Page 41 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

ISAAC

I woke to the warmth and weight of Ezra curled around me, one long leg draped over my hip and the hard line of his cock up against my arse.

“Morning,” he murmured as I stirred. He pressed himself in a bit tighter and reached down for a friendly stroke. “And what a delightfully refreshing way to start it.”

“Mmm. What about Jonty?”

Ezra laughed. “Whilst you’ve been sleeping like the dead, Jonty has been up, had his cornflakes, had a wash, discussed the state of the nation, decided he was too wheezy to do any schoolwork but not so wheezy he couldn’t play a couple of rounds of his game du jour on the PlayStation, had some meds, and then gone back to bed.

He’s out for the count but feeling better.

Snoring like a chainsaw. So we’ve got loads of time. ”

“For what?”

“One of these.” He wriggled closer still, if that were indeed possible, cuddling my junk like his favourite plushie. “A snugglefuck. Invented for slacking doctors with yet another day off.”

“You’re going to have to teach me what to do. Usually at this point, I’m feigning sleep or an urgent appointment while trying to retrieve an AWOL sock from under the bed.”

“Then you’ve been missing out. Morning sex is the best thing ever.” Ezra paused a beat. “Unless you’re sharing a jail cell with a psychopath, of course.”

Sniggering, I relaxed into his snugglefuck.

To love it. To ease into the caress of his confident hand, twisting up and over my swollen head.

His drowsy kisses, his biscuity warm bed smell.

The heat of his breath on my neck did things to me I wasn’t expecting.

When his lips planted a path there, I shuddered, biting back a whimper.

I felt like my soul was answering his, saying, oh, so this is what it should be like .

He fiddled with something behind me, and then his lubed dick found a home between my clenched thighs, skimming my sensitive hole and my taint.

With small rocking movements, he got himself off against me, wrapping us up so tightly together I couldn’t have squeezed a cigarette paper between us.

And all the time working my dick, his panting gusts on my neck matching his thrusts against my hole.

Making me come took embarrassingly little effort. I finished him off with my hand. Then after we mopped up, we settled into bed again with two cups of tea and mundane plans for the day.

Like we’d been doing this together for all our lives.

Tomorrow, I’d be back at work. Five long days before my next day off.

I’d dragged my heels towards the hospital plenty of times, not in the mood for the predictable shitshow that lay ahead.

But today, for the first time ever, I genuinely didn’t want to go.

I wanted to stay here, in my flat with Ezra and Jonty, which, overnight, had been turned into a home.

I wanted to do the laundry, empty the dishwasher, take Jonty for a wander into the park across the road.

“I listened to what you said,” I told Ezra as, reluctantly, he dressed for work.

“About the mid-range electric car?” He sat on the bed next to me and planted a kiss on my nose. “And swapping it for a Porsche? Cool, babe. I’ll help you choose. Fuck-off yellow would be a great colour.”

I swatted him around the head, rolling my eyes. “No, I’m keeping that Golf forever, just to piss you off. I meant not becoming a cardiac surgeon. I… I’m going to have another go at the exam, but I think you’re right.”

A couple of weeks earlier, a sheaf of paperwork had arrived from the solicitor, David Trethowan, relating to the blasted Fitz-Henry memorial medal.

What with Ezra, exams, work, and a weird sort of grief I was gradually coming to terms with, I’d clean forgotten about it.

Mustard Michael, bless his interfering cotton socks, had already produced a shortlist of nominees.

But as I leafed through, spreading them out on the coffee table, I felt my will to live seeping out and disappearing through the floorboards.

Two Ruperts, one Henry, and three Charles.

In terms of diversity, he might as well have been selecting English cricket team sheets from the 1920s.

Home Counties, XY chromosomes, and so terribly Anglo-Saxon.

“Do you want to play Sackboy with me on the PlayStation, Uncle Isaac?” interrupted a breathy voice.

Jonty stood right next to me, really close, in that freaky, oblivious way that children had of entering your personal space uninvited.

