Les Noyades

18: In the Orchard

Those few hours after Sédar spoke to him would perhaps be the most influential hours of Rumi's life. He had been so disoriented by his talk with Sédar that at first he could hardly think what to do with the minutes that followed it, let alone everything else— for Yves was in his room when he returned to it, with his face full of talk and something else. Apprehension, Rumi thought, but he did not question it. He had too much of his own thought dashing against his conscience.

"I waited for your father to go to bed," Yves told him, crossing his legs surreptitiously. "And then for Sédar. And now I've waited for you to come to bed. Come here."

Rumi knelt at Yves' feet and watched up at him with wary eyes. Yves put a hand either side of his face and leaned down to kiss him; how Rumi had missed that, and how it excited every part of him to have Yves' lips pressed daringly against his own once more.

"There," Yves whispered. "I've broken the spell."

"Spell?"

"Sédar made you drink his tea. I think it makes you go mad."

Rumi did feel quite mad, but he did not think it was for the tea— he saw it as lying at Yves' feet, just as he knelt there now, with Yves' fingers stroking tenderly at his cheeks.

"You are so beautiful," Yves murmured. "I don't think it's the tea at all. You make me feel mad."

"I don't mean to."

"But you do. Let's sleep in the van tonight, okay?"

Rumi knew why.

-————&&&————-

Rumi rolled over, half sleeping, and felt a sudden warmth before realising that he was up against Yves' body. He had been trying desperately hard, so it stood, to keep Yves unaware of his presence— he was afraid, for whatever reason, of what was supposed to be happening. He did not quite know what to do with himself and his nerves had kept him from reaching true peace, along with the trench of cold they lay in.

He assumed that Yves would be asleep; it was late, the clock hand would be lowering again, and he was hardly conscious himself, but then a long arm came and wrapped around him.

"Come lie closer," Yves whispered, and Rumi stopped breathing.

He did as he was told, supposing that Yves would be cold also and wanted the extra warmth. Then Yves rolled him to lie on his chest.

"Kiss me," he breathed, and so Rumi did.

They collapsed into each other with palpable relief after so long apart, watching each other with a need to be touching, and always with company that so restricted their movements. Rumi had been unable even to touch himself at night for the nerves that scraped out his insides whenever he thought of what might happen if his father were to learn of his new infatuation, and this resistance had left him swollen and sore— that it was thickening already made him embarrassed, and this shame was curious when he considered how often Yves had touched him there.

Yves went to hold his hips and gripped him there as he began to rock his own upwards so that Rumi could feel how stiff he was in kind. His hand then dropped, once the petroleum jelly had been located, beneath Rumi's waistband to begin warming him up, stretching him out the way they had been night after night in the same place, all of it building up to this one moment— and Rumi could barely breathe for both worry and want. They seemed almost the same thing. God, how he needed it.

At last, Yves got to undressing the both of them and kissed Rumi sweetly before turning over to lie atop him so that he could spread his legs and press them further apart with the weight of his own body. Rumi's lips parted and he looked down, his brows furrowing as he comprehended their new holding.

"Be brave for me," Yves urged as he propped himself up on one hand and used the other to guide himself. "It will hurt."

Rumi realised that Yves was going to do it, they were going to have the accompaniment to sherbet, and he reached for his discarded shirt to stuff in his mouth as his eyes screwed up tight. He bit down hard with his jaw clenched painfully close whilst Yves positioned himself. Rumi couldn't see what was happening but he could feel it against him. Then it started to press and he took a deep, shuddering breath. Yves began to force himself inside and Rumi was rendered paralysed by how much more painful it was than he had expected— Culshawe had always led him to believe that there was nothing like it, that it was the most natural pleasure gifted to man, but how could that be when it was as if he were being torn apart? He sobbed gracelessly into the shirt he held to his mouth as Yves carved the first path in previously unconquered territory.

"It's okay?" Yves asked, evidently seeing how Rumi's face contorted. "Is it okay, baby?"

Rumi nodded and Yves slowly breathed in before hesitantly beginning to move his hips. After so long imagining such a moment, Rumi hardly knew what to think; it was so different to what he had thought it might be. Just weeks ago he had been watching young men out the window and dreaming only of their hands on his shoulder to bring him to his end, and here he was having sex in the back of a van with his father's student in the middling hours of a dark Scottish night.

"Oh, Rumi," Yves was sighing, his expression one of utter relief and release.

Rumi half-laughed for joy at what his world was. Perhaps the tea had sent him mad but that it seemed to him so amusing he should be in such a place when he had only weeks or so before been deathly afraid of even meeting Yves' eyes. He looked up into them, rolled upwards as they were, and fell in love for the thousandth time.

"Make me yours," he begged, wrapping his legs around Yves' heaving hips. "Make me all yours."

Yves grunted and Rumi felt it inside of him, how he was filled up. It made him squirm with discomfort and when Yves touched him until his own tide washed over him all he could truly feel was what had been done to him.

Yves dropped back onto the blankets covering the floor of the van with a long sigh of satisfaction. Rumi thought of what Sédar had said of friendships that finished in sordidness. There was nothing sordid about this, he told himself; this was the purest form of what he wanted to give Yves, and he would never see perversion in what had been his greatest pleasure in a world so devoid, to him, of nice things. But he had to make sure Yves was with him.

"Yves," he said out to the darkness, and his voice was hushed still from the need to be carefully quiet they had obeyed up until that point. "Do I have to say it?"

Yves was silent for some time and Rumi thought he had fallen asleep until he spoke.

"No," he said gently. "You don't have to, because I know."

"I think I will, all the same."

"Go, then. Say it."

Rumi brought himself close to Yves' ear and brushed back his hair.

"You are all the stars to me, now, and I love you more than I have ever loved the night sky."