Three

Hilary term started in the last days of a bleak and cold April. I had three papers due that week. I’d worked on them through Easter break while picking up extra shifts at PP. (I’d again managed to avoid going home to Deveraux) and felt confident as I submitted one early Monday afternoon to Professor Alexander.

I’d always enjoyed writing academic essays. It used a different part of my brain from the creative stuff, even if there was still an element of the creative about it. I enjoyed reading, and so it felt like a natural extension of that to write about the subjects, books, and theories I liked reading about.

The best thing about Oxford so far was the freedom I felt being able to read and write and learn about things that interested me as opposed to being told by a decades-old school curriculum. The scope of the curriculum here was infinite. It stretched from Beowulf to Dickens to Hemingway to Roth, and for the most part, allowed me to move in any direction through the history of English Literature that I wanted based on my own curiosities. The work wasn’t hard, not yet at least, but what was harder to adjust to was the fact that everyone here was smart.

I wasn’t the smartest student in class anymore; I was slightly above average at best and middling at worst. But there was some comfort to be found in that. It allowed me to keep my head down, listen, and learn. I didn’t have to lead discussions like I did back home. I didn’t have to impress anyone. I didn’t have form that I had to maintain. Each paper I submitted was a new chance to improve and show progress.

Oxford was a beautiful setting in which to learn. To sit and read some of the greatest works of literature, poetry, and prose ever written in a city steeped in what was a near-mythological wealth of history was a privilege. Some of the greatest minds that had ever existed had studied here, and I was lucky I got to do the same.

I thought about the nameless donor a few times a day. Though he’d still never confirmed it, Gideon was the form they often took in my head. Now that Cas was thousands of miles away and out of his life, and mine, I couldn’t understand why, if it was him, he couldn’t just tell me so. I’d mention my gratitude to the benefactor often so that if it was him, then he’d know.

Since I’d not been back to Jersey since starting university, we continued to exchange emails – Gideon didn’t text – where he’d ask me to tell him in extreme detail about my life here. He’d loved studying here. Had said this was where he was his happiest. Occasionally they invited old cohort’s back for ceremonials and he never missed a single one. I wondered if this was where he’d met the person who broke his heart, though I was always a little too scared to ask him that.

He’d still feed me tidbits of news about Caspien and Xavier, though it was far easier to skip over these when they were written down.

I was in the King’s Arms on a Wednesday night with Nikita and Irish Conn when Finn texted to invite me for a drink. I’d seen him a couple more times since our first drunken night in the wine bar, where he’d told me I was his type, though he’d never made any kind of move on me, and I still hadn’t decided if I wanted him to.

Me:

I’m in the Kings with a couple of friends. Come in.

He didn’t respond, so I wasn’t sure if he would, but twenty minutes later, he strolled through the door, completely unfazed by the strangers who glared at him suspiciously as he approached.

“Guys, this is Finn,” I said by way of introduction. “I know him from back home.”

This settled them. Nika grabbed a stool and sat it down between himself and me and pointed at it. Then he offered to buy him a drink.

“I’ll get these,” Finn said. “What’s everyone on?”

When he returned to the table with their drinks, plus a shot each, any lingering doubt about him vanished. It was apparently that easy to win over my two friends. Bast had a late shift at the bike shop but was due to come later.

Finn was easy to like. He didn’t dominate the conversation, was interested in other people’s stories more than he liked telling his own, and was generous with his debit card. He paid for another two rounds before Bast showed up, by which time we were all amiably drunk.

I was at the bar getting my first round since I’d got here when Bast sidled in beside me.

“Yes. He definitely wants to fuck you,” said Bast. We’d talked about Finn before, about how I wasn’t sure if he was into me in a sexual way or if he was just a naturally flirty person. “Or, he wants you to fuck him. Whichever way you prefer.”

I laughed a little nervously. There’d been no one since the drunken encounter on my birthday, which I didn’t like thinking about. Not to mention, I had no clue which way I preferred. Was I a bottom or a top? Finn would be the first guy I’d ever properly been with, and I felt drunk enough to find out. Drunk enough to forget how Cas was supposed to be the first. The only.

