Tea, page 8
Chris sighed. “Okay.”
Then he backed up, fisting both hands in the front of John’s hoodie.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve been a little funny about this ex of yours,” he said. “And I know something’s up. And that something is affecting the way you handle me.”
John took a shaky breath. “It—it’ll affect every relationship I ever have, Chris.”
“So—maybe this is something we need to talk about.”
John swallowed.
Talk about it? Tell Chris exactly what people thought when they looked at John? What they thought when they saw him with Chris? What Lauren thought?
And why it had been so easy for everyone to believe every word that Daniel had ever said?
The instinctive answer was no.
But—
But now, Chris’s stepmum had seen John for herself. If John didn’t tell Chris the truth, she’d tell Chris the lie.
It was now or never.
Chapter Eleven
CHRIS SUGGESTED ENDCLIFFE Park. He knew it like the back of his hand, and John needed neutral territory. Somewhere they could both walk away, somewhere neither of them would feel trapped, but also, in a savage act of self-defence, somewhere busy enough that Chris wouldn’t want to cause a scene.
So they went to a park that Chris knew, bought massive cups of tea and coffee, respectively, and found a bench.
And John said, “You don’t know what I look like.”
Chris sighed. “No.”
“Have you—do you— God, can I get a pass for asking dumb questions right now?”
“I guess so, if it’ll help you tell me what happened with Lauren back there.”
“Have you always been blind?” John blurted out.
“No.”
“When—when did—”
“I was six. And we’re not talking about that; we’re talking about you.”
“Okay. Do you remember what anyone looks like?”
“Not really.”
John licked his lips. “So—so you don’t know what it’s like to just look at someone and be afraid?”
Chris paused.
“I know what it’s like to hear someone and be afraid,” he said.
“Yeah, but there’s no shouting or violence or—”
“There doesn’t have to be,” Chris said. “The same way you could read me the phone book and I’d be happy, there are people who could read me the phone book and I’d be afraid.”
John chewed on his lip.
“Are you saying you’re one of those people?”
“People look at me,” John said, “and they see a thug.”
The worst of it was that John hadn’t always minded. His type in guys—twinks who demanded to be worshipped—tended to like a big, rough-looking bloke. And being a wall of muscle and ink was a really good thing walking home at night, or going to fix fuses in the less desirable parts of the city. It used to just irk him, once. Just make him roll his eyes and think the hipsters round his flat were hypocrites for all their non-judgemental equality rallies, and then crossing the road to avoid him when he was out for his morning run.
Then along came Daniel.
“I look hard,” he croaked. “I look mean. People are afraid of me. And I never used to really mind, because, you know, screw what they think, what did I care, right?”
“Right,” Chris said firmly.
“Then I met Daniel.”
“The ex?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what changed?”
“He—we were together for a while. He lived over in Doncaster, wasn’t out to his family, said his dad would kill him, so it was all really quiet. Stolen weekends now and then. He met my family a couple of times, but never the other way around. He was training as a hairdresser, said he wanted to finish his course, and then he’d leave Doncaster and come and live in Sheffield with me, and it would all be okay.”
“And you believed him.”
Chris’s voice was so quiet, so sympathetic, that John wanted to cry.
“Yeah,” he mumbled instead.
“How much of it was bollocks?”
John barked a harsh laugh. “He did live in Doncaster. He was training as a hairdresser. The rest was all lies. He was engaged. He was going to get married to this other bloke, some accountant or something.”
“Oh, the son of a—”
“He’d mentioned this salon a couple of times, so I’d figured out where he worked, see, so I went over, intending to surprise him after work and take him out for dinner or something. It was our one-year anniversary. I was thinking, you know, it had been a year, his course was bound to be finishing soon, so what harm could it do if I picked him up and we came back to Sheffield and celebrated where his bigoted family couldn’t see us, right?”
“Oh, God.”
“Only, I turned up and caught him as he was leaving, and he walked straight into the arms of this twat in a suit, and I—I caused a right scene, started shouting in the middle of the street at this suited idiot and saying I was Daniel’s partner, and who did he think he was. And he said he was Daniel’s fiancé.”
Fingers crept over John’s hand, warm from the polystyrene cup. John squeezed them and took a shaky breath.
“I cleared off after that. I realised I’d been the other man, and I cleared off. And the next—the next thing I knew, there’s the police at my door, and I’m being arrested.”
