Episode 2 – A hot beverage before going to bed sounds nice.
Watching patrons clamor for bottles of Christmas ale and drinking straight from the tap—this was how George spent the days that followed leading up to Christmas.
He personally dabbled in the affairs of his business from conception, to production, to actual sales in bars and pubs, because he liked to nitpick at the work his people did, not leaving anything to chance for he had a case of trust-mistrust growing up, which was a personality complex one usually got when one’s entire childhood was built upon a lie.
Secrets exist for a reason, my son. It makes life that much more mysterious, George’s father would tell him whenever he’d come home drunk with a woman wrapped around his arms. The women—who weren’t anything close to the divine image of George’s mother—would scandalously drape their languid bodies around his father, sniffing them of what little money they have like a pack of wretched bloodhounds.
Your mother has secrets too, George. So, don’t tell her mine, his father would remind him often during those cold nights when his mother was out for two days, working backbreaking hours on two shifts that were hours apart.
George would nod, unblinking, thinking nothing of the secret which so clearly screamed the truth of his father’s lecherous treachery. He trusted his father, tried his best to understand his pop’s extracurricular activities. But his young mind, his young mind knew that his father’s actions couldn’t be trusted.
This case of trust-mistrust grew with George over the years leading to puberty. He tried to support his father’s ideals, thinking them as innocent, pure, and just, when in truth they were nothing but hideous lies. He might not have comprehended the word philandering, but he clearly knew that his father was doing it almost every night.
Not long thereafter, George’s case of mistrust developed into full-blown hatred when came those nights of muffled abuse behind closed doors. He would hear the sounds of banging and screaming his mother would do as she argued dad’s infidelities.
He knew his parents were fighting, and he didn’t need to see the brutality of their arguments if the strong rapping of the door’s wood or the crashing of inanimate objects was anything to go by. They weren’t acting like a family. No. They were a bunch of strangers living in the same house.
Trust. It was what his father wanted from him. One of the pillars of belief that George’s world had been built upon. But the trust he gave his father crumbled into dust the night when her mother finally left them for a better man. George thought that his mother would take him with her, but she didn’t. She left him to live with the lie that was his father.
Years of drunken depression didn’t bode well for George’s father and soon thereafter he died. No one went to his dad’s funeral. Cos nobody cared.
George was left to care and fend for himself as a young teenager with the occasional visits from an aunt who’s too occupied with her own life to start caring for another. George didn’t blame her auntie. She had her own life. And he, he had his.
Life had embittered George in the years that followed. It became so deeply-ingrained that it became his persona. Growing into adulthood, he kept his eyes open, and his wits sharp when it came to any relationship he established, may it be professional or otherwise, for he knew that to trust was to be betrayed. And to be betrayed was to feel hurt in a way that was unbearable.
Poor George. Life gave him nothing but poison—poisoned lies that his father had kept all those years which George rewarded with nothing but trust...the kind of trust that maybe his father would change for the better if they waited long enough. But his father never did. He wouldn’t. Why would he? Why would he when lying felt so good, and bedding a different woman every night felt like a different dream coming true every...single...time.
The trust—that false faith George had been willing to hold onto became the very venom that tainted his innocence for a lifetime.
He was just a man, a boy even, when his life got flipped upside down, turned inside out. And no matter how strong he was, he knew that he could only be broken once. And when he became broken there was no putting him back together. George knew that at a young age. No matter the effort, it doesn’t matter. He understood that he would forever be shattered. Forever broken. Damaged beyond repair.
He had accepted that his childhood was never an innocent affair, but a choreographed lie. He had accustomed himself to the truth that not a smidgeon, not even an iota of innocence was left to dwell in his young soul, for he had seen how terrible life could be. And that was the truth.
Therefore, it couldn’t be helped who George became now. He was the kind of man who’s quite untrusting of people he meets, cherry picking on the work his employees did on a daily basis, placed every little thing under the speculation of a microscope for he knows that man—known for their vile nature—couldn’t be trusted. He grew up with a liar for a father so he knows. George knows. He knows, and he’d be damned if he ever let his guard down.