But… Uncle Isaac . My belly dissolved into a warm puddle.

How I adored the sound of that. For the first time ever, I didn’t mind a child breathing down my neck. I’d never heard of Sackboy, mind.

“Or we could play something easier?” he suggested, seeing my hesitation. “Although if we play Sackboy, I’ll let you be Oddsock. He runs quicker than Sackboy and jumps off walls.”

“I’d love to.” How could I say no to those bottomless brown pools? After all, I was yet to manage the same with his father. “But I warn you now. I’ll be rubbish.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be better than Daddy. I have to let him win quite often. Otherwise, he might stop playing with me.”

One nebuliser, a packet of chocolate digestives split between us, and a marathon gaming session later, three things became clearer.

One: Sackboy’s adventures through the Manglewood were like crack cocaine; I hadn’t thought about work or exams once.

Two: in a short space of a morning, Jonty had purloined his dad’s knack of wrapping me around his little finger.

Three, he was an attention pickpocket. My pile of surgical textbooks lay untouched.

Ezra came back after his lunchtime busking set.

My pulse quickened at the steady rhythm of his busy, bright footsteps, tilting my world toward a better place.

Plopping himself between us, he planted a wet sloppy kiss on Jonty’s cheek, which Jonty brushed off with a ‘yuck’, and a more tender one on mine.

Jonty wasn’t watching, too busy catching Dreamer Orbs, but I blushed like a teenager caught canoodling in front of his parents.

One of Ezra’s long arms snaked around Jonty.

His other hand, cool from the outside air, rested lightly on my thigh.

“My two favourite boys look like they’ve had a constructive morning. ”

“I’ll have you know I built a pen to round up the Banana Bandits,” I answered indignantly. “And herded fifteen of them into it.”

“Yeah, but then he ran out of Knight Energy and they all escaped again, Daddy! Uncle Isaac’s even worse at Sackboy than you!”

“What?” The absolute fibber! “That’s not what you said when I collected that Orb.”

Jonty giggled. “I was being nice, so you’d carry on playing.”

Ezra squeezed my thigh. “You’ve been suckered, Isaac, babe.”

The abandoned pile of shortlisted names sat on the low coffee table. Ezra picked a few CV’s from the top. Then smirked.

“Yes, I know,” I said, before he came up with a sharp witticism. “I haven’t decided what to do about it yet.”

Ezra tapped the top sheet, the first page of Dr Rupert Kavanagh’s CV, before executing an excellent impression of Mustard Michael. “Schooled in the Surrey countryside, whereupon he captained the first team at rugby, followed by Cambridge, followed by a stint at the professorial unit at King’s.”

“Some people would sell a kidney for that gig,” I commented.

“Whereas others just know the right people.” Ezra tossed the CV back on the pile.

“At risk of sounding like a stuck record, dear Daddy isn’t alive anymore.

You can ditch this prize and he’ll never know.

Poor Rupes and his cronies will have to soldier on without the Fitz-Henry medal opening even more doors for them.

” He pulled a face. “I daresay they’ll survive. ”

I shook my head. “Can’t, I’m afraid. The money is in a trust. I checked with David Trethowan.

One bursary to be awarded every year, of ￡10,000 adjusted in line with inflation, to be put towards the cost of exams, courses, conferences et cetera.

Those are the rules. Mustard Michael will be baying for my blood if I don’t follow them. ”

Ezra shrugged. “Bend them a bit, then. Or add some extra conditions, such as the successful candidate can’t own a Barbour jacket, have an understanding of the rules of lacrosse, or be friends with people called Tiggy and Bunny.”

“Give the money to the person best at Sackboy,” piped up Jonty. “You two losers would never win it.”

He got a cushion thrown at him for that, by his dad. “You should have kept quiet, buddy, instead of drawing attention to the fact you’ve been on that thing for hours. Won’t do your asthma any good, you know, sitting in front of all these computer games.”

At that, Jonty rolled his eyes. “He’s lying, isn’t he, Uncle Isaac?”

