Page 24 of Rhymes with Metaphor

T he next morning, they slept in till past noon at Reg’s insistence, milking the decadence of leisure for all it was worth. When they got up, Reg made Joel a breakfast of laverbread on toast with bacon. They ate on the patio.

“Scraped off the rocks of the Gower Peninsula,” said Reg. “How is it?”

“Salty.” Joel sent him a coy glance. “Is that how I taste?”

“Similar. Laverbread isn’t as runny.”

After a pause, Joel said, “Will you let me some time?”

“Perhaps.” Reg bit into his toast.

“I want to.”

“I know,” said Reg.

“Today?”

“Today, I’m taking you to the fair. So put on your finest clothes and meet me at the front door.”

Joel stretched elaborately and went upstairs. He came down again wearing the tangerine shirt with the top three buttons undone with no T-shirt beneath, and the new pair of trousers Reg had bought him with a lace-up fly, neatly tied.

Joel hugged Reg at the front door.

“Oh, Joel,” said Reg, luxuriating in the way Joel’s name filled his mouth so sweetly, the way Joel’s eager body filled the hollows of his own. Joel looked and felt so inviting, Reg was tempted to stay in with him all afternoon. But he’d made a promise.

“Let’s go and see if the blackberries are ripe,” said Reg.

Instead of taking Joel straight to the fair, Reg led him around the corner to the end of a cul-de-sac from which a lane led off behind the houses.

One side was bounded by a railway embankment, the other by a wooden fence high enough to block anyone from the houses seeing them.

The lane was so narrow, two people could walk abreast only if they were very permissive about their personal space, and so they moved along it, softly clasped to each other.

Blackberry bushes grew in a thick rough and tumble over the fence.

“Martin and I used to pick these and put them in our plastic sandcastle buckets, and if we gathered enough, Bethan would make us blackberry tarts. Come and look.”

The first one Reg found was red.

“Can I try?” said Joel.

“It’ll be sour.”

“I don’t care. I want it.”

Reg plucked the berry and held it out to Joel, who leaned forward and took it from Reg’s hand with his mouth. Reg felt Joel’s soft lips on his fingertips and shivered.

Joel bit the berry and winced.

“I did warn you, cariad,” said Reg. “Spit it out if you need to.”

But Joel swallowed it.

They went looking in the bush together, grappling gingerly among the prickles, disturbing a bee that hummed past them.

Reg, peering into the bushes, found a darker one. “This one should be sweeter.”

He fed it to Joel, and Joel sucked the tip of his finger.

“Nice,” said Joel, chewing it with his eyes half shut.

Reg could see a trace of dark hair in the V of his tangerine shirt.

Reg touched it with his thumb. Joel lifted his head, and Reg moved closer and his lips touched Joel’s.

They held still for long seconds. Joel’s mouth was tacky and tart with blackberry juice, warm, and full of summer, and it softened and relaxed under Reg’s.

It was a sweet kiss.

Joel sighed quietly as Reg pulled back.

“Was that your first kiss?” Reg whispered.

“Yes,” Joel breathed.

“Did you mind it?”

“I liked it,” said Joel quietly.

“You didn’t say.”

“My mouth was full.”

There was a streak of purple juice on Joel’s chin, and with his half closed eyes, Joel was looking into Reg’s with pure affection, intense and endearing.

It must have been all that build-up. Leaf shadows flickered over their bodies—white, black, white, black—in the muffled humid air.

He took handfuls of Joel, holding his ribs gently, reassuring himself he wasn’t imagining this.

Joel’s hand came to rest on Reg’s back. This time, they moved in unison and met halfway.

Joel opened his mouth slightly as the kiss went on.

Clearly, he didn’t know what he was doing, so Reg led him gently, touched the point of Joel’s upper lip with the tip of his tongue and let his tongue play on it awhile, and Joel shivered in his arms.

Reg hadn’t properly kissed anyone in years.

He and Flip had been together for six years, long enough that they generally skipped the kissing and went straight to fucking when they reunited.

Reg didn’t want to skip anything with Joel.

He wanted to experience every single first time with him, to savour every moment and make it last. But what he really wanted, if he was honest with himself, was to return to his youth, those days when he and Flip were Joel’s age and they’d first acknowledged their feelings, before the stress of his profession had worn Flip down and made him jaded and paranoid.

Or back to more innocent days when he and Martin had been children, building sandcastles and racing the tide.

Reg pulled back, mouth wet and sticky from Joel’s, and he breathed, “You are the most beautiful, unutterably precious creature I have ever met.”

