. It wasn’t, oh, look at that lovely couple. It was, oh, look at that nice man helping that poor blind dear.
Part of him seethed.
And the other part heard Chris’s devious tone and realised its potential.
“I could hold your arse all day, and I’d just be helping you round,” John said.
“Bingo.”
“Doesn’t it—make you mad?”
“‘Course,” Chris said. “But twenty-odd years of it, you tend to get tired rather than mad. And they mean well. They’re just…dumb.”
“No kidding,” John said.
“You’re my first boyfriend, you know.”
John’s brain stalled. “Seriously?”
“Mm.”
“Um. So. Girlfriends?”
“Nope.”
“Friend with benefits?”
Chris laughed. “Yes.”
John blew upwards into his hair. “Thank God. It would have been a tragedy if someone who looks like you hit twenty-four without getting it. I mean, Jesus. There should be a line of guys waiting at your door with flowers.”
“Meh, flowers.”
“Coffee tins, then.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Why aren’t there?”
“Trans and disabled? Good luck. Most people don’t want to touch that with a barge pole, and try meeting the ones who don’t mind when you’re stuck inside most of the time and your best friends are a lesbian and a very, very straight man.”
John frowned. “Stuck inside?”
Chris bit his lip.
“What do you mean by stuck?”
“It’s…been difficult.”
“What has?”
Chris sighed. “My…my dog died last year.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
“He was getting on a little bit, but it was still a shock. He had cancer. The vet said he was in pain, so I let him go, but…it was hard. I loved him to bits, and he was my assistance dog, so it had a double-whammy effect. It’s harder to get out and do things on my own.”
“Aren’t you—sorry, this is probably really insensitive…”
“Go for it.”
“Aren’t you getting another?” John asked awkwardly.
“Yeah. But I need one that’s trained for blind people and epilepsy. Which is hard. And Sam died so suddenly that they hadn’t started to prepare for me to have a different dog, so there wasn’t one ready.” Chris’s face brightened and he fumbled for his phone. “They have a puppy in training for me though. I won’t be able to have her for at least a year yet, but that’s something at least. Look, Gina took a picture for me.”
The phone chirped up, saying the names of pictures aloud, and when it said “Poppy puppy,” Chris handed it over. John squinted in the sunlight and then laughed. The photo was of Chris and a tall, slim woman who, judging by the dark curls, was probably his mother. They were sitting on the grass in a field, and Chris was grinning down at a young dog—too large for true puppyhood, but too small to be full-grown—squirming in his arms. A yellow dog, either a Lab or a Retriever, that looked lethal. In the sense that it was trying to lick him to death.
“She’s cute.”
“She’s gorgeous. It’ll be great to have a dog again. It gets lonely at home, and they don’t—Sam didn’t…”
When Chris trailed off, John carefully reached over to touch his wrist.
“They don’t care if you’re having a bad day, or if you can’t go to the gig because you’ve had four seizures, or if you’re being a moody, self-indulgent shit. They just—they don’t care. You’re…you’re their whole world, and they love you no matter what you are or what you have or who you’ve become. And they’re always going to love you.”
There was something bruised behind his voice, and John tightened his grip gently.
“I was depressed,” Chris blurted out. “I’d just come out. As Chris. And my mum split up with her boyfriend about it after he said it was down to my brain damage—”
“What a fu—uh. Tosser.”
“Fucking knobhead,” Chris corrected primly, and John laughed.
“Yeah. That.”
“Yeah, he said obviously the fall had damaged more than my vision. Mum went nuts and threw him out on the spot, but she was upset too—they’d been engaged—so I felt guilty for it, even though I was glad she’d done it…”
John stroked his thumb over the back of Chris’s hand.
“And Dad was struggling. He didn’t know what to do or what would help, and the doctor was being such a dick about referring me to the clinic to get treatment. And I was just…depressed. It was like the final straw. I was blind and epileptic, and now I was trans as well? It was all too much, you know? How was I supposed to build something good out of that mess?”
“This better be your thought process then, and not now,” John chided.
Chris laughed. “Yeah. I was a teenager. I didn’t have anyone to tell me different except my family, and you know how you sometimes think, yeah, well you’re my mum; you’re supposed to tell me that, sometimes?”