“Um…yes.”

That got me my own cushion in the face.

“But it’s time we called it a day,” I amended. “It might not be bad for your asthma, but my ego is on the floor. You’ve thrashed me.”

In a firm daddy voice that had me hiding a chuckle, Ezra warned Jonty not to ask me to play another game with him and that, after he finished this one, to find something more productive.

Like looking up the answers to the volcano worksheet so he didn’t fall behind with his geography schoolwork, or to draw a nice picture for when the new baby arrived. Jonty made a duh sound at that one.

“Won’t you play a game with me?”

“Nah, mate. I’ve got to phone the council about getting us another flat. Or getting ours refitted. The one’s up by the middle school are nice—closer to Mummy, too. But there’s a waiting list.” He turned to me. “Might be worth seeing if I can jump the queue a bit if I get support from the GP.”

“Do they all need a month’s rent deposit?”

Ezra sighed. “Yes. And no, don’t even begin to?—“

“Calm down. I was only asking.”

Banned from Sackboy, Jonty trailed after me into the bedroom. Seemed I’d made myself a friend. Sitting on the end of the bed, he examined my furniture with interest.

“Where did you sleep last night?” he asked.

“Um…”

I froze. Why couldn’t he have directed this question to Ezra when they were rolling around in Isaac’s own bed together earlier this morning whilst I’d sat at the kitchen table cramming for a mock revision paper?

As I busied myself folding up clothes that never normally got folded, Jonty patiently waited for me to answer.

Oh lord, already I was going to have to explain gay people. To an inquisitive ten-year-old. Exactly how unprepared was I for this conversation? Fully aware my cheeks were turning scarlet, I sucked in a deep breath.

“I… um… I slept in here too?”

Jonty tutted. “I know that, silly. I meant which side of the bed?”

The breath left me in a deep whoosh. “Th-this side.” I pointed to the left, and he gave me a triumphant look straight out of his father’s playbook.

“I guessed. Daddy stole the pillows. As usual.”

While Jonty was testing out the springs, the pillow thief himself appeared in the doorway. A minute later than ideal but thank fuck anyway.

“Daddy?” Jonty cocked his head, frowning. “If I have a baby brother, will I have to share a bed with him when I stay at Mummy’s?”

Ezra shook his head. “Nah, not for a while. He’ll be too small. Don’t want to roll over in the middle of the night and squash him.” He grinned. “And he’ll poo in his nappy, mate. You won’t want to wake up to that.”

“Yuck, no.” Jonty pulled a face. “I don’t want that in my bed.

Perhaps I’ll wait until he’s older before I invite him over to ours for a sleepover.

” His sharp, Ezra-like gaze switched between the two of us.

“Not as old as you two waited. I saw you kissing yesterday, in the kitchen.” For a second, he seemed uneasy.

“On the lips. Is it okay for brothers to do that?”

The bottom dropped out of my world. Ezra, however, hardly missed a beat.

“They don’t normally. But the thing is, buddy, although Isaac’s my brother, his mummy and daddy are different to mine.

Granny was once married to Isaac’s daddy.

After she died, we grew up in the same house, and Isaac’s mummy—Janice—and Daddy looked after me.

” His lip curled in contempt. “Sort of. But you and your new brother have the same mummy, so you’ll be like you and Freya. ”

“I’d never kiss her on the lips. That’s yucky too. I don’t even like holding her hand; Mummy always makes me when we cross the road outside their house.”

“Exactly.” Ezra’s eyes flicked to mine, no doubt sensing my sigh of relief. “So it’s okay for me to kiss a brother like Isaac, whose parents aren’t my parents. How we want to be with each other can take on any size or shape.”

Chewing his lip, Jonty fondled the corner of the duvet as his growing brain absorbed yet another layer of complexity known as modern family life.

Then, with a precise nod as if he’d cleared a few things up, he lifted his dark head.

The mischievous grin spreading across his gap-toothed face was as blessedly bright as the morning sunshine.

“Can it be a big hexagon?”