Twenty-seven

Caspien still had another week at home before flying back to La Troyeux for his final term, so it felt like a cruel and unusual punishment to have to keep going to school knowing he was home at Deveraux.

I wanted to be with him more than I wanted to skip school. Though, I’d also never wanted to skip school more in my life. I was again dreading it. Ellie hadn’t mentioned it on her socials, but Georgia had posted some vague inspirational quote on her page late the night before that I assumed was aimed at me: Hurting someone is as easy asthrowingastoneintheocean; butyouwill never know how deep that stone will go.

I didn’t get it.

Alfie had texted me around the same time:

Wat the fuck, bro?

I’d ignored it.

I’d begun to feel the coming apart of the relationships that had defined my high school life up until this point. In a year, I would be in another city surrounded by strangers and possibilities, and it was this that I clung to as I walked into registration.

Ellie seemed to have been watching the door avidly, though looked away quickly when I entered. I sat down next to Alfie and made a determined attempt to ignore the glare he aimed at the side of my head. He couldn’t exactly say anything with the girls at our backs, but as soon as we were out and heading to History, he all but dragged me into the toilet. He threw a loaded look over his shoulder at Georgia, who was dragging Ellie off in the opposite direction toward the arts building.

“What the fuck, Jude?” he said, eyes wide. “You broke up with Ellie??! Before the prom?”

I went to the drinking tap in the corner and bent my head. “The prom was the last thing on my mind at the time, Alfred.”

“Then what was on your mind? I don’t get it? Why’d you do it?”

“Because I didn’t want to go out with her anymore. Why else?”

This seemed to completely blow his mind because his eyes became even wider, blonde eyebrows hitting his hairline. “That doesn’t even make sense, mate.”

“Doesn’t it?” I said. “Why do you care so much, Alf? Focus on your own girlfriend, yeah?”

He stalked toward me. “Yeah, well, my own girlfriend is acting like it’s my fucking fault or something.”

“Well, that’s just stupid. Why would it have anything to do with you?”

“That’s what I said. I think she thinks you’re seeing someone else or something and that I knew about it or whatever.”

“Well, tell her it’s not true.”

“Eh, I did!”

“Then, I don’t know what to tell you. Or what you want me to do about it?”

He blinked at me. “What is even going on with you, mate?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing going on with me. Leave it alone. ” I pushed past him and out into the hall. He came after me, of course. Unable to let it go. Unable to understand that it wasn’t any of his business.

“Look, I know this year has been a bit crazy,” Alfie was saying, walking with me down the corridor. “Moving to Devs and working with Luke and then Beth’s baby and mocks and prepping for A’s, but like, Els and you were great.”

I wanted to stop and hit him, and I probably would have if I thought it would make him shut up. But I knew it wouldn’t. He’d still be shortening words and rabbiting on and acting like he knew everything about everything when in fact the entire wealth of Alfie’s knowledge extended to Rugby Sevens, his PlayStation 5, and the John Wick films. Some perverted part of me wondered what he’d do were I to turn around, and say very slowly and clearly, that I’d broken up with Ellie Powell, the hottest girl at school, because I preferred having Caspien Deveraux’s cock shoved down my throat to kissing her. This, I knew, would have shut him up.

I slowed my steps and turned to him. “Look, Alfie, we’re both going to Uni next year. Me to Warwick and her to fucking Scotland and everyone knows long-distance relationships don’t work. I’m doing us both a favour. She’s hot and smart, and she’ll thank me that she’s single when she gets to Edinburgh. Even if she does hate me now.”

I let the words sink in, saw his expression turn, and then I added. “If you want me to talk to George for you – explain that this has nothing to do with you – then I will. Though I doubt she’d believe me. I’m sure she hates me as much as Ellie right now.”

Alfie smiled suddenly. “More mate. I think she hates you way more.”

Lunch was awkward. I sat with Josh and a few of his rugby friends a few tables away from Georgia, Alfie and Ellie. My sandwich tasted like wet cardboard, and behind me, I could feel Ellie’s hateful glare boring into my head.

I wanted to be home already. I wanted to see him. Kiss him. Hear his voice. It was worse knowing he was at Deveraux and not in another country, knowing that I could be with him now if I wasn’t here listening to chat about which girls the rugby lads wanted to take to the prom. He’d be going back to Switzerland in six days, and I resented everything that kept me from him.

I thought about skipping fifth and taking an Uber to the house, but I couldn’t be confident I wouldn’t see Luke on the way in. He worked on the grounds three days a week now, today being one. And there was no way I would be able to explain my presence there at this time of the day.

As I was leaving sixth, there was a text from him.

Caspien:

I’ve no idea what I used to do all day around here before you came along to entertain me.

Me:

read pretentious Russian literature and ride your horse.