“For what?”
“For—”
He couldn’t say it.
His throat stuck on the word. If he said it, Chris would go. Anybody would go. Hell, John would go, in their position. People didn’t do what Daniel had done. They didn’t tell those kinds of lies. They didn’t.
“For what, John?”
“He—he told—he told his fiancé—that we’d pulled at a party, it was this one-night stand he’d regretted ever since, but I kept—I kept coming back. That I’d—I’d r—”
The word stuck again.
“That I made him do it.”
There was a long, awful pause.
Then:
“Do what?” Chris whispered.
“Everything. That our whole relationship wasn’t. That—that we’d had this one-night stand, and then I kept calling him and threatening him and saying if he didn’t come over and have—do it again, then I’d tell everyone.”
He could hardly breathe. The air was too thin. Slowly, John let go of Chris’s hand and bowed to press his forehead to his own knees. There wasn’t enough air.
“And what’s your version?” came the softest question in the world.
“It was a relationship, Chris. It was. We went to gigs and hiking and did normal bloody relationship things. We did. It wasn’t—it wasn’t anything like what he said, it wasn’t.”
“So—”
“Only he kept saying it.”
The lie had been bad enough. The lie had been horrible and heartbreaking—but in itself, only that John had misjudged Daniel so badly. He’d thought himself in love, only for that love to turn out to be a heartless, cheating c—c—word that John wouldn’t ever say out loud.
The worst of it hadn’t been the original lie—but the way Daniel had repeated it. Over and over and over again.
“The minute he said I’d made him sleep with me, his fiancé called the police. And Daniel told them the same story. And they arrested me, and I spent hours in this interview room with some free lawyer and this detective telling them it wasn’t true.”
He could still hear the policewoman’s slow, careful questions. He could still smell the lawyer’s perfume.
“I told them everything, and I thought that would be the end of it. I mean, I had text messages of us flirting on my phone, and I had a selfie of us at a gig, and Nora came down and gave a statement saying he’d come to family dinners and had been at Nan and Granddad’s anniversary celebration. I thought it would be dead in the water.”
“Only it wasn’t.”
“He just kept saying it, kept coming up with new stuff, kept lying— He’d give them things like his STI check results and say the dates meant something, and he got all these people like his mum and whoever to say he wasn’t the type to cheat, and he just kept on and on and on, and—and do you know what it’s like, when you know something’s true, but someone insists so hard and so long that it’s not that you start believing it too?”
John’s voice cracked then. He could feel tears on his face. The questions were circling around his head like vultures, the shadows of the damage Daniel had left behind. When he was arrested, he knew the truth. Knew it was a load of lies, from beginning to end, and not one bit of it had been true. It was a desperate attempt by a pathetic little man trying to get out of getting caught.
And then, over the next four months—four months—of the same lies, over and over and over…
He’d started to question. He’d started to wonder if he was losing his mind. If he’d remembered it right after all. If, if, if.
Four policemen had come to his door to arrest him, not one or two like normal people got. The detective frowned at him all the way through that original interview. The lawyer kept telling him to say ‘no comment,’ like he was guilty. They took his clothes away so he’d not be able to hang himself. The judge only granted bail because he’d never been arrested before.
Because he’d pulled Daniel when they were both drunk in a nightclub. Because maybe a big lad like John drunk was too scary to say no to. Because maybe he was intimidating. Because maybe—maybe—maybe—
He’d lie awake at night, replaying every sexual encounter he’d ever had in his mind, looking for the fear, the coercion, the force. Looking for the moments when his boyfriends wanted to say no, but couldn’t. Looking for the hints he’d missed. Looking for the r—
Two months after that initial interview, he worked himself up so badly that he sat in the kitchen all night, with a knife and a packet of pills, trying to work up the courage to do it. To end it. It had gotten so bad he’d tried to end it all.
“Even Tasha started looking at me funny,” he croaked. “My own sister thought I could have done it. That fiancé thought I could have done it. I had to quit football. And every time someone so much as looked at me funny in the street, I wondered if they knew, if they were thinking I could do something like that, if they thought I was this dangerous r—”
Chris’s hand smoothed down his back and disappeared.
John closed his eyes, and the wracking sob that tore at his frame was the first since that shell-shocked, terrified cry in a police station cell, nine months ago.
