But their confessions earlier had put a bit of a spin on matters. He’d rather assumed that Tom was experienced—that Tom would in fact lead him down this daunting path to being fully fledged gay. Well, fully fucked gay anyway.
Not so, it appeared.
In Ollie’s opinion, garnered from extensive reading, nothing was guaranteed to drive people apart faster than finally having sex. It was pretty much fatal to any good flirtatious relationship. Almost as bad as marriage. And everyone knew there were no romantic books written about married couples. It was all in the chase.
But this wasn’t a book. Ollie didn’t intend to finish the final page and write a review. Although, if he did, naturally he’d give himself five stars. No, this was real life and had to progress beyond the cut and chase, the excitement and toying. He’d kind of hoped he might get at least some assistance from his partner, but clearly not. Never mind. Ollie was inventive and clever. And he had Bartleby. Not for anything related to sex, clearly. Sheesh, Timmy would be turning in his floating timeline grave…
“Hello?”
Ollie switched back into the moment with a rueful pout, which he was well aware he was far too old to employ, but which, nevertheless, had been one of his most successful expressions ever. Tom seemed well pleased by it and leant in to kiss him. He mouthed, “I should get going,” and then proceeded to make no move whatsoever to leave. In fact, he twisted around in his seat and pulled Ollie closer, then more forcibly still, so they ended up with Ollie straddling Tom’s lap, still kissing.
Ollie murmured back, “Sure. You’d better,” and still there was no attempt at all from Tom to actually stand and leave, just as he’d predicted.
“It’s late…” Indeed it was. Ollie was impressed with Tom’s timekeeping abilities. Perhaps he was reading the stars. He surely wasn’t looking at his watch.
“It’ll…” It would. Ollie agreed. He’d agree to anything Tom Collins wanted. Sitting on Tom’s lap in the cold darkness was singularly the most erotic thing he’d ever done, and when Ollie considered what had taken place in the shower, only an hour or so before, he surprised himself with this assessment. He could feel the body heat pouring off the other man, knew Tom would be enjoying his too. His lips were stinging from kissing the day’s stubble and he wondered if his was similarly plaguing Tom. The strong arms braced around the small of his back, pulling him on and into an even harder kiss seemed to say it wasn’t.
“I’ll be—”
“So will I.” Ollie shifted closer. It was two to one, after all. Tom appeared to get his intent and Ollie enjoyed the first touch of fingers on his jean-imprisoned cock. An eternity of moments passed until he was freed into the chill night air.
“I—”
Ollie let his release be his reply this time. He made a small choking sound of disbelief, his face buried in Tom’s neck, as he pumped out hot spurts into a cold hand. It seemed to Ollie that it went on for a very long time, but when he was done, the stars were still in the same place and apparently the Earth had not turned all that far after all. He felt melted and languid, slightly drunk and very, very happy. Tom was obviously feeling the same way for there was not one tense tendon beneath him. They pooled together until Ollie whispered, “Stay the night—in your old room, if you want. If that makes you more comfortable. No pressure.”
He was disappointed not to get an immediate capitulation, until when he lifted his head a little, he realised that Tom had fallen asleep.
§§§
Woken up, Tom had accepted the spare room offer.
They’d parted without much further ado. Ollie was fairly sure that Tom was talked out, something he had yet to experience in life, and he was more than happy to lie in his very warm bed and go over the whole day once more from his early start on the hillside, thinking Tom Collins was long gone to the final release of sperm into Tom’s hand. It was a longer journey than it seemed possible to have in one day. But Ollie got to his arrival at the fair and then no further. He felt himself sinking, and he had the most pleasurable final realisation that Tom would be there when he woke up. He was good at plan…
§§§
Ollie woke with the same sense of expectation he got at Christmas. Tom was there. But this was a thought that immediately reminded him of his insights the previous night—definitions of that simple word,
home
. He wondered how many Christmases Tom had experienced with anticipation and delight.
He was not dealing with someone who would or could have normal reactions to the things other people took for granted. Stranger in a Strange Land indeed. Tom was negotiating a world of families and parents and children and relationships and straight and gay and everything in between with no map whatsoever. He was as lost as Ollie had once been on a hillside in Wales. Ollie intended to find him. More importantly, he intended to keep him.
