“You’re giving it to me?”
“Only if you promise to fuck whatever toilet water you’re currently using in the bin.”
We’re both grinning our heads off. Then, out of nowhere, Lando pulls my T-shirt over my head, tosses it across the room to a pair of armchairs, and sprays me with the fragrance. I can’t smell it, but my heart is racing.
“Fuck, that smells so good,” he says, crowding into the space between my shoulder and jaw and sniffing deeply.
He’s close, ridiculously close, but I don’t move away. My dick stirs.
“What does it smell like?” I’m using every ounce of concentration I possess to keep my voice even, to stop my breath from hitching. It would be so cringe if now’s the time I get an erection.
Lando inhales again and pulls back. His cheeks are a little flushed, but he doesn’t seem embarrassed. “Figs, and basil, and tomato leaf.”
“Okay . . . but what do those things smell like?”
“Fuck, I . . . don’t know. Uh, I guess it smells clean and fresh, like grass . . . no. Wow, okay, it’s really difficult to describe scents to someone who’s never smelled anything.”
“It is. There aren’t as many words for smells as there are for sight or sound,” I say. “You kind of have to phrase it in terms of emotion, though I know people have different emotions about everything, so it might not be the same for you but . . .”
“Okay, okay . . .” Lando tucks his head into the gap by my neck and breathes in again.
I ignore the way the lower half of my body responds to his proximity.
Hey, Little Harry, don’t start things up now. You wouldn’t work for me earlier, and now you’re too late for the party.
“It’s a happy fragrance,” Lando says. I’m trying to think of it as though he’s a dog and I’m a tree covered in piss. Not a good time to be getting aroused. “It’s like a creamy and sumptuous kinda smell, but also young and sparkling. It’s like . . . an intelligent scent. That sounds so stupid but . . . I don’t know, it just feels right on you. It smells comforting, like a place you want to come back to. Like a bench in a tranquil park or a beach at sunrise. Like reading abook you already know ends with a happy ever after. Like . . . watchingThe Muppet Christmas Carol.”
Abruptly Lando sobers and erects himself to his full twelve hundred feet of height.
I can’t think of anything to say, and a heavy silence hangs between us for a while.
It just feels right on you.
Like a place you want to come back to.
Comforting.
I’ve never wanted to be able to smell something so badly before.
“Do you want to borrow some PJs?” he asks, piercing the stillness in the same way jamming a pair of scissors into a balloon would.
I hide my gasp with an, “Um . . . actually, I sleep pretty much naked. Will that be a problem?”
Lando shakes his head. “Just don’t try anything.”
“I wasn’t planning on,” I say. That ship has probably long since sailed. Besides, I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun I’ve had this evening.
13
Saturday 3rd May 2025
Lando
Harry Ellis sleeps naked. Not “pretty much naked” as he’d claimed to last night, but completely nude.
Nood, bare, starkers, full moon, birthday suit, buck naked. Dick and balls flapping everywhere.
In fairness, he didn’t start off that way.