Joel laughed. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t speak, then. I want to squeeze you till your juice runs out and then imbibe you all afternoon.” Reg kissed Joel again, revelling in the feeling of engulfing him, and in the feel of Joel’s mouth.

Their kisses became prolonged, the breaks between them shortening, Joel gasping each time, until Reg coached him on how to breathe while they kissed.

“I can’t,” Joel whispered.

“You can. It’s like breathing underwater in a dream.”

Joel gradually relaxed, and his breathing evened out. As Reg kissed Joel, his awareness spread along the laneway and spilled into the road. He could feel the breeze riffling the water in the lake and feel the warm tarmac on the road.

If it was up to Joel, they would stay here until someone discovered them, and maybe even afterwards, but Reg decided it was time to call a halt to the proceedings because, for his part at least, the kiss was growing much too heated for a place this public.

Reg drew back, but Joel followed him with his mouth, holding him, refusing to let go. Reg indulged him for a few moments longer before breaking the kiss.

“Was that nice?” Reg whispered.

Joel licked his bottom lip. “Reg?”

“Yes?”

“Can you come, just from kissing?”

Reg laughed. “It’s never happened to me.”

“I think I will if you keep kissing me. It’s a good hypothesis, because it’s testable.”

“Then, we shall have to test it. But not yet.”

“Why not?” said Joel.

“Because I promised to take you to the fair.”

“Will it be better than this?”

“It’ll be different. And while we’re there, you’ll remember this kiss, and you’ll get so hard you’ll ache. You’ll be bursting by the time I take you home. And when we get home, we can do this again and again and again, all evening, for as long as you like.”

Reg kissed him one last time, and he pulled a soft sound of pure longing from Joel.

“Well, my little fox,” said Reg. He groped in the brambles, plucked another blackberry, and crushed it against the wooden fence, tracing the word corrupt along the board with its juice.

“Have you considered a notebook?” said Joel.

Reg clapped him on the back of the head playfully, then put his arm around Joel’s shoulders and led him out of the lane. The hardest part was letting go of Joel when they came to the road. Still, Joel persisted in being so close they continually brushed against each other as they walked.

It was a gorgeous afternoon. Generous heat welled up from the asphalt, and above them, pale grey cloud held it in.

At the fair was the smell of candy floss and deep-fried potatoes, coloured lights wheeling in the sky, and sounds bloomed from the arcade and wheezed from machinery as the rides spun around and around.

“You’ve got my fingerprints on your shirt.” Joel pointed.

“You’ve marked me for yours, have you?” said Reg, surveying the purple stains.

Joel looked at him, half laughing. He had never looked so innocent and so fetching.

“Now listen,” said Reg, holding him by the shoulders. “I am going to take you on every ride until you’re so dizzy, you’re toppling, and then I’m going to stuff you with greasy, wonderful food. And then I’m going to bring you home and take shameless advantage of you.”

And Reg did as he’d promised, and after the last ride, with Joel weak and wobbly, Reg took him for gelato at the ice cream parlour.

“Peach,” said Reg, handing the cup to him.

They ate on the promenade overlooking the beach.

“Good?” said Reg.

“This is the best day of my life,” said Joel.

Reg felt absurdly pleased.

There was now blackberry juice and peaches and sweet cream around Joel’s mouth, and Reg couldn’t help himself. He reached over and wiped him clean with a napkin, and Joel laughed like a child and leaned against him.

After the fair, they walked home along the causeway in the early evening light, the sky like blue-grey chalk and the music of the fair behind them.

“I can smell woodsmoke,” said Joel. “Let’s see where it’s coming from.”

And he ran along the road with Reg in tow, and when they found the house with the chimney gushing smoke, Joel asked why someone would burn wood in the summer.

“Comfort, I suppose,” said Reg.

Joel took Reg’s hand in the gathering dusk.

They went back along Blackberry Lane. Midway, Joel stopped and pressed himself against Reg.

They both leaned in together and kissed, hard, intense, with increasing urgency as a freight train grumbled and squealed along the top of the embankment behind the lane.

Reg had never desired anyone or anything as much as he wanted Joel right then.

After a time, their mouths broke apart with a hard pop, Joel taking surging breaths.

“Touch me,” said Joel.

“Let’s go inside.”

“Now. Please.”

“If you insist,” said Reg, checking to make sure they were alone before he kissed Joel again and put his cupped hand between Joel’s legs, startled to discover how hard Joel was, the material of his trousers tight against his palm. Joel jumped at the contact.

“All right,” said Reg. “You don’t want to come in the lane.”