Caspien:

I’ve already done both of those today.

Me:

well, I’ve studying to do. Not all of us had our place at Oxford confirmed when we were 5.

This wasn’t a lie. I did have studying to do, but we had agreed to do it together in the library later. But I wanted him to ask if I was still coming. I wanted to know that he wanted to see me. It was an urge I never grew out of; I would always leave plans we made open-ended, would always ask him things in a way I thought would induce him to tell me what I wanted to hear. It rarely worked.

Caspien:

You know as well as I do that if you want to getinto Oxford, then you need my help to do it.

Me:

You’re offering to help me?

Caspien:

I might be. I’ll want something in return though…

I smiled.

Me:

Maybe I don’t need your help.

Caspien:

We both know that’s a lie.

Me:

What is it you want?

I was stopped in the middle of the common outside the front of school, completely absorbed in the small flickering dots on the screen.

Caspien:

I think you know what I want, Jude.

I felt my dick harden in response to that.

Me:

Gideon home yet?

Caspien:

He’s due back tonight. About 10.

Me:

I’m just leaving school now. I’ll be there in an hour

This time, when I asked Luke to drop me straight at Deveraux, he opened his mouth to say something, and closed it, his eyes skipping very briefly from the road to me.

Finally, he said, “You and Cas are getting on pretty well these days, huh?”

There was a small flurry of panic in my chest, a manic beating of tiny wings. Luke’s face was easy, relaxed; nothing unkind or suspicious in it. Merely curiosity.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s alright, I suppose.”

Luke smiled, that same warm upturn of his mouth he always gave me when I did something that impressed him.

The door to the library had barely closed before Caspien had me pushed back against one of the wooden shelves and was kissing me hard. I dropped my bag on the floor and dug my hands into his hair. He scraped his teeth over my lip, bit and gnawed at my jaw and sucked what I felt would be a bruise into my neck.

“Did you miss me?” I asked.

“I told you,” he said against my skin. “I was bored.”

“You must have been really bored,” I panted.

“Extremely,” he said, kissing a path across my throat. He slid his hand over me, making an appreciative noise when he felt how hard I was. “Is this for me?”

“Of course it is.” The noise was building in my head, building to that place where it would turn white and loud. Pleasure sparked out everywhere, a million little firestorms all over my body.

“Did you think about this today?” he asked between sweet kisses.

“All day,” I managed.

He went to his knees, and I could do nothing but endure the inferno as it consumed me.

As distracting as he was, he was also an exceptional study partner. He posed interesting questions, reviewed texts from viewpoints I’d never have considered, and made fascinating arguments. He had a way of looking at the world that always brought everything into sharp, lucid focus. I was mesmerised. Spellbound. And by the end of that week, I had never been more in love with him.

I’d catch myself gaping in wonder at something he’d say or how quickly he’d be able to define the meaning of some overly wordy passage or poem and have to force my features into something more subdued. Less enthralled. His brain fascinated me. As much as every other part of him fascinated me.

He was then the smartest person I’d ever met. I thought of the boys I sat with at lunch talking about girls, sports, and video games, and I couldn’t understand how he could possibly be the same age.

Each day that week, Luke dropped me off at the big house after school, where Caspien and I would use our mouths and hands on each other first before committing solidly to studying.

It worked.

I’d never been more focused on revision, felt more prepared for an exam, or enjoyed schoolwork as much as I did that perfect week in April.

As we drew closer to the end of the week and his leaving me, a buzzing began under my skin and between my bones. A yawning pull that only made me more desperate for him, so I grew rougher with him.

On the Saturday before he left, I noticed two round symmetrical bruises on his hip bones where I’d dug my thumbs in too hard as I’d taken him in my mouth. The day before, I’d bitten his lip so forcefully it had bled onto my tongue.

He didn’t seem to mind these little stamps of desire, but they scared me. The ferociousness with which I needed him and with which I couldn’t bear to part with him, terrified me. I barely slept the night before he left for Switzerland.

The car was picking him up at eleven on Saturday morning, and he’d agreed to meet me at the birdwatcher hut at eight. I’d gotten up early and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, telling Luke and Beth I was going for a run. And I had run. All the way across the estate to the hut, so I was dripping with sweat by the time I got there.

This time, he was waiting for me, perched on the bench with his knee propped up as he scrolled his phone. He took one look at me – I held my breath, certain he’d refuse to touch me given the sweating, dripping state I was in – but a feral sort of look came into his eye, and he lunged at me.

“Christ, Jude. You taste so good,” he told me as he licked and sucked at the sweat at my throat and inhaled the damp hair curling at my neck.

We tumbled to the ground and tore each other free of our trousers, our impatient and hungry mouths devouring. I was on my back, and he was on top, and he wrapped his hand around us both and began to stroke.