“What happened then?”
“W-what?”
“You’re not in prison. So what happened then?”
“Police decided there wasn’t any evidence of what he was saying. Dropped it. I never heard from him again.”
“Good,” Chris murmured. “So, when you saw Lauren…”
“I thought— God, Chris, my own sister started avoiding me. So ever since, when people give me funny looks, it makes me think of what happened. Everyone thinks I’m this massive monster, and I must be dangerous. And families—what kind of family are going to want me anywhere near their son? And you—”
He stopped, scrubbing at his face.
“Me, what?”
“Don’t—don’t get angry with me.”
“Depends what you’re about to say,” Chris said warily.
“You—you’re worse.”
“Worse how?”
“You’re—Daniel—you’re more…” More what? “…vulnerable than he was.”
“Meaning?”
John blew out heavily. “Meaning people are going to look at me, this brick outhouse of a man, with you, this—this blind, trans guy who needs a cane to get around, and—and think even more that I’m an abu—ab—bad.”
Chris sighed.
For a long moment, there was silence.
And then Chris said, “Do you believe them?”
“What?”
“Do you believe you’re bad?”
John opened his mouth—and paused.
“John.”
“I never meant to be,” he said fervently. “I’ve never—I’d never, not ever, force anyone to do anything on purpose. But I’m—you’ve felt me, Chris. People are scared of me. How—how do I know nobody’s ever done something because they’re scared to say no? How do I know when yes actually means yes when I’m like this?”
“Trust.”
“W-what?”
“Sounds to me,” Chris said softly, “that Daniel’s not only damaged the way you see yourself, but the way you trust your partners.”
“How do you mean?”
“You don’t trust that they mean what they say when you’re doubting things like that.”
John swallowed spasmodically.
“Guess not.”
“So, what now?” Chris murmured.
John blinked at the blurry ground.
“Sorry?”
“What now? You can’t have a panic attack like this just because my stepmum shows up.”
“I—you’re—you still want to—”
“Okay. Okay. Listen.”
Chris slid off the bench with a heavy sigh and went to his knees, guiding himself between John’s feet with tiny touches of his fingers. Once there, both arms came up around John’s neck, and John found his face buried into the warm shoulder of Chris’s coat.
“You’re not dangerous, John.”
It was like a punch in the chest. His eyes burned. With a choked noise, John burrowed harder into Chris’s shoulder and brought his arms up to cling back.
“Not going to deny you’re a massive motherfucker, but you’re not dangerous.”
John laughed wetly.
“When I’m with you,” Chris said softly, “I feel safe.”
The tiny word was like a shiver in John’s soul.
“And maybe there’s a couple of things you ought to know. I have a GPS tracker on my phone and in my cane—in case I get into bother, or I’m lost—so my dad can find me again. Gina was in that café with us at another table, on our coffee shop date. She told me what you look like afterwards, so I might not really get how that means you’re dangerous—well, except maybe your size—but I could describe you to someone else if I had to. I’ve never actually dated someone I didn’t already know before; you’re the first time I left that comfort zone. I’m cautious. And yet—I have a condition that can literally knock me out in your presence, but it was only the lack of medication that had me going home after that night in your flat.”
John felt a whole new wave of tears, but for a whole new reason, welling up.
“My point is, I’m cautious as hell, and yet I still feel safe with you. I feel good with you. You make me feel happy, confident, sexy, beautiful—and yes, I know what it’s like for everyone to tell you something you know isn’t true, and for it to get inside your head. I know I can bring a lot to a relationship. I know I want one. I know that someone out there—maybe someone right here—could be a great thing for me, with me, and there’s nothing about me that makes me undateable. But when you’re trans, when you’re disabled, everyone else tells you otherwise. You get this on repeat from the wider world that you’re this ugly, fucked-up freak, nobody will ever want you, and you’ve no right to want these things.”
“That’s—”
“Bullshit, I know. But it doesn’t stop me believing it when I’m down. It’s hard to resist what everyone else says is true.”
It wasn’t the same. The two situations—they weren’t comparable, yet they kind of were. Chris kind of got where John was coming from. What it was like to know something was a lie, but to half believe it anyway.
Chris sat back on his heels. John let go, only to find his face cupped in cool hands and lips brushed against his cheek.
