Page 28 of Undefined Terms

Then Celyn moves, down. The knees hit the floor, my floor, the carpet from the flat, the carpet I walk on in my boots. Celyn looks up. The face, the eyeliner, the eyes still unfocused from a minute ago. The buckle, the button. I watch from above and I can’t breathe and I can’t look away and the hands are careful and steady and mine are shaking against the wall.

The mouth, Celyn’s mouth, opens. Takes me in. Not the graze I half expect, the whole wet heat of it sliding down, the tongue flat and dragging under the head, the lips tight past the ridge, and my hand slaps the wall.

‘Christ. Celyn.’

A hum round me, pleased. Celyn pulls back slow to the head, tongues the slit, goes down again, deeper, the throat there for a second then gone. One hand splayed on my hip, holding me to the wall so I can’t push up into it. The other hand lower, cupping my balls, rolling them, then back, finding the place behind, the soft ridge under the sac, pressing, a slow firm circle that lights something up the inside of me.

‘There, no, fuck.’

The fingers pinch, just there, and the feeling forks, sharp and bright, and drags the whole thing up faster than I can stop it.

‘I’m going to, I can’t, I’m.’

Celyn doesn’t pull off. The mouth goes tight, the hand presses, and I come, fast, embarrassing, ten seconds maybe and less, down Celyn’s throat with my fist against the plaster and a sound that isn’t a word. Celyn takes it, swallows, keeps me in through the kick of it until I’m too much and slides off slow.

Celyn looks up, the smudge, the eyes, and says:

‘That’s the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.’

I get us up off the floor, onto the bed. Find their t-shirt where it landed and pass it over without thinking, because the floor’s cold and the shaking’s gone to the after-kind. Celyn watches me do it.

‘You listened,’ they say. Not flat now. ‘I told you to steer and you let me. People don’t, mostly. You did.’

‘You said it was the whole of it.’

‘It is.’ The mouth, the smudge. ‘Turns out it really is.’

Celyn left an hour ago. Kissed me at the door, slow, different from the street. No urgency, something else. I don’t know the word.

‘Tomorrow,’ Celyn said. ‘The bar. Normal.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Unless you want another three days.’

‘No.’

‘Good.’ The mouth. Then gone. The sound of trainers on the stairs. The door.

I’m in the bed, can’t sleep, the image won’t leave, Celyn’s face. The light from the window on that face. The sound. The one second where lips touched me and the body said: that’s it. Can’t hold it. Now.

I’ve never come that fast. One graze and the body threw everything away like it had been waiting for exactly this.

The jeans are in the laundry basket, the shirt’s on the floor, the jacket’s still by the door where Celyn pushed it off.

I lie there in the dark. The nail on the wall.

I want to go back. Right now. I want to walk to wherever Celyn is and put my hands on that waist and do it again. Better, slower, learn the sounds, learn the body. Find out what makes that expression happen. The head back, the throat, the grip on my shirt.

Tomorrow is too far, I’ll be there.

The body knows before the brain catches up. Skin remembers. Hands remember.

The alarm goes at six. I’m already awake, been awake since five, or four, or whenever the streetlight stopped being the only thing in the room and the grey started coming through the blinds. Doesn’t matter, the body’s up, the body’s been up.

I shower. The water hits my face and my hands and the backs of my knees and the skin feels all of it. Switched on. Everything louder than it was yesterday.

Yesterday.