Page 24 of Bare
‘Come in.’
Rory stepped aside just enough to let Neil pass, which meant passing close. The pull again, concentrated in the narrow spacebetween his body and the doorframe. Neil walked through the gap without breathing and found himself inside a flat that confirmed everything he'd imagined and nothing he'd prepared for.
A sofa, large, low-slung, upholstered in a fabric that had once been charcoal grey and was now a topography of paint marks. A kitchen visible through an arch, a stovetop moka pot on the counter, a half-eaten packet of digestives beside it. Music playing low from speakers behind a stack of canvases.
The contrast with Neil's flat was total. He was entering a different language. Every surface held something. A jacket thrown over a chair. Photos tacked to the wall, a younger guy, Kieran it had to be, at various ages, gap-toothed and growing.
A bottle of red wine on the coffee table.
Two glasses. Still slightly damp.
Waiting.
Placed with a precision that didn't match the rest of the flat. Rory had set it out for him. Had opened the wine, had washed the glasses and placed them on the table. The hope embedded in the clean glasses made his chest contract.
It should have set his teeth on edge. Every instinct he owned, the instinct that aligned cushions and checked desk gaps, should have been screaming. Instead his body loosened. The chaos had a logic. Evidence of energy spent making things rather than tidying them.
‘So, this your flat?’
‘Mine. Bought it after the Whitmore sale. Two years back. Kieran needed somewhere that was ours, not ours-for-now.’
‘And… your brother? Is he…’ Neil heard himself ask.
‘At his girlfriend's. Won't be back till tomorrow.’ Rory closed the front door. The click of the latch was loud. ‘Anything you want.’
Neil's jacket was still on. His keys were still in his hand. He was gripping them hard enough that the teeth dug into his palm.
‘Rory. Listen.’ He turned to face him. Took a breath that stuttered. ‘Before anything… I have to be clear.’
Rory leaned against the closed door. Arms at his sides. Waiting. His face was unreadable, the face unreadable for once. The stillness was a concession: I'm letting you set the terms.
‘Just… sex.’ He said it like a rule. Like it might hold. The words came out hard and flat, exactly as he'd rehearsed them in the car and the shower. ‘Nothing else. No complications. My life… Freddie… comes first. This can't interfere with that. With anything.’
He met Rory's eyes. Tried to project conviction. Managed controlled desperation.
Rory was quiet for a beat. Two. He heard the words and what was underneath them.
He heard, too, the echo of other men in other rooms who'd said versions of the same thing.
Except Neil was standing in his living room with trembling hands and eyes that were terrified and open at the same time, and the one who'd said just sex was the same man who'd said honesty looking at a painting, and Rory couldn't make those two things fit.
His head tilted. A small smile, not the loaded one. His face said:I hear you. I hear the lie. I’ll let you have it.
‘Loud and clear, Neil.’ He pushed off the door. Took a step. ‘Just sex. No complications.’ Another step. Close now. Near enough to count the paint flecks on his collarbone, ochre and prussian blue against skin. ‘You came all the way here, on a Friday night, in your good jeans, smelling like you showered twice. Can’t waste that.’ His voice had dropped. Low and steady and very near. ‘So. How are we doing this?’
He didn't touch him. That was the devastating part. He stood there, six feet one of muscle and confidence, and looked at Neil's mouth and waited. Dared him with nothing but proximity and silence and the absolute certainty that the next move was Neil's.
The keys fell from Neil's hand. Neither of them looked down.
Neil grabbed a fistful of Rory's T-shirt and kissed him.
He had never kissed a man.
He'd had a man's hand on his cock in a car thick with pine freshener. He'd come in men's hands and in men's mouths and he'd tasted men's skin beneath his tongue. But he had never put his mouth on a man's mouth. Never. Because kissing was the act you couldn't file under transaction. Kissing meant you wanted the person, not just the body. And Neil had spent years making sure he never wanted the person.
His mouth landed off-centre. Caught the corner of Rory's lips, the soft skin at the edge, and adjusted, and the ring was smooth and Rory's mouth was warm and the collision of the two, metal and heat, stopped his throat from working.
His knees nearly buckled, literally, his legs went liquid, the muscles in his thighs giving way, and he gripped the T-shirt harder to stay upright. A sound came out of him that he would deny under oath.
