Merry-Go-Round (Sequel to 'Carousel')

Chapter 5 - Hands in Pockets

I didn't quite know what to do. I watched him as he moved around and felt a little silly. My hair was still wet from the shower and the sheets were a mess. "What are you even taking photos of?"
"You," he said. "In my shirt. In my bed." He came around to the head of the bed, threw his pillows over to where I had slept and sat down with his back against the headboard before training the camera on me again. The shutter clicked.
"I thought you would be more used to the other side of a camera," I said putting my pullover and jeans from the previous day to the side of the bed.
"Actually, I know both sides." He looked down at the tool in his hands. "But I like this side better."
"Why is that?" I leaned forward and took the camera from him before he could use the entire film up.
"Because having your picture taken is very passive."
I focused on him and he made a goofy face as I took the picture. The lever made a scratching noise. "Be serious."
Michael looked at the lens and his features changed. His eyes, his cheekbones, his mouth. It was subtle but at the same time astonishingly, fundamentally different. He turned to face the light from the window. "You'll be able to see all my scars," he said as I pressed the release and the shutter snapped, but I wasn't sure which scars exactly he meant.

The gloom only lasted a moment, then he turned back to me again with a smile that was lovely but at the same time masklike professional. Snap. Transport. Focus.

It was like collecting faces. And it was amazing how many he could produce without any noticeable effort. He leaned towards me, flirting with the lens, and the defuse light that came from the window emphasised the movement of the muscles in his bare chest and arms as he shifted weight onto them. I leaned backward, away from him. Snap. Transport...

Suddenly he moved forward getting up on hands and knees and came out of focus. His image blurred but my finger was already on the release and I couldn't stop the picture from being taken. When the shutter opened again, I saw his reaching hand through the visor. He pushed the camera away from my face and put his mouth on mine. It wasn't rushed. It wasn't forceful. It just happened. His lips were soft and gentle and his advance on me made me smile. Heat was coming off his chest and there was a light, dusty sent of after-shower powder. Close up, white traces of it were still visible on the side of his neck where he hadn't rubbed it into his skin properly, and while I was holding the camera in my right hand, suspended somewhere in mid-air, I rubbed the dust away with the other. It left his skin smooth and silky and did the same to my fingers. I slid them up the back of his neck, the open shirt sleeve riding up to my elbow. He hadn't washed his hair, but nonetheless there was a bit of cool moisture from the shower in it. I felt it on my arm – the smooth, warm skin and the moist hair. His hand touched my thigh, moving along it, gently but strong. And then he passed some unseen point and I suddenly knew this wasn't a tease. He wasn't going to stop. He was in my mouth and his hand was running up the outside of my leg and it wasn't going to stop at that.

Michael wasn't one for dirty talk – he wasn't much of one for touch, either. We kissed and we made love – but he had never done much touching until he was too far down the line to really know what he was doing. There was no way he was that far gone, now. His hand glided under the shirt, lifting the red cloth off my skin as it travelled over my hip, came up to my waist, his wrist taking the shirt with it. I was going down into the crushed sheets and upturned quilt by the foot end of the bed, and he was going down with me. Fingers pressed into my flesh, his thumb rubbed over my stomach. He looked down to find the lowest button, but I had one hand free to pull his face back to my mouth. He found the button anyway. And the next one.

Unseeing I reached my arm over the foot end of the bed and let first the camera slip from my hand, then let the strap glide through my fingers until I felt the weight rest securely on the floor. And then I let go of the strap. And while his hand working its way up through the buttons, I thought that I would never be able to develop that film. Because whoever would develop it would find photos first of me in that tell-tale red shirt with the black shoulder flaps sitting in an unmade bed, and then pictures of Michael Jackson in that same bed without a shirt. And to round it all up a blurred snap shot of him on hands and knees coming towards the camera. It wouldn't take much imagination for anyone to come up with the rest of the story.