“Let me be very clear,” Chris said. “If you ever, ever try and make me do something I don’t want to do, this is over. No second chances. No excuses. But you’ll know about it. I promise you, I am a noisy bastard when I’m not happy. There’s no way you’ll be missing it and wondering later if you read the signs right.”
John’s lip wobbled. Chris must have felt the shake, for his mouth stopped it, steadied it, with the softest kiss in the world. John closed his eyes and focused on the feeling.
“You’re kind of a little fucked up in the head,” Chris whispered. “And I think you need a bit of professional help to maybe untangle that. But you don’t scare me. You didn’t scare Gina. And you know, you won’t scare my family either.”
“You don’t know that,” John whispered.
“Oh, I do. My dad’s the best in the business when it comes to reading people. He’s going to take one look at you and write you off as a pussy.”
John choked with laughter.
“Trust me,” Chris murmured. “If you need to take things slow with the whole meeting the family thing, then okay. But don’t do it out of some fear they’re going to rush me off to a safe house and have you arrested for daring to put your hands in my pockets. And—maybe think about getting some counselling or something, ’kay?”
John scrubbed both hands over his face and exhaled heavily.
“You’re—” he started.
What?
Perfect? A godsend? A blessing? An angel in skinny jeans?
“I—”
“What do you need?” Chris murmured.
“I need to go home,” John croaked. “And I’m—God, I’m so sorry, but right now, I don’t think I could handle you. I’d second-guess if you meant yes about having salad for lunch at this point.”
“Oh, hey, spoilers, that’s a hard no right there,” Chris quipped and stood. “Okay. Tell you what. You run me back up to Whirlow Hall Farm, I’ll join Lauren doing whatever the hell it is she’s doing, and you go and get your space and call me tomorrow, yeah?”
John reached out, slid both arms around Chris’s waist, and hugged him hard. Buried his face against Chris’s stomach, feeling the hard thump of a pulse against his nose, and inhaled.
God. “I love you,” he mumbled into the fabric, saying what he’d started to only a moment before.
“What?” Chris asked, stroking his hair with gentle hands.
John unburied.
“Nothing,” he mumbled and caught one of the hands to kiss them. “Come on. I’ll take you back up.”
Then he backed up, fisting both hands in the front of John’s hoodie.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve been a little funny about this ex of yours,” he said. “And I know something’s up. And that something is affecting the way you handle me.”
John took a shaky breath. “It—it’ll affect every relationship I ever have, Chris.”
“So—maybe this is something we need to talk about.”
John swallowed.
Talk about it? Tell Chris exactly what people thought when they looked at John? What they thought when they saw him with Chris? What Lauren thought?
And why it had been so easy for everyone to believe every word that Daniel had ever said?
The instinctive answer was no.
But—
But now, Chris’s stepmum had seen John for herself. If John didn’t tell Chris the truth, she’d tell Chris the lie.
It was now or never.
Chapter Eleven
CHRIS SUGGESTED ENDCLIFFE Park. He knew it like the back of his hand, and John needed neutral territory. Somewhere they could both walk away, somewhere neither of them would feel trapped, but also, in a savage act of self-defence, somewhere busy enough that Chris wouldn’t want to cause a scene.
So they went to a park that Chris knew, bought massive cups of tea and coffee, respectively, and found a bench.
And John said, “You don’t know what I look like.”
Chris sighed. “No.”
“Have you—do you— God, can I get a pass for asking dumb questions right now?”
“I guess so, if it’ll help you tell me what happened with Lauren back there.”
“Have you always been blind?” John blurted out.
“No.”
“When—when did—”
“I was six. And we’re not talking about that; we’re talking about you.”
“Okay. Do you remember what anyone looks like?”
“Not really.”
John licked his lips. “So—so you don’t know what it’s like to just look at someone and be afraid?”
Chris paused.
“I know what it’s like to hear someone and be afraid,” he said.
“Yeah, but there’s no shouting or violence or—”
“There doesn’t have to be,” Chris said. “The same way you could read me the phone book and I’d be happy, there are people who could read me the phone book and I’d be afraid.”
John chewed on his lip.
“Are you saying you’re one of those people?”
“People look at me,” John said, “and they see a thug.”