He tipped his bottle of Devil’s Harpoon into his mouth, toasting a patron who just ordered a bottle of the Pregnant Santa—another one of George’s products, which was a well-spiced and seasoned mix.
“Nothin’ like a good ale to get rid of them ails, ain’t that right Bona?” asked the patron, his voice dry and chafed, which could either be due to long hours of work or too many bottles to drink. George didn’t care for neither of these reasons, for as long his bottles were sold. That. That’s all that really mattered.
It was definitely a white Christmas with snow booting up to one’s ankles right outside the tavern where George found himself settling in, away from the menacing rip of the cold climate that had managed to turn a quiet little town into a chilling inferno.
The pub looked like a time capsule from the sixties. Or even earlier. With its old jukebox stashed in one corner by the pool table where men—who were too young to even be drinking—were showing off to their girlfriends bouts of machismo evidenced by their mixing of beer, vodka, Red Bull and absinthe. They would down the mixed drink with incessant chugging, coupled by the revolting singing of curses. Girls swooned at this, which made George snort at the inexplicable recklessness of today’s youth.
Over to the other side of the bar was the drinking hole where shelves behind the bartending waitress were stacked with both colorful and colorless liquor, the colorless looking pure and yet had the most percentage of alcohol. The waitress—the one George fondled just the other day—was busy serving the downpour of patrons, popping open bottles of Bona’s products and serving beer by the pitcher from the dripping tap of the barrel that doesn’t seem to go dry, what with barrel after barrel getting consumed by the almost demonic consumption of alcohol their quaint little town was famous for. If there was a fight for the book of world records as to which town drank the most, theirs would surely top the list beyond the shadow of a doubt.
George swished the ale in the bottle he held in his hand. The consistency of the product inside the bottle was as clear to him as it was dark. Clear in the sense that he knew every molecule that made up his own product, and yet it was dark in the sense that it was incredibly addicting. And as he consumed what remained of the bottle to the last drop, he knew, he knew that the only reason he’d gotten into the business of making beer was due to his struggle to forget. To forget the past and everything it stood for. What it represented.
What’s funny about drinking was that most people did it to forget. And yet George finds himself remembering every hurtful detail of a life he wanted to let go of. The memories clung to him the more alcohol he consumed. There really was no cure for repressed memories. The only sure way of forgetting hurtful things was through lobotomy, and that sure as hell wasn’t something George was ever going to consider. He might be emotionally unstable with his troubled past, but he wasn’t a complete basket case. He was insanely sane, thank you very much.
At the corner of his blurred vision by the end of the bar was a boy. He was alone. And he was covered up in expensive winter clothes. His aura was sophisticated. Like he didn’t belong there. He was like a floating mirage in a desert of hopelessness, in an ocean of people who cowered behind the spirit of the ales and the lagers and the bourbons, cloaking themselves from whatever problems that haunted them just outside the reclusive haven of the tavern.
The boy had hair as dark as night, and a complexion as pale as the moonlight. There’s a captivating twinkle in his eyes that gave such an effervescent glow. He was mesmerizing. He wasn’t the kind of boy who vied for attention. No. He was the kind of boy who deserved it. Only a fool would not notice his alabaster glow and youthful presence. He was a catch.
George suddenly felt enamored by the sight of the boy, who’s holding his own in a tavern full of drunken men whose desire for women diminishes the more they consumed pints of alcohol. What’s funny about drinking was that after a dozen bottles—in the eyes of a man—fellow men would start to look like girls, and women ended up looking more like the guys. This was evidenced by the drunken, and probably smelly middle-aged man, who had taken a liking towards the shy boy.
The said middle-aged man approached the boy with a dirty swagger. The quiet boy was perched on a barstool at the end of the bar, looking unsure of himself as he watched the man advance towards him in a friendly sidestep. It didn’t take long before the drunkard started engaging the boy with flirtatious chatter. George observed with equal amounts of curiosity and amusement as the boy spoke with the drunken man, who by now had taken off his jacket to show off his guns.