When the end of the night came, Finn walked back with us. Bast was the one to invite him up, the offer of some beer in his room that we were all welcome to share. In Bast’s room, Finn sat close to me, warm thigh pressed against mine, eyes catching mine whenever I looked at him.

He was good-looking. Not in the same way Cas had been, but no one was good-looking in quite the same way he was – his otherworldly beauty was almost frightening, but Finn was attractive in more than looks. He was one of those people who didn’t seem to carry an ounce of anxiety inside him, had an easy manner and was completely comfortable in his own skin. He reminded me a little of Alfie. Which made me realise that it came from a place of privilege, of never really wanting for anything. Or rather, never being deprived of anything.

Finn was real, solid, and when he smiled at me, there was no artifice in it.

He found me coming out of the bathroom, the one down the hall on the first floor shared by half the dorms. He was leaning casually against the wall as I stepped out into the hall, his legs crossed at the ankles, hands in his pockets.

He gave me an easy smile. “Your friends are cool.”

I moved to lean on the wall opposite. “Yeah, they are.”

He seemed to be considering something, then said, “So, I’ve been dropping hints since the day outside the Bodleian that I’m into you. I’m just not sure if you’re picking them up. So I thought I’d just ask.”

Warmth rippled across my chest and down. Life flooding into the cold parts of my body.

I liked how it felt.

“Was that a question?” I asked.

Finn laughed a little. “No, I guess technically it wasn’t.” His eyes, still sparkling, turned more determined, and he pushed off the wall and came toward me. When he was close enough that I could smell his shower gel, I straightened up and pressed myself back against the wall. Finn looked at my mouth and then leaned in and kissed me. It wasn’t hard, but it was determined. There was no subtlety in it; it was the sort of kiss that left no doubt about what he wanted. I couldn’t say now whether I kissed him back, or if I simply allowed him to kiss me.

He was warm, firm, and slightly taller than me, making me feel somewhat cocooned. Did that mean I’d be under him? That he’d be the one fucking me? Was that how it worked? I was sure suddenly that I didn’t want that. To be fucked.

I hadn’t known what I was before, but it seemed now I knew what I wasn’t.

When he pulled back, he met my eye directly and said, “That was, though.”

“I’m not a bottom,” I blurted. “I mean, I’ve never...I don’t want to do that.” I felt embarrassed, unqualified, and very young as the words left my mouth, and when Finn laughed I wanted a void to open up beneath my feet and swallow me into it. But his eyes were kind.

“I’m vers. But we can do whatever you want, Jude. Fuck, I wasn’t even expecting we’d fuck tonight.”

“Oh,” I said, still embarrassed.

“I’d actually really like to suck your dick,” Finn said. “If you’ll let me.”

I could only manage some version of a nod.

My dorm was as I left it earlier that day. Empty glasses by the bed – a habit I’ve still not grown out of – dirty clothes strewn across the carpet, textbooks open on the desk on the pages I’d last been reading. My laptop was on the unmade bed where I’d been watching a Belgian film at lunchtime. I flitted about scooping things up and reordering things while Finn sat at the desk chair, relaxed but rapt, watching me.

“I don’t give a shit about your room, Jude,” he said at last.

“Eh, oh, I know, but still.”

He waited silently for a few moments while I continued before he lost patience and stood. He took the empty glass from my hand and set it down on the desk, and then tugged me gently across the room to my bed. Nudging me to sit on the edge of it, he moved to settle between my legs and reached for the button of my jeans. His face was open and soft, a small fire of desire in his eyes that sparked something to life inside me.

“You have a really nice dick,” he said as he stared at it, hand slotting around its base. He leaned in and sucked it into his mouth without any further commentary.

I’d had three people suck my dick at this point in my life. (The girl I’d woken up next to on my birthday didn’t count, mainly as I couldn’t remember whether she did.) Each of them had distinctly different techniques. Finn’s, I decided, was the most enthusiastic. He seemed to enjoy it more than Ellie had, more than even Caspien had – though Cas’s was by far the most skilful. Just like when he’d kissed me in the hallway, Finn was determined in this too, and so I came shockingly quick.

He swallowed my climax with the sorts of sounds that made me think of a particularly tasty meal. I’d fallen back onto the bed, and when he was finished, Finn came to lie on his back next to me.

When my mind cleared and the fog of climax had lifted, I said languidly, “That was nice, thanks.”

He laughed. “Fuck, that’s the most depressing compliment I’ve ever gotten.” He punched me lightly on the shoulder.

I laughed back. “No, I mean, it was great. Really good. I enjoyed it a lot.”

“Stop talking, Jude.”

I was silent for a minute or so. “You want me to return the favour?”

“I actually don’t,” he said.

I twisted my head to look at him, but he was still all easy smiles and soft eyes.

“I meant, I don’t need you to. I get so fucking turned on when I’m sucking dick.” He gestured at his body. The zip of his jeans was down and his cock lay soft and spent outside of it.

“Hot,” I smiled.

“Yeah, you are.”

I punched him on the shoulder and we laughed again. It felt nice. Comfortable and easy.

We went back to Bast’s party a short while after, still laughing about something stupid. We sat a little closer together, caught each other’s eye a little more often, and brought each other a drink when one of us went to the box of beer on the window sill.

It set the tone for how it would be between us: comfortable and easy. We were mainly friends, but every now and then, need would flare up between us and we’d tug each other into empty rooms at parties to get each other off with our hands or our mouths.

Who instigated it would vary, but it would almost always lead to Finn on his knees with his eyes closed in bliss and his fist around his cock as he swallowed mine and we both tried not to make too much noise. Not that it mattered. Everyone knew. It was as open a secret as there was. I knew everyone was well aware of what we’d been doing when we’d come back into the room together, flushed and thirsty.

Sex, the full kind, never really came up. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me. We were attracted to each other, but after sating our desires with our mouths or hands, the rush of lust would fade, and we’d leave these encounters satisfied. I didn’t know if Finn slept with other people – we never talked about it – but it wouldn’t have bothered me if he was. What I had with Finn, casual and easy and comfortable, was more than enough.

My heart wasn’t ready or willing to take on anything else. Caspien’s memory was too big, too powerful, too all-consuming for there to be room for anything else. He was a ghost, and what I was living through then was a haunting. When I closed my eyes, and often too when I was awake, I could still feel his lips on mine and the touch of his breath on my neck.

One Sunday afternoon, I was in Milner’s Books, and a girl passed me who reminded me so much of him that it ached. I couldn’t understand what it was because her hair was dark, almost black, her eyes round and brown.

But after following her for a little while around the store, I understood what it was. It was the line of her neck that led up to her delicate girlish ears, and the way she held her head. Eventually, she caught my eye and smiled. Surprisingly, I hadn’t creeped her out.

For a second, I thought about giving her my number, asking her out for a drink. But then I remembered Ellie, and how her eyes would look like Ellie’s did that day when I ended it. When Cas came back into my life, I didn’t want there to be someone else I would have to hurt or leave, so I could have him.

I smiled back, then turned and hurried out of the shop and back to my dorm. I bought a bottle of vodka on the way and drank it with a stolen carton of orange juice from the common kitchen I promised to replace the following day.

When I think back now, I know that part of what stopped me crossing that line with Finn was that I didn’t feel confident yet in my own sexuality. I didn’t understand it enough to know what to do with it. There hadn’t yet been a need for me to define myself as bi or gay or anything else. I’d slept with girls, but I knew that didn’t mean I was straight. I’d loved a boy, and yet somehow I knew that didn’t mean I was gay.

Had someone asked me outright, I’m sure I’d have been able to come up with an answer, but I was still uncertain enough that it prevented me from taking things to that next level with Finn.

Though I was unsure if I wanted to fuck him, I was certain I didn’t want him to fuck me. And I didn’t know whether that was to do with orientation or preference or even Finn himself.

So, it was a scab that I left alone. We played around with each other, easily and indefinably, but always respectfully. No definitions, no rules, and no expectations.

And this worked perfectly, up until it didn’t.