The worst of it was that John hadn’t always minded. His type in guys—twinks who demanded to be worshipped—tended to like a big, rough-looking bloke. And being a wall of muscle and ink was a really good thing walking home at night, or going to fix fuses in the less desirable parts of the city. It used to just irk him, once. Just make him roll his eyes and think the hipsters round his flat were hypocrites for all their non-judgemental equality rallies, and then crossing the road to avoid him when he was out for his morning run.
Then along came Daniel.
“I look hard,” he croaked. “I look mean. People are afraid of me. And I never used to really mind, because, you know, screw what they think, what did I care, right?”
“Right,” Chris said firmly.
“Then I met Daniel.”
“The ex?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what changed?”
“He—we were together for a while. He lived over in Doncaster, wasn’t out to his family, said his dad would kill him, so it was all really quiet. Stolen weekends now and then. He met my family a couple of times, but never the other way around. He was training as a hairdresser, said he wanted to finish his course, and then he’d leave Doncaster and come and live in Sheffield with me, and it would all be okay.”
“And you believed him.”
Chris’s voice was so quiet, so sympathetic, that John wanted to cry.
“Yeah,” he mumbled instead.
“How much of it was bollocks?”
John barked a harsh laugh. “He did live in Doncaster. He was training as a hairdresser. The rest was all lies. He was engaged. He was going to get married to this other bloke, some accountant or something.”
“Oh, the son of a—”
“He’d mentioned this salon a couple of times, so I’d figured out where he worked, see, so I went over, intending to surprise him after work and take him out for dinner or something. It was our one-year anniversary. I was thinking, you know, it had been a year, his course was bound to be finishing soon, so what harm could it do if I picked him up and we came back to Sheffield and celebrated where his bigoted family couldn’t see us, right?”
“Oh, God.”
“Only, I turned up and caught him as he was leaving, and he walked straight into the arms of this twat in a suit, and I—I caused a right scene, started shouting in the middle of the street at this suited idiot and saying I was Daniel’s partner, and who did he think he was. And he said he was Daniel’s fiancé.”
Fingers crept over John’s hand, warm from the polystyrene cup. John squeezed them and took a shaky breath.
“I cleared off after that. I realised I’d been the other man, and I cleared off. And the next—the next thing I knew, there’s the police at my door, and I’m being arrested.”
“For what?”
“For—”
He couldn’t say it.
His throat stuck on the word. If he said it, Chris would go. Anybody would go. Hell, John would go, in their position. People didn’t do what Daniel had done. They didn’t tell those kinds of lies. They didn’t.
“For what, John?”
“He—he told—he told his fiancé—that we’d pulled at a party, it was this one-night stand he’d regretted ever since, but I kept—I kept coming back. That I’d—I’d r—”
The word stuck again.
“That I made him do it.”
There was a long, awful pause.
Then:
“Do what?” Chris whispered.
“Everything. That our whole relationship wasn’t. That—that we’d had this one-night stand, and then I kept calling him and threatening him and saying if he didn’t come over and have—do it again, then I’d tell everyone.”
He could hardly breathe. The air was too thin. Slowly, John let go of Chris’s hand and bowed to press his forehead to his own knees. There wasn’t enough air.
“And what’s your version?” came the softest question in the world.
“It was a relationship, Chris. It was. We went to gigs and hiking and did normal bloody relationship things. We did. It wasn’t—it wasn’t anything like what he said, it wasn’t.”
“So—”
“Only he kept saying it.”
The lie had been bad enough. The lie had been horrible and heartbreaking—but in itself, only that John had misjudged Daniel so badly. He’d thought himself in love, only for that love to turn out to be a heartless, cheating c—c—word that John wouldn’t ever say out loud.
The worst of it hadn’t been the original lie—but the way Daniel had repeated it. Over and over and over again.
“The minute he said I’d made him sleep with me, his fiancé called the police. And Daniel told them the same story. And they arrested me, and I spent hours in this interview room with some free lawyer and this detective telling them it wasn’t true.”
He could still hear the policewoman’s slow, careful questions. He could still smell the lawyer’s perfume.
“I told them everything, and I thought that would be the end of it. I mean, I had text messages of us flirting on my phone, and I had a selfie of us at a gig, and Nora came down and gave a statement saying he’d come to family dinners and had been at Nan and Granddad’s anniversary celebration. I thought it would be dead in the water.”
“Only it wasn’t.”
“He just kept saying it, kept coming up with new stuff, kept lying— He’d give them things like his STI check results and say the dates meant something, and he got all these people like his mum and whoever to say he wasn’t the type to cheat, and he just kept on and on and on, and—and do you know what it’s like, when you know something’s true, but someone insists so hard and so long that it’s not that you start believing it too?”
John’s voice cracked then. He could feel tears on his face. The questions were circling around his head like vultures, the shadows of the damage Daniel had left behind. When he was arrested, he knew the truth. Knew it was a load of lies, from beginning to end, and not one bit of it had been true. It was a desperate attempt by a pathetic little man trying to get out of getting caught.
And then, over the next four months—four months—of the same lies, over and over and over…
He’d started to question. He’d started to wonder if he was losing his mind. If he’d remembered it right after all. If, if, if.
Four policemen had come to his door to arrest him, not one or two like normal people got. The detective frowned at him all the way through that original interview. The lawyer kept telling him to say ‘no comment,’ like he was guilty. They took his clothes away so he’d not be able to hang himself. The judge only granted bail because he’d never been arrested before.
Because he’d pulled Daniel when they were both drunk in a nightclub. Because maybe a big lad like John drunk was too scary to say no to. Because maybe he was intimidating. Because maybe—maybe—maybe—
He’d lie awake at night, replaying every sexual encounter he’d ever had in his mind, looking for the fear, the coercion, the force. Looking for the moments when his boyfriends wanted to say no, but couldn’t. Looking for the hints he’d missed. Looking for the r—
Two months after that initial interview, he worked himself up so badly that he sat in the kitchen all night, with a knife and a packet of pills, trying to work up the courage to do it. To end it. It had gotten so bad he’d tried to end it all.
“Even Tasha started looking at me funny,” he croaked. “My own sister thought I could have done it. That fiancé thought I could have done it. I had to quit football. And every time someone so much as looked at me funny in the street, I wondered if they knew, if they were thinking I could do something like that, if they thought I was this dangerous r—”
Chris’s hand smoothed down his back and disappeared.
John closed his eyes, and the wracking sob that tore at his frame was the first since that shell-shocked, terrified cry in a police station cell, nine months ago.
“What happened then?”
“W-what?”
“You’re not in prison. So what happened then?”
“Police decided there wasn’t any evidence of what he was saying. Dropped it. I never heard from him again.”
“Good,” Chris murmured. “So, when you saw Lauren…”
“I thought— God, Chris, my own sister started avoiding me. So ever since, when people give me funny looks, it makes me think of what happened. Everyone thinks I’m this massive monster, and I must be dangerous. And families—what kind of family are going to want me anywhere near their son? And you—”
He stopped, scrubbing at his face.
“Me, what?”
“Don’t—don’t get angry with me.”
“Depends what you’re about to say,” Chris said warily.
“You—you’re worse.”
“Worse how?”
“You’re—Daniel—you’re more…” More what? “…vulnerable than he was.”
“Meaning?”
John blew out heavily. “Meaning people are going to look at me, this brick outhouse of a man, with you, this—this blind, trans guy who needs a cane to get around, and—and think even more that I’m an abu—ab—bad.”
Chris sighed.
For a long moment, there was silence.
And then Chris said, “Do you believe them?”
“What?”
“Do you believe you’re bad?”
John opened his mouth—and paused.
“John.”
“I never meant to be,” he said fervently. “I’ve never—I’d never, not ever, force anyone to do anything on purpose. But I’m—you’ve felt me, Chris. People are scared of me. How—how do I know nobody’s ever done something because they’re scared to say no? How do I know when yes actually means yes when I’m like this?”
“Trust.”
“W-what?”
“Sounds to me,” Chris said softly, “that Daniel’s not only damaged the way you see yourself, but the way you trust your partners.”
“How do you mean?”
“You don’t trust that they mean what they say when you’re doubting things like that.”
John swallowed spasmodically.
“Guess not.”
“So, what now?” Chris murmured.
John blinked at the blurry ground.
“Sorry?”
“What now? You can’t have a panic attack like this just because my stepmum shows up.”
“I—you’re—you still want to—”
“Okay. Okay. Listen.”
Chris slid off the bench with a heavy sigh and went to his knees, guiding himself between John’s feet with tiny touches of his fingers. Once there, both arms came up around John’s neck, and John found his face buried into the warm shoulder of Chris’s coat.
