Wax - Chapter 6: Chapter 6
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I recall Jaeger a couple months back, saying something along the lines of thirty seconds being the maximum time one was allowed to stand in front of the condom shelf in a Tesco's Express. I'd exceeded that threefold.
The rest of the store was empty either way, so the only thing keeping me on the move was knowing he was somewhere down the street, upstairs in his hotel room, taking a shower. Waiting.
Size wasn't exactly the problem; I knew mine, just not his preference for function or comfort. These things should be bought together, with both sides playing a part in making the decision, but here I was scrolling through my phone for reviews. They didn't help very much. I ended up with three different boxes in my size. Also the only ones in my size. That, or I could have opted for what they were marketing as tighter fit but, whatever. Start slow.
Other reasons for exceeding the thirty seconds had to do with fire thoughts burning low. Heat waves; they distort straight lines and clear images, rising up and pushing things out of the way inside. We had the entire bottle of cognac and an hour or so to finish it. Two to three glasses later, he was pouring himself another glass with his eyes glazed over the candlelight, raised to his lips—melted. I finished that glass for him only because his smiles were back to gentle innocence and that was a clear sign of his disarming. A lowered guard.
He wandered between the lines of clear- and fuzzy-headed nearing the end, tipsy, and with his top button that had somehow come undone. I'd never seen him with his top button undone, even back then. It was always up and in order. Like it was an unspoken rule of his. Half the time, I was staring at it—the triangle of skin between his collar bones, flanked by the white fabric of his dress shirt. The pleasant past was what we talked about and it was good. Words flowed. As they do with fond memories. Nice things are always easier to talk about; have a good laugh over.
He hadn't even seemed to notice the button for the rest of the evening and when it was time to leave, he'd slipped on his coat and left his vest unbuttoned too—guard completely lowered. As though cognac made him forget to be proper. I for some reason found something very wrong about him looking like that, at least in the back of my head, something wasn't sitting right. It wasn't a feeling I could explain. I considered making up some sort of excuse to get him to the bathroom, wait till he's sober enough to get into a cab but really. I didn't want the night to end.
The goodbye was all I could think about, going down the spiral stairs with him leading the way. Disappointment kept the flames extinguished but it was on impulse that I'd asked. Tried for something more.
No shit, though. It surprised me when that was exactly what he gave in return.
More; it came. The immense heat I never thought I could feel from the surface of a frozen lake. Of course, reaching out to skim fingers across its ripples was an entirely different thing from the lake, itself, lapping against the shore where I was—reaching out to me. The way his head had tilted with a step, closing the distance. Red dusting the pale skin below his eyes. The corner of the keycard running down the front of my shirt, an almost of his touch. His fingers—fuck.
"Having some fun tonight eh, mate."
I looked up. The guy behind the counter was done scanning the boxes, musing to himself. Responding to that wasn't exactly the easiest thing. I merely nodded. In the process, bottles of lube by the counter came into view. Strategic. I took one, scanned the label on the back, and added it to the bill. The skin. The almost. The eyes—
"Aight. You have a ten?"
I searched my pockets for coins. The almost. The fingers. The eyes. The lake. "No."
He nodded, cashing out the bill I gave him. Thoughts returned. The glasses. It could drive people insane, how they looked so good on him but also nearly begging to be removed. To reveal what he kept frozen underneath. To undo. To undre—
"—mate?"
I looked up.
The guy was laughing. "I asked if you need a bag."
Common sense tells you that people don't usually walk out on the streets with boxes of condoms in their arms and a bottle of lube stuffed into their coat jacket even if they had to be paying 5p for a plastic bag but I was an exception. As I often made myself out to be.
"It's fine," I told him, finding a pocket for everything and heading for the door. The lube stayed in hand. No space for that. It landed me a couple of stares down the street back to the hotel and even the guy at the lobby entrance, who looked my clothes up and down before standing back and holding the door open.
Up in my head, there was him. Down the hallway to the lift lobby, there was him. Waiting for the elevator, it was him. Getting in, heading up; it was him. There's this thing about visual imagination, some dual reality that comes with seeing two things at once. The view of the city going up the building; the him in the reflection of the glass. In the shower. In the shower, waiting. Fuck.
Movement listens only to instinct once thoughts begin to undress. Slow.
The rest of the evening unfolding in my head was practically what I'd dreamed of for god knows how long and all that I could really think of was the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years I'd fantasized about the crux that was this moment. The want. The need.
Somewhere along the way, I'd actually given up thinking it would happen in reality. Two years into the distance apart, I sort of caved in to the voice that said it was never meant to be. I mean, the feelings were one thing. Sex was a plus. Sure, it'd be nice if we ever got down to it but back then, it just seemed like a whole fantasy I'd been cooking up on my own. He never did raise a word about it. I never got around to asking.
You're still the idiot I know.