“Christ, tell me about it…”
“I got Sam around the same time. I was growing up, and I wanted to be more independent. And you need to be able to walk them and play with them—they’re still dogs, even if they’re working dogs—and I was finally approaching that position, so I got Sam.”
“And that changed things?”
“No. But it helped me ride it out until I could start unpicking that crap,” Chris said. “If I wanted to hide in my room and have a good cry, Sam would come and shove his nose in my armpit and let me. And I learned I could take him into doctor’s appointments and everything with me, so he sort of turned into this…I don’t know, security blanket?”
“That’s kind of what a dog is for, in my opinion,” John said.
“You have one?”
“God no, never allowed,” John said, pulling a face. Chris seemed to brighten at his tone, so John ran with the story. “Been living in a flat ever since I left home, and when I was a kid, Mum was always so particular. Won’t have a mess in the house, and animals are filthy.”
“Excuse me, my dog was the picture of perfection.”
“He had hair.”
“So do you, fuzzy.”
“I don’t leave my hair on the carpet.”
“Pretty sure you did last night…”
John choked and cackled into his fist. The lady, who had just arrived with their breakfasts and steaming cups, gave him an odd look, but then chattered blithely about the weather, recommending a little cove down the road if they wanted to see some—ooh, sorry dear, hear, hear—some choice waves.
Then she was gone, and John recovered himself enough to rearrange the mugs to the right places. Chris wrapped his hands around the coffee mug and took a long, deep swallow.
“Fuck, that’s better.”
His face looked orgasmic, and John had to concentrate very hard on not spilling his tea.
“So. No dog?”
“Nope. To be fair, Mum had four kids who all wanted pets, and she couldn’t have had them all. Dad’s allergic to cats, for one, and Nora always wanted a kitten. I wanted a puppy—I think Fran did too, but, to be honest, she wanted a whole zoo—and Tasha’s one and only soft spot is for rabbits.”
“Oh, we had a rabbit when I was little,” Chris said brightly. “Grenade.”
“Sorry?”
“It was about the same size, and Dad used to threaten to throw it like one if it didn’t stop chewing through the hutch wire.”
“That’s tiny!”
“Netherland Dwarf. My first pet. I was only four. It went to live with my auntie in Australia when I was seven because rabbits like Australia.”
“That sounds suspiciously like how our goldfish went to keep old Mr Peters next door company when he moved to France,” John said, and Chris laughed.
“Exactly the same. Bunny heaven is in Australia, don’t you know.”
“And goldfish heaven in France. Go figure.”
“Pretty sure they’d have tried to sell me the same story about Sam if I wasn’t the one who’d taken him to the vet in the first place,” Chris said, and John snorted.
“Think your twenties is maybe a bit old for the retiring pet story.”
“Think so. So. If you’re still about in a year or eighteen months, want to come walk my dog with me?”
John smiled and stroked Chris’s fingertips where they rested lightly against the warm ceramic of the coffee cup.
“Yep,” he said and then tapped the plate. “C’mon. Eat up. Got to take you to the beach and see how gorgeous you look all windswept and covered in sand.”
“I am not getting sand in unmentionable places.”
“Nah, too cold for that. But you’ll still look gorgeous. And then, if the heater in my car doesn’t complain too hard, we can find ourselves a lay-by and indulge.”
“In what?”
“Use your imagination.”
Chris’s smile widened, and John bit his lip. Christ. Passion indeed.
But then—
The soft way Chris had spoken, the spike of sympathy in John’s chest at the obvious wound that Sam had left behind, the painful and raw desire to smooth it over and help—
Sure, there was passion.
But whatever Chris said about love, John knew his own feelings.
Chris might feel passion-then-love.
But John definitely had a dose of both at once.
Chapter Twenty-Two
CHRIS—AND NORA, and Mum, and just about everyone in the world, actually—would call John an over-the-top, exaggerating romantic, but sod the lot of them.
It was the best week of John’s life. That was his story, and he was sticking to it.
Sleeping every night cuddled up to Chris’s back? Having coffee and breakfast by the sea every morning? Seeing the beauty of Chris’s laughter on a windy beach, ankle-deep in a freezing surf, yet his face lit up with so much life that it hurt John’s heart? Making love three times—once on the rug in front of the roaring fire—and only three because Chris’s body still wasn’t used to it and complained about the fact the next morning? And that was only making love the traditional way. If John included any time they started with cuddling and ended with climaxes, then the count hit eight before the week was over.