Beer stains matted the front of the man’s shirt which suggested that he hadn’t taken a bath for god knows how long. His eyes were bloodshot too, and he could use a little bit of soap and some fragrant shampoo to make him more tolerable.
The boy was far too kind to engage the horny, mangy brute who probably was too drunk to care for a razor to shave the dense forest of hair around his face, making him look all the more scruffier, mangier, and bear-like. What a Neanderthal.
George Bona watched. He kept watching as the boy’s profile animated in such a delicate and seductive manner that it was captivating as it was distracting. Distracting in a way that George found the space inside his pants getting filled by the sudden growth of his maturity.
Leaning against the counter, he shifted from foot to foot, adjusting and squeezing the stubborn organ inside his belted trousers. “Tiffany, two bottles of the Pregnant Santa, please.” He told the waitress who had been doing everything she could just to get noticed. She’d been whispering naughty things to George’s ear this entire time but George was far too distracted to be bothered. Too distracted by the sight of the boy whose face was now etched with discomfort as the middle-aged drunken man slithered a sly hand over the boy’s thigh.
“Mr. Bona,” said Tiffany, “It’s Christmas Eve. I was wonderin’ if—”
“Not now, Tiffany,” he replied, dragging the two bottles of the Pregnant Santa from the counter as he slowly made his procession to where the boy was, with the middle-aged man hovering the boy with one hand tracing a pattern going up the boy’s inner thigh. Spittle flew as the drunkard enunciated every consonant with a feeling, just to get the young man to come home with him tonight.
The closer George got, the more he realized how impervious the young man was to the brute’s sarcasm. He could hear the drunkard talk different kinds of nasty to the boy and yet the boy seemed...unfazed. The boy huffed and raised an authoritative palm. George knew that the young man had had it.
The boy bared his teeth in an approximation of a smile, “No, sir, I’m not here to be whisked off my feet by you of all people. So, no thank you,” he said, and his voice carried those words straight to George’s groin like a melting caress. It was then he knew that he wanted the boy just as much as the drunkard.
George placed the bottles firmly on the counter beside the boy which made both the drunkard and the object of their lustful affection snap to look at him, “On the house,” George said sternly, eyes narrowed, gesturing for the drunkard to take his offer of two beers, “I said...on the house,” George emphasized with the clap of his right hand on the man’s shoulder, looking him straight in the eye while at the same time tightening his hold on the man as if to cement the message that he wanted the drunkard to leave the boy alone. The man sighed. He knew that George was marking his territory like a dog.
The drunk nodded his compliance, and with a gratuitous smile to the boy, took the two beers in both hands and scampered off, but not before thanking George for his choreographed gratitude.
“You uh...” George started saying, but his speech got impaired by the disarming features of the said boy, who was now looking at him with those grey eyes that only a fool wouldn’t be captivated to.
The boy’s features were approximated on his face in a way that looked perfect to George’s lustful eyes, “...you uh, you new in town, buddy?”
“No. No one’s new in this old town.”
George swallowed, his guile melting.
He took a moment to study the boy’s face—grey eyes that were almond-shaped whenever his long lashes batted into a seductive close. There was a quiet sort of wink in the way the boy opened and closed his eyes. George knew that look all too well. There was a hidden mischief waiting to be explored. The boy’s nose—while not perfect—looked perfect and adorable to George. And those lips, they were flushed with so much blood and youth that he would be a fool not to take his chance to kiss them by the end of tonight.
George perched on the stool beside the boy’s, and out of politeness the boy swiveled his chair to the direction of George’s, as if telling the man that he was open to whatever conversation that was to ensue between them.
“I’m George.”
“I’m Percival.”
“No last name?”
Percival leaned on the counter by the elbow, his palm spreading by the side of his face to support his cheek, “What’s it to you?” he replied almost dreamily, “Will your first impression of me change if I give you my last name?” he asked, and his voice was part coy, part sly. It was the kind of undertone that George wasn’t expecting. This boy, despite his fragile demeanor, sounded like someone who could definitely hold his own in a tavern full of people.
“Nah, I already have my first impression of you.”
Percival gave an approximation of a smile, a very controlled kind of smile that had equal amounts of both interest and quiet mischief, “And what were your first impressions of me?”
George sniffed and wrinkled his nose, swiveling in his chair and said, “Tiffany, a Devil’s Harpoon and a Pregnant Santa, please. Just put it on my tab.” Percival watched George with equal amounts of warning and interest. Surely he wouldn’t say no to a proffered drink. Not from a man who was as good-looking as George Bona. The polite gesture was to say yes. And that’s what Percival did as their orders were placed on the counter: two bottles of Christmas ales—one lighter than the other.
The beer dribbled the sides of the bottles as George slid them from Tiffany’s grasp over the counter, settling them between him and object of his lustful pining.
Tiffany had jade stones for eyes, and wore envy like a fitted shirt as she wiped the smear of alcohol over the Formica counter. Her eyes piqued with a discerning cat-eye squint, watching Percival with a jealous scowl as he and George laughed at whatever cheesy pick-up line George had said.
“Take the darker one,” offered George, “It has less alcohol.”
Percival hesitantly wrapped his long fingers around the pint which made George ogle. The boy’s fingers looked like candles, like someone who wasn’t used to doing manual labor. Those weren’t working hands. They were the hands of a well-bred and diplomatic boy.
“Which one is the Pregnant Santa?” Percival asked.
“The one you’re holding,” George replied, deadpan. His expression was almost always serious and without a hint of an emotion, “We measure the amount of alcohol by their color. The darker it is the more honey it contains, with other flavorful notes.”
“Like...?” Percival drawls, elongating the single word in a way that told George he needed to elaborate further.
“You mean the notes that make the Christmas ale?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s cinnamon, orange peel, cloves, vanilla—which yours have in abundance—and Nevada honey.”
Percival smiled, lifting the bottle under his nose, sniffing, “You know your ales, Mr. George,” he said, still smelling the proffered beverage.
George smelt the delicate notes of sandalwood as he neared Percival. He couldn’t help but pierce through the boy’s personal space, leaning more suggestively, but not too close—just enough to show that he finds the boy interesting.
Percival’s scent was much too sophisticated. Like he didn’t belong with the lagers and the bourbons in the tavern, “You know, kid, you don’t belong here,” George said, furtively sniffing at the prized scent of the young boy who looked up with eyes that were inadvertently teasing.
“I don’t? What makes you say that?”
“First off, you look fresh out of high school,” George tipped his chin towards the pint in Percival’s hand, “Second, you’re not holding your beer right.”
“How am I supposed to hold it then?”
“You either hold the base or the neck.”
“Like this?” Percival replied, clasping the neck of the bottle, “Feels odd.”
“You never held a bottle before haven’t ya? I doubt if you even drink,” George took a swig of his ale, and then wiped his chin with a big gloved hand.
“I’m old enough to drink, thank you,” Percival countered, mildly irritated.
“Why am I finding that hard to believe?”
“Cos I’m not a boy. I just look like one.”
George’s eyes glimmered with interest, “You don’t say,” he tipped his beer into his lips, eyes trained on Percival the whole time as the man—who looked like a seventeen-year-old boy—rubbed his naked hands around the moisture of the bottle. His fingers were long and delicate and candle-like as he clasped around the neck of the drink, slowly lifting the mouth of the ale to meet his lips. He parted his mouth ever so slightly around the tip of the bottle and took a slow, tentative sip which made George shiver for reasons unknown. He just did.
George was watching. He watched as Percival made love with the bottle like it was a man’s cock, glass-hard and spirited in his hands with the longest of fingers. Percival tilted his head slightly with his eyes slowly dropping in a dream-like whisper, as if he’s trying to capture every note and every sumptuous flavor from the alcohol he had just tasted.
“Just like wine,” Percival commented, “You were right. It is light,” his tongue struck out and licked the redness on his lower lip to spread. He hiccupped and bit his lip, and with a shy smile he covered his mouth with three fingers while giving George a come-hither look that was either unintentional or planned. It didn’t matter to George if Percival was trying to seduce him, because he couldn’t deny the stirring in his cock. He would pull out all the stops to have a feel of those hands tonight. He just had to. There was something about Percival that was equal amounts innocent and downright mischievous. George could only imagine what Percival’s body would feel like in the dark.
“Your nose is covered in tiny red veins,” Percival said, “You drink a lot?”
George was surprised. It didn’t occur to him that Percival was also checking him out. He thought that he was the only one being observant, “Yeah, I do. That obvious?” he clasped his nose, suddenly conscious of the way it looked. George knew he was an attractive man, but he couldn’t help but feel inferior in the presence of the man/boy named Percival.
George raised his beer to his lips and took a deep drink.
It cooled his parched throat as the alcohol went straight to his head.
He cleared his throat and swallowed, “Smell plays a substantial role in how delicious something truly is. It’s the aroma that gets your juices going and fills you with anticipation,” he explained.
Percival’s cheeks puffed with an amused smirk, “You sound like the Food Network,” he commented, stifling a lighthearted chuckle. He cleared his throat and straightened his back to meet George eye to eye, “You always this stiff?” he asked while gliding the mouth of the bottle into his slightly-parted lips. What the question did was make George even more stiff as he shifted in the stool he was sat.
George exhaled softly to somehow relieve the straining ache he was feeling at the pit of his abdomen, the spirit of the alcohol becoming his oxygen as he breathed back in, “Are you saying I’m too rigid?” he asked in that same unsmiling demeanor he always had while shifting uncomfortably to cover his arousal.
“No,” Percival replied, taking the back of his left hand to wipe the excess from his mouth, “What I meant was, are you always this horny, with only five seconds in-between absolutely limp and completely hard.”
George almost sputtered his drink as the alcohol went straight up his nostrils. He kept coughing unattractively while Percival laughed at the man’s expense, biting his lip in a manner that made George even harder in his tight pants.
“I’m sorry...you surprised me.”
Smirking, Percival took out a pack of cigarettes and lit a fag. George stared not in rude judgment, but he stared out of hushed delight. He never pegged Percival to be the smoking kind, “You smoke?”
“Great observation, yes, yes I do. Want one?” Percival offered but George was quick to decline, “We all have our favorite poison, George,” he quietly blew smoke into the air, “I wonder what’s yours.” The statement was said in a voice that was as slippery as a snake, and it gave George a shiver that ran from the back of his neck down his spine.
The smoke slithered up like white serpents into the sky as Percival quietly blew from the corners of his mouth. He looked at George pointedly then cupped the man’s chin with his soft yet agile hand, “Some men sound so perverted that they might have been breastfed on semen. Or any bodily fluid that’s the consistency of.........well......semen.”
It didn’t seem real to George the person that was sat before him. There appeared to be a strange disconnect between the man/boy’s physical features and the way he conducted himself. He was deception personified. A contradiction of sorts. An enigmatic riddle that George was interested to solve.
George sagged in his seat, leaning his side against the counter for support, his left hand clasping the bottle between his legs while his right kept rubbing down his own thigh in a manner that communicated his insecurity, “Before I spotted you...you were talking to the man I drove away. What were you two talking about?”
“Wasn’t it obvious?”
“No. No to me it wasn’t.”
“He wanted to know what I looked like under all these fabrics,” Percival stated in nonchalance, and yet his expression held his mischief, “He’s too old for me, I think. Too old that his hernia might inflate into a sizeable balloon just by lifting a spoon,” he tilted his head into a view of his dainty neck, the tip of the cigarette burning orange as he sucked through it before puffing, “That kind of old,” he then chuckled and George had to suppress a smile.
George wanted to smile. But it’s like his face wasn’t used to the emotion, “I like a man who drinks,” Percival continued, “Don’t get me wrong. But that man...the way he drinks...it may as well be on a drip feed. If he ever cuts himself, I’m sure beer will come sputtering out,” his lips pursed which caused his cheeks to move up, which caused his eyes to become smaller. It was all these tiny little things that George observed and took delight watching.
George breathed out a little too inaudibly through his nose, “You might find me much worse. I got nothing but alcohol under a thin layer of skin.”
“And yet you manage to look and remain sober.”
“That I do,” George said, “Are you from around here?”
“Used to,” Percival gave a pained stare at the bottle in his hand, “I just thought I stopped by. Get a feel of the place again before I go,” he looked to George and whatever confidence Percival’s eyes held in the beginning was now reduced to a more subdued, vulnerable expression.
To want to know more about what’s behind Percival’s forlorn expression would be an understatement. George was about to investigate, but held back. He didn’t want to venture into unchartered territory. It just wasn’t his thing. He found that talking people into acknowledging their feelings always ended up making him recognizing the bitterness of his own. A trip down memory lane wasn’t a place he wanted to go. It’s a place under lock and key that he’d do well to avoid and keep avoiding.
Percival rested his face into his folded elbow on the counter, looking at George through the furtive wink of his lashes in a way that every man wanted to be looked at—to be looked at with equal amounts of pining and lust, “Wanna know what limbo feels like, George?”
The words were drunk, but the person saying them wasn’t. George humored him anyway, “I find myself growing interested, yes. What...what does it feel like?”
“Crush a bottleful of sleeping pills into your pot of coffee.”
“Wait, you’ve tried crushing a bottleful of sleeping pills in your pot of coffee?” George questioned, sounding more concerned that he would want to be.
Percival slowly nodded, trapping his thumb between his teeth, his eyes growing in mischief as he smiled, “You’re easy to talk to......you know that?”
“No, people say I’m a depressed grouch.”
Percival bit his lower lip, the smile never left his eyes as he slowly dragged himself up and back again into a sitting position, with the bottle getting tipped onto his tongue, lips wrapping around the mouth of the Pregnant Santa, “You’re not a grouch. If you were, then you would be antisocial. But here you are, talking to me as if we’ve known each other for decades.”
“I think you’ve had one drink too many,” George deliberated.
“Are you kidding?” Percival stubbed his unattended cigarette onto the tray to kill the smoke billowing from it, “I don’t get drunk,” he blithely shook his head, smiling.
The man/boy appeared that he couldn’t get drunk, and this was something that George regarded with curious excitement as he ordered Tiffany to bring them more bottles, which both men consumed like oxygenated water on a drip feed. After six or so bottles, Percival’s eyebrows raised an unspoken challenge, “Well, well, well, Mr. George, are you trying to buy your way into my pants?” he teased, unrelenting, with the suggestive biting of his glazed lower lip.
“No,” George smirked, “I’m trying to buy you a drink, that’s all. Unless...”
“Unless what?” Percival goaded, biting his lip, his tired gaze teasingly maleficent.
“...unless I’m slipping a five-dollar bill in your g-string, hehe.” George was too out of it to realize that he was starting to form the approximation of a smile. That same smile melted however when he heard Percival’s next set of words.
“How’d you know I’m wearing a g-string?”
George swallowed his own tongue, “I...I didn’t, I was just—”
“You’re easily flustered,” Percival chuckled lightly, taking a hand to caress George’s arm which made George shiver at the sudden contact, “So you’re going to shove five dollar bills under the strap of my g-string? Hmm...?” Percival kept caressing the hair on George’s arm.
“I’m, I’m sorry,” George stammered, “That’s the gay man in me wanting to come out when I made the joke and.........what? Why are you laughing? Something I said?” A small V of question formed between George’s eyebrows.
“You said there’s a gay man in you,” Percival grinned lasciviously, “I didn’t peg you for a bottom.” Percival cupped his palm over George’s hand, the warmth of the contact spreading onto George’s skin like a conflagration. Such affectionate gestures that fuel a man’s desires. And those desires are evident in the way George looks at Percival.
There was no thinking involved in what George did next as he leaned closer to press his lips brazenly against Percival’s, relishing the scorching touch of soft lips that brought fire to his own, melting his thoughts into nothing but pure desire for the man/boy.
Both don’t give mind to the people in the tavern since all the patrons seemed drunk out of their wits anyway. They were all boozed and would hardly remember this night the following morning once they wake up in another person’s bed.
George pulled away with an embarrassed groan, “Ugh, sorry...I uh...I’m really sorry,” his palms raised in supplication, “I was just hungry and I—”
“Mistook my mouth for food?”
George huffed an embarrassed sigh, “Yeah. Yeah I did. I thought your mouth was food.”
Percival laughed at that and it was the kind of laugh that would make you want to sleep with him. George’s flushed skin prickled with heat, despite the nipping cold of the chilly weather.
George watched as Percival laughed mirthlessly at the blushing fiend who kissed him. And that blushing fiend happened to be him. He couldn’t help but stare at the irrepressible and confident man/boy. Somewhere in his heart a string is getting pulled, and despite his reservations, he finds it compelling, wanting to respond to it and give it attention. But he knew he had to deny the sensation, for fear of getting his feelings hurt.
Percival quieted down after some time, taking generous sips of his Holey Moley—another one of George’s stronger products—to busy his mouth from the activity of too much laughing.
“George?”
“Hm?”
“Do you believe that it’s better to do something bad than doing something worse?”
“I don’t really know. Isn’t everything we do always end up getting worse?”
“True...very true,” Percival glugs a mouthful, “Right now what I want is...”
“What...?” George swallowed, his brain and senses buzzing with alcohol.
“What I want to do is...” Percival drawled, “...do bad things...with you.”
George visibly shook which made Percival laugh yet again. The man/boy was clearly throwing George for a loop.
“But no, seriously,” Percival backpedalled, shaking his head clear of alcohol, “How do you picture this night to end up between us?” He was dropping land mines everywhere and it was hard for a horny man such as George not to step on them with intent.
George took a lungful of air and took a fist to pump his chest in order to muster some confidence, “Us. Together. Sweaty and hot while we both make the right noises that my neighbors will find completely wrong. And then you will tell me that I’m the best sex you ever had,” he said, all in one breath, his heart racing.
“Hmm, confident,” Percival tipped his beer bottle in George’s direction, “You really like upselling your organ as a tool that gives pleasure huh?”
“Yeah, yeah I do. Come home with me.”
Percival rested his bottle on the counter, and, with his dreamy half-lidded eyes, leaned ever so suggestively, resting both hands palm-flat over George’s thighs which made George draw a shaky breath of anticipation, “Percival...? Will you?”
“Nah. I’d rather masturbate in my bed.”
George could feel his chest tightening, “Aw, come on. Don’t be difficult.”
“I’m not. I just believe it’s rewarding doing things for yourself. And that includes running a closed fist up and down your hot and wet erection.”
“Jesus Christ,” George shuddered at that which made Percival laugh while drawing his hands away from the man’s trembling thighs. George had never been made more aware of how hard he was, with his balls humming quietly inside a hot cocoon of pre-orgasmic build-up. A build-up so strong that it’s boiling hot and wild through his titillated nerve endings, the sensation spreading and spearing through the very flimsy barrier that’s keeping his orgasm from erupting. He might have already burst in his pants for all he knew, what with their back and forth repartee of nothing but crude remarks and illicit, barefaced suggestions.
“I like you.”
George couldn’t stop the words from spilling. His heart in his throat. His pulse skyrocketing. His desire roaring in his ears. His arousal filling his cock with unbearable pain.
“No,” Percival replied, “You like my body. Not the person inside.”
George stared with misted eyes which Percival played at, looking long and hard, waiting for George’s confidence to crumble into fine dust. But Percival knew that they were both in the trappings of lust. And with a choreographed smile that looks every bit real, he smiled, “Who am I kidding. I like you too,” he professed, and it made George let out a withheld sigh of relief.
George was bursting at the seams, “M-my house is not far from here. Would you like to go for a nightcap?”
Percival pouted his lips, “I hear sex dripping in your invitation.”
“You do?”
“Yes, and it’s leaking rather nicely,” Percival winks, rising, and with an open hand he said, “You may take me home. A hot beverage before going to bed sounds nice.”