“You’re not dangerous, John.”
It was like a punch in the chest. His eyes burned. With a choked noise, John burrowed harder into Chris’s shoulder and brought his arms up to cling back.
“Not going to deny you’re a massive motherfucker, but you’re not dangerous.”
John laughed wetly.
“When I’m with you,” Chris said softly, “I feel safe.”
The tiny word was like a shiver in John’s soul.
“And maybe there’s a couple of things you ought to know. I have a GPS tracker on my phone and in my cane—in case I get into bother, or I’m lost—so my dad can find me again. Gina was in that café with us at another table, on our coffee shop date. She told me what you look like afterwards, so I might not really get how that means you’re dangerous—well, except maybe your size—but I could describe you to someone else if I had to. I’ve never actually dated someone I didn’t already know before; you’re the first time I left that comfort zone. I’m cautious. And yet—I have a condition that can literally knock me out in your presence, but it was only the lack of medication that had me going home after that night in your flat.”
John felt a whole new wave of tears, but for a whole new reason, welling up.
“My point is, I’m cautious as hell, and yet I still feel safe with you. I feel good with you. You make me feel happy, confident, sexy, beautiful—and yes, I know what it’s like for everyone to tell you something you know isn’t true, and for it to get inside your head. I know I can bring a lot to a relationship. I know I want one. I know that someone out there—maybe someone right here—could be a great thing for me, with me, and there’s nothing about me that makes me undateable. But when you’re trans, when you’re disabled, everyone else tells you otherwise. You get this on repeat from the wider world that you’re this ugly, fucked-up freak, nobody will ever want you, and you’ve no right to want these things.”
“That’s—”
“Bullshit, I know. But it doesn’t stop me believing it when I’m down. It’s hard to resist what everyone else says is true.”
It wasn’t the same. The two situations—they weren’t comparable, yet they kind of were. Chris kind of got where John was coming from. What it was like to know something was a lie, but to half believe it anyway.
Chris sat back on his heels. John let go, only to find his face cupped in cool hands and lips brushed against his cheek.
“Let me be very clear,” Chris said. “If you ever, ever try and make me do something I don’t want to do, this is over. No second chances. No excuses. But you’ll know about it. I promise you, I am a noisy bastard when I’m not happy. There’s no way you’ll be missing it and wondering later if you read the signs right.”
John’s lip wobbled. Chris must have felt the shake, for his mouth stopped it, steadied it, with the softest kiss in the world. John closed his eyes and focused on the feeling.
“You’re kind of a little fucked up in the head,” Chris whispered. “And I think you need a bit of professional help to maybe untangle that. But you don’t scare me. You didn’t scare Gina. And you know, you won’t scare my family either.”
“You don’t know that,” John whispered.
“Oh, I do. My dad’s the best in the business when it comes to reading people. He’s going to take one look at you and write you off as a pussy.”
John choked with laughter.
“Trust me,” Chris murmured. “If you need to take things slow with the whole meeting the family thing, then okay. But don’t do it out of some fear they’re going to rush me off to a safe house and have you arrested for daring to put your hands in my pockets. And—maybe think about getting some counselling or something, ’kay?”
John scrubbed both hands over his face and exhaled heavily.
“You’re—” he started.
What?
Perfect? A godsend? A blessing? An angel in skinny jeans?
“I—”
“What do you need?” Chris murmured.
“I need to go home,” John croaked. “And I’m—God, I’m so sorry, but right now, I don’t think I could handle you. I’d second-guess if you meant yes about having salad for lunch at this point.”
“Oh, hey, spoilers, that’s a hard no right there,” Chris quipped and stood. “Okay. Tell you what. You run me back up to Whirlow Hall Farm, I’ll join Lauren doing whatever the hell it is she’s doing, and you go and get your space and call me tomorrow, yeah?”
John reached out, slid both arms around Chris’s waist, and hugged him hard. Buried his face against Chris’s stomach, feeling the hard thump of a pulse against his nose, and inhaled.
God. “I love you,” he mumbled into the fabric, saying what he’d started to only a moment before.
“What?” Chris asked, stroking his hair with gentle hands.
John unburied.
“Nothing,” he mumbled and caught one of the hands to kiss them. “Come on. I’ll take you back up.”