Yes, it was the best week of John’s life, without question.
He felt guilty for thinking it, but…Chris’s epilepsy had even—cooperated. Almost as though it somehow knew the week was special. Chris had had two seizures, and John had witnessed neither. He’d been in the shower for the first one and knew nothing at all until he came upstairs and found Chris on the bedroom floor. And the second time, he’d been out for a run and come back to find Chris asleep on the sofa. Only later had Chris told him what happened.
John felt guilty as sin, but—
But also a tiny, tiny bit relieved.
It was horrible of him—he was here for all of it, he was. John didn’t want Chris to think for a minute that he thought less of him because of the seizures, but John also wanted the week to go without any hiccups. No worries, no insecurities, no fussing on his part, and no prickliness on Chris’s. So, for the seizures to strike when John was out, and Chris handling them entirely as he always had, was a sick kind of relief.
Chris just laughed at him when he’d explained and said, “I get it. I’m a little bit glad too, to be honest. It’s stressful to seize in front of people who don’t have a clue.”
“I have a bit of a clue.”
“Until I tell you to go fuck yourself and try punching you when you’re trying to put a blanket over me for a kip, you don’t.”
“Uh—”
“Trust me. You’ll see one soon enough. But I’m sort of glad you haven’t yet.”
John never wanted to leave.
All right, so Chris had seriously cold feet and liked to tuck them up into John’s balls during the night. Okay, his taste in food was questionable. And yes, his hair got everywhere—the shower drain, the bedsheets, between John’s teeth…
Worth it. Even the downsides felt like little pieces John could slot into his new world, like completing a puzzle. When he found himself simply massaging those toes in one hand in the middle of the night, to rub some warmth into them and relieve the discomfort on his own bollocks without even waking Chris up, John knew he was done for. And he didn’t care.
The week went by too quickly, and New Year’s Eve was on them before John knew what had happened. The day started out like any other—making love in the tangled sheets, getting his hair pulled for calling it that, going out for breakfast and a bucket of coffee for the caffeine addict he’d fallen in love with. At lunchtime, they drove over to Whitby, and when Chris confessed to having never been sailing, John paid for a little jaunt out round the bay in a boat. The spray was ice-cold and the wind harsh, but Chris clung to the railing and laughed like a kid, fascinated by the deafening screech and wail of the birds that perpetually lived in the cliffs just shy of the town. John bracketed him in, really to prevent any accidents, but that close and with Chris that beautiful, it ended up being a hug against the slippery metal anyway.
When they were back on dry—well, moist—land, John snuck a kiss in a narrow street on a trip to find a good café in which to shelter from the misty rain, and Chris’s lips tasted like salt.
“Love you,” John whispered before he let go.
“Passion you.”
John rolled his eyes.
As the night grew in and midnight approached, John rumbled up a torch from his toolkit in the boot of the car, and they walked down the long harbour wall. The sea crashed and bellowed against its stone walls, the spray leaping up to slap them, and as the first fireworks began to rise, little sparkles and crackles of light to prepare for the imminent New Year, John caught Chris’s waist in both hands and dragged him close.
“I want to start next year off right.”
“Oh, aye?”
“Uh-huh. I’m going to kiss you at midnight. Then I’ll spend the next twelve months kissing you.”
“No, thanks, might need to breathe.”
John laughed. Chris stretched up on his toes and kissed his chin.
“Are the fireworks near us?”
“Not really.”
“Good. I don’t like the noise.”
“Is the sea helping?”
“Yeah. But you could help too.”
“How?”
“Hands over my ears.”
John obeyed, cupping that narrow face in the dark, feeling the soft shells of his ears and the wild, damp curls around them crumpling under his palms. He felt Chris’s smile.
“Best start,” Chris breathed. “Just in case their clock is wrong.”
John laughed and dipped his head.
His watch beeped as their lips touched. A church bell boomed, somewhere back in the bay. Fireworks exploded.
John didn’t care. There were gloved fingers fisted in his coat. Cool lips and cooler metal against his mouth. A body leaning precariously against him, held only by their hands. It was raining. The sea was freezing. The coffee Chris had had before they came out was revolting.
And nothing had ever been more perfect.