To think this was what I'd be up against in actuality... fuck, he was formidable. As if I hadn't known that already. The words; the slow, sensual workings of that hand with the card, sliding down; the soft, hazy look in his eyes; the tilt of his head; the dust of color on his cheeks; the slow, slow gaze following his hands—
Was he experienced? Hard not to entertain that thought with those moves he pulled on me. For sure. Whatever we had between us for the past seven years became ambiguous some four years later. Like in the letters, we talked about taking a break but on everyday text and the calls that stopped after a while, we'd never actually had a conversation about it.
Some of the crew back in station twelve tried to set me up couple of months after I came on board, thinking I was single and had no way of finding release. Jaeger was all for that lifestyle. He'd slept around pretty much and liked the idea of three to four sex friends at a time.
He preached the importance of protection and whatnot but I'd given zero fucks about that sort of thing as a virgin. A couple of them even asked. I was long over hiding my inexperience by then, so I'd told them up front and surprisingly the teasing stopped after a day. They got bored, I guess. That, or they somehow figured out I was the serious type. Or that the idea of just, sex, wasn't appealing to me.
It stayed that way for pretty much the rest of the time we were apart. Seven years down the road and not a single drop of experience.
Would that bother him? I scanned the key card he'd handed me before I'd left for Tesco's and fuck he wasn't kidding around with the expenses. The suite featured two and a half rooms in the style of some vintage Victorian furniture I couldn't put a price on. The fancy shit was not something I could afford in a lifetime and whether this was coming right out of his pocket or part of the hotel's scheme to have him leave a five-star review (wouldn't work, by the way), I'd have to ask.
I headed down the entrance hall—mahogany-panelled—into the living room, removing my jacket and leaving it somewhere on the satin sofa thing, standing in the middle of the room to take things in.
The first thing in my head was the sound of a running shower that had my mind in a crazy blank for a good minute. Through the double doors was a grand-ass bedroom. I left the boxes on the bed where he'd see them. I mean, the choice was up to him, whichever he preferred, anyway, so.
Then I was just standing in the middle of the bedroom again, listening to the fucking shower and staring at the king-size, wondering how his bare skin would look against that shade of satin blue.
It wasn't long before it started to sink in; the fact that we hadn't, not once, prior to this, talked about sex—which was ultimately the entire reason I came to terms with eventually having to be the one pushing for it, or so I thought.
Now that he'd exceeded my expectations and thrown me off my game, I realized: well, fuck. I don't actually know what to do.
Sure, the statement's figurative. I mean, I'd done my fair share of research over the years to know what was supposed to happen but knowing him, he had the tendency not to fit in textbook instructions despite actually having a textbook-oriented brain.
There was that.
And then there was the fact that we were about to fuck on our first night after seven years; which wasn't the best idea considering the untouched subjects we had yet to cover. Sure, we talked about the past over dinner but whatever really happened back then in our private lives, who we were and what we were—stuff like that, we'd left out of the loop for some other time. Those things. They were far too heavy for first-day conversations.
I got out of the room and poured myself a glass of water at the pantry, taking a couple of gulps to wash the alcohol down and hopefully sober up a little. It didn't exactly work wonders.
I was feeling the weight of the day on my shoulders and then, my eyes. I was also dumb enough to sit on the sofa because at this point, there was no way I could get up after taking a second and closing my eyes. The cognac was in my veins but it was quite the task trying to differentiate the heat and the beat in my chest. Whichever came first.
The next thing I knew I was looking at the shade of pale skin like a blanket of snow over my mind and at this, I stirred. No surprises—he was hard to resist. Soft layers of white, untouched, begging to be marked with a touch; to have fingers running across its surface and sinking deep, down, where it was
wet.
Closed eyes was not a good idea. I resumed reality, keeping them open but also struggling to ground myself. The heavy weight of the day's MVAs, EMSs were catching up on the eyelids and added up, sank into the sofa. In fact, even just the thought of him; the fantasies; the image; the feelings, they were all so heavy.
Just so many things we had to be talking about that were hard to even raise and not necessarily something that I wanted to be raising, if, at all. It didn't make sense to bring up all the unhappiness, all the harsh conditions of the cold winter we'd had to experience and recall memories that were better off being forgotten. That's what I like to tell myself. Heavy things are a burden. And most of the times, people liked to leave their baggage behind.
=============
[Vanilla]
A shower does wonders for the clouded mind and while steam was yet another obstruction to clarity, it was, at the very least, bearable in the absence of anyone else. And now that I wasn't as intoxicated as I had been twenty minutes ago before stepping into the shower, the thunderous beat of my heart was all-too-obvious underneath the bathrobe. Good god, if any form of fabric could conceal such a thing.
Midway, I'd even had the sense to prepare myself after sitting in the tub with the water running down my head for ten minutes straight. Recalling textbook ideas soon made way for clear thoughts and clear thoughts soon made way for the usual mode of thinking: multiple simulations of the next hour or so unfolded in my head which, eventually, necessitated some form of nervous.
I peered out into the bedroom before exiting the bath completely, slipping on the bedroom slippers I'd left by the mat and registering the empty bedroom—along with what appeared to be three boxes of condoms laid out, displayed on the bed for all to see. 'Take your pick' seemed to be the accurