Charles crawls up to run his lips across Loris’ pectoral muscles – a treasure he wasn’t the first to discover but intends to claim ownershipof. ‘So… by his logic, you’re not possessive of my face?’
‘Sorry, I enjoy spreading my passions. That being said, I’m still not sure if I’m gonna be able to share my portraits of you.’
Charles twists his neck to peer at the drawing, whose photographic realism is even more puzzling from a distance. His reflection may be split, his friends would recognise him in a second. Fortunately, no one follows Loris’ account.
Unfortunately, no one follows Loris’ account.
Charles shouldn’t trust his reasoning in the direct aftermath of a soul-cleansing sexual experience, but he elects not to second-guess this conclusion.
‘You can upload it.’
He resumes kissing Loris’ skin, recalling how it burnt against his own, missing the sensation, craving for more. Craving for longer and freer. He’s only tiptoed around the new world he’s unlocked. Now that he’s familiar with what it looks, sounds and feels like, he can’t wait to lose himself in it.
The obsessive thoughts he already struggled to muffle during work meetings and family dinners will become a constant problem. But they might also be a salvation, keeping him from approaching another new world.
A devastated land, cold and plunged into darkness, because the sunlight won’t reach it from the other side of the Channel.
No. He’s doomed if his mind manages to go there while he’s still lying between Loris’ naked limbs.
‘What was the sigh for?’
Charles could kiss Loris and make him forget that he sighed. Or kiss Loris to forget why he sighed. But it’s wiser to save the kissing for later, to distract himself from painful answers.
‘What’s with the “three years in London”rule?’
Loris lifts Charles’ chin.
There’s no surprise in his eyes, no annoyance towards this odd-timed return to the topic of their argument. Unlike what Charles accused him of earlier, Loris knows who he’s dealing with.
‘Initially, I was here for only six months. If it’s any consolation.’
It should be, now that Charles is fully aware of what he would have missed. But the confirmation that Loris’ stay in London was framed by an hourglass from the start won’t work out in his favour.
‘I stayed because I enjoyed my life here, I made really good friends, I got involved in the rugby club. But there’s too much I want to do. So spring 2019 is the deadline I gave myself. Now, funny story, back in October my mum said, “Don’t meet someone now!” A week later, a twat and his pen showed up.’
‘You hadn’t met anyone in London before? Looking the way you do?’
Charles lies down on his side, his cheek on the pillow, and Loris wedges his knee between his thighs.
‘No connection worth sharing with her. Except one, but he turned out to be a self-obsessed entitled brat.’
‘Who was he? I probably know him.’
Loris caresses Charles’ skin around his pendant. ‘I’m not telling you, he wasn’t out.’
‘Great. Now I’ll wonder who you’ve hooked up with whenever I’m at a party.’
‘Just forget about it.’
‘You chose an all-things-obsessed brat, remember?’
Loris laughs, his eyes so fond and his fingertips so gentle, it dispels most of the doubts that have crippled Charles until this very look and this very touch. Loris did choose him, and he loves him, for all he is and everything he’s not, rather than who he used to be or what hecould become. Charles is real, yet enough, for the one person he would be willing to change for.
He needs to turn this certainty into light to aim at the shadow looming over their tomorrow.
‘What are your plans after your cousin’s wedding?’
‘Some time home to begin with. Then in July, I’m gonna supervise a rugby camp in the south of France. In August, I’m going on holiday with a few friends. And after that, the idea is to move abroad again. My mind is set on Italy.’