I saw stars. Bright blinding lights of rapture sparking behind my eyes.

“Cas...fuck, that feels...”

“I know. I know.” He was moving his body on me like he did when he rode his horse, a powerful tightening of his thighs, the fluid movement of his arse up and down. “I love how hard you get for me, Jude. This big dick is always so fucking hard for me.”

“Shit...”

Caspien didn’t swear often, not as much as Josh or Alfie or other boys at school, or other girls at school, even, but when he did it was always in moments like this, when he was turned on and loose, his restraint unravelling. I loved when he spoke to me like this while he touched me; the scent, sound, and feel of him overwhelming every one of my senses.

He leaned forward and dropped a large, hot, mouthful of spit on our cocks.

“Have you ever gotten hard for another boy, Jude?”

I shook my head fervently.

“You know I haven’t.”

He smirked, looking pleased. “This beautiful dick only gets hard for girls and me. How peculiar.”

I wasn’t sure the former was even true at this stage. I didn’t even want to find out.

“Caspien.” It was a warning.

He still had us gripped in one hand, stroking lazily, but with the other hand he was digging the edge of his thumb into the slit, something that always drove me insane. Poking back and forth and around, almost like he was trying to widen the hole there. The sensation had been odd at first, but I’d grown to crave it. I even played with it when I was alone now, trying to understand the magic of it.

“When I come home again, I think I’ll let you put this beautiful thing inside me. Would you like that?”

Need pulsed out of the hole he was playing with.

“Fuck,” I said and thumped my head back against the mucky ground.

“Would you?”

“Yes. Fuck, Cas, yes. Fuck.”

“Would you fuck me hard and rough or slow and soft, do you think?” He spat onto our dicks again and began to move his hands faster, both together. “Tell me.”

“Hard.” I glared at him, that violent desperation taking over me again. I dug my hands into his thighs and moved my body in time with his, imitating the act I so badly wanted to do. “I’d fuck you so hard, Cas. So fucking hard you wouldn’t be able to sit on that horse for a week.”

He came, erupted, in a glorious white fountain all over me. His body arched as though he’d been shot through with an arrow from behind, all the grace and beauty of a dying Greek hero.

I came an instant later, pleasure moving through me quick and bright as my orgasm pulsed out over our hands and softening cocks.

When it was all over, I wanted to pull him to me, hug him tight and profess everything I felt inside, but I knew it would only ruin the moment. He shot me a sly, seductive smile and stood up. The weight of him lifting off my body felt like the dip of a rollercoaster.

He pulled two handkerchiefs out of the pocket of his riding pants and threw one at me. C.L.D was stitched prettily in navy into the cream cotton.

“What does the L stand for?” I asked as he began wiping himself down.

He shot me a look. “Lucifer.”

I rolled my eyes and stood to wipe myself clean of our expulsions.

When he was finished and had tucked his used handkerchief back into his pocket, he said, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don’t know what the L stands for.” He smoothed his hair back and avoided my eyes. “My father’s name began with an L. Or at least, that’s how she referred to him in her journal. The mystery was her parting gift to me.”

“So she did care about you then,” I said a little too energetically. “If she loved him and named you after him, then she must have cared about you.”

He gave me that look he sometimes did, the one which suggested he thought I was the stupidest person he’d ever met. But then I saw it, the tiniest glimmer, a dance of light behind his eyes. Innocent hope. It was snuffed out in an instant.

“Christ, I would like to live in your world for a day, Jude,” he sneered. “Is it summer all the time? Are the rivers flowing with chocolate? Unicorns prancing around?”

My cheeks flamed. “I was only pointing out th—”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

I didn’t want him to go on this note, not after this week and just now and because of everything that I felt and wanted from him now. I moved toward him.

“Okay,” I said placatingly. “Okay, I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again.” I bent my head to kiss him. His lips were cold, mouth unmoving. “Please. I’m sorry.”

His mouth opened like a flower, the inside warm and sweet, and he let me kiss him.

“I have to go,” he said when I pulled back. “I’ve not finished packing.”

He moved to go and I looped my hand around his wrist. “You’ll call me tonight? When you get there?”

“Yes, Jude.”

Letting go of him physically hurt.

“Cas,” I said as he pulled open the door.

He paused.

“I’ll see you in six weeks, okay?” I said.

Six weeks felt like a lifetime to me then. Impossible and vast.

“Yes. Good luck with the rest of term.”

“Thanks, I’ll need it.” I’d meant that getting through the rest of it without him here would be so brutal that I could barely let myself think about it. But if he guessed that’s what I meant, he didn’t react in any way.

I drank in every inch of his face – the perfect, elegant structure of it, the slope of his nose, the graceful way he seemed to breathe – as though it might be the last time I ever saw him.

In many ways, I wish it had been.