And immediately, Ollie saw the morning play out in one of two ways. He could turn this into his rose-cottage, sugar-coated fantasy. He could cook them both breakfast and slip into Tom’s room, be welcomed into the bed with a grumpy but secretly very-pleased-to-see-him pat of encouragement on the sheets to crawl in alongside Tom and they could sit there eating, perhaps reading the papers…
But if he chose this option, Ollie knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would begin to fade…He saw this as clearly as he’d seen Freddie sliding translucent into stacks of Latin textbooks, or gliding insubstantially over the untidy beds in the dorm. It wasn’t a literal fading, of course, as it had been for Freddie. But this, whatever he and Tom had between them, would dazzle for a passionate, brief instant in time and then it would fizzle out. They’d never be a couple. Never have a future. They would be characters in a novel given life and a moment to burn bright but be forever condemned to live only within that tiny allotted span of life.
How did you become substantial and real? How did you force life to bend to your will and make it what you wanted it to be?
Ollie knew the answers to his rhetorical questions, or he wouldn’t have been asking himself them: you took the harder road.
He’d made his little character face each challenge head on, and every time Freddie had taken a beating, been humiliated, broken, defeated—every single time—he had in fact won and grown stronger where it counted.
Ollie didn’t make Tom breakfast.
He didn’t slip into bed alongside him.
He woke him by throwing some running shoes at him and challenging him to a race to the summit behind the house.
Catchee, catchee monkey. Running up that hill, did Tom Collins begin to see that not all meanings could be got from dictionaries?
Couple: two people who are married or otherwise closely associated romantically or sexually.
Yeah. Ollie had a much more interesting and varied vocabulary, and he’d find a definition that Tom could live with. Lure him in and keep him.
Ollie lost the race. He’d suspected he might. He didn’t care. He didn’t lose by much and his consolation prize was extremely pleasant indeed. Tripped, wrestled to the ground, he was kissed, Tom pinning him by his shoulders to the cold earth with his thumbs stroking into the warmth of Ollie’s armpits. With his lips, Tom explored Ollie’s eyes, the sweat on his brow, his hair, and nuzzled into his ear, making Ollie laugh with pleasure and return the favour. Ollie bit lightly on Tom’s earlobe as they surrendered to the bliss of sharing such raw physicality.
Finally, Tom lay upon him, breathing heavily, which pressed their hips together at each seize of air. “Your running has improved.”
“Maybe yours has just got worse…”
Tom scowled. “I’ve been busy.” He sank into a reverie, which gave Ollie time to admire the sleep and running-tousled hair and the morning stubble, both very attractive indeed. “I’d better get back and start on those orders…Jesus.”
They rose together and began to jog slowly off the summit.
“I wish Hop-Along Cassidy could come running with us.” Ollie slid this in casually and knew Tom was entirely unsuspicious. “I thought he looked a bit stronger this morning.” This assessment would probably have surprised Bartleby, Ollie reflected wryly, as he recalled the very spry, very eager dash the dog had made outside when he’d let him out that morning.
Tom glanced over. “The warmth in the kitchen maybe.”
Ollie made a
I-have-no-idea
noise.
Timed to perfection, as they came in sight of the house, he offered, “You could leave him here today, if you want.”
“Are you sure? I can’t come over and feed him tonight because I have to deliver some chairs to Te Anau, but every other night I could…”
Ollie nodded as if it was no big thing, but added, “No problem; I can do it for one night.”
“Okay then, thanks. It’s not much of a life for him in the shed with all the noise and…” Tom trailed off, for once perhaps seeing the obvious for himself. Ollie let him. Part of catching a monkey, he assumed—because it was something he’d never once wanted to do for real—was persuading the vicious little critter to want to be caught—seeing the benefits of captivity for itself. Ollie had the very pleasing thought as he watched Tom rattle off in his van, that Tom’s final parting glance at the dog had been one of extreme jealousy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Later that morning, Ollie and Bartleby took a taxi to Arrowtown to retrieve Ollie’s car. They went into an art exhibition and watched some live music, all part of the continuing festival.
Having a three-legged dog with him was a bit of an impediment, Ollie discovered. Everything took twice as long, as everyone stopped Bartleby, patted him, discussed him, and admired him for his bravery. Ollie had often wanted to be more inconspicuous, having grown up believing that everyone had read about Oliver’s latest, fictional, sexual exploit and was staring at him. He knew intellectually that none of this was the case, but the few times it had proved to be true were so unfortunately memorable that they had tended to colour his whole life. He should have got a three-legged dog earlier, he realised. He was now merely an accessory for Bartleby’s adventures.
And just like that, Ollie had an idea for his next book. A dog, dumped, running after its owner’s car, falls into all sorts of adventures, including losing a leg, but still ploughs on, trying to catch its elusive owners. He bought a notebook, and he and the dog sat on his favourite white plastic chairs once more, while he drafted out the book. He considered possible endings for a while, tempted to have the dog finally returning to its owners, only to have in reality been killed in the accident where it lost its leg, and therefore be dead, and so the ending became a kind of
Pet Sematary
gore fest. Tempting. Bartleby didn’t seem too keen on this idea, and Ollie probably had to agree with him that it was a little derivative. And probably not the best idea for a children’s book. Ollie supposed he ought to end the book with a tearful reunion and cute kids weeping over the error that had seen the dog lost, not
dumped
. Possibly in a rose-covered cottage in Devon, he reflected somewhat bitterly. He grinned and had the dog turn away from the cottage at the end and head for the distant hills with a scruffy mutt he’d picked up along the way. Then he made the mutt a pedigree in disguise.
Ollie chuckled as he noted both the dogs were male.
Ack, he wasn’t too proud to be accused of having a hidden gay agenda.
Humming
Let it Go
, Ollie led the dog back to the car and they headed for home. Once more, that burning desire to start writing had come over him. There were an endless number of possible adventures the dog could encounter on his travels, and in his mind Ollie had just had him meet the last Moa alive—this twelve foot tall, flightless hunk of a bird having been hiding in the depths of the New Zealand rainforest—when he rounded the driveway to the house and saw the minivan.
He saw his mother, Luke, Jonas, David and Leticia, too, of course.
It was something of a shock, and clearly not only for him.
§§§
His greeting with his mother, Ollie realised rather sadly, only reminded him yet again of the things Tom Collins would never know. However estranged you were, however much water under the bridge had flowed on by, family was family. They gave each other rueful glances and then his mother embraced him only to pull away and say, “It was Horatio Roseberry I was trying to remember—at that party we went to. Dreadful chap. And what on earth have you done to your hair?”
“Hello, Mother.”
Greetings were exchanged and there had been some changes with everyone, not just Ollie. Leticia not only sported a wedding ring, she also carried more visible evidence of her commitment to David by struggling out of the vehicle belly first, with a shy smile of embarrassment. “Hello.” Ollie couldn’t help but stare. She nodded. “Twins, apparently. Two months to go.”
“Wow.” Yeah, almost-PhD from Cambridge was utterly defeated by the idea of two sets of eyes…and feet…and
brains
…inside someone’s
body
…Ollie shuddered then chuckled at his own inanity and hugged her. “You look incredibly beautiful.”
David got a manly shake and congratulations and a small joke about publishing too vigorously, which he seemed to enjoy.
Bartleby then got noticed and that took most of the pressure off Ollie, because, of course, even though it was his mother,
his mother
, he was now in the presence of the woman who’d tricked and used a vulnerable man to her own advantage.
And for the first time, Ollie realised that he wasn’t thinking this about himself. As he watched his mother retying Bartleby’s neckerchief into a more stylish design, Ollie felt a flare of anger on Tom’s behalf for the real victim of his mother’s scheming. She’d done it
for
him, not
to
him, and crazy as it was, she’d been right. Look at him now.
Tom, however…Ollie closed his eyes metaphorically to remembrance of the shed as he’d closed them for real the first time he’d seen it.
Tom needed rescuing, and Ollie was doing the best job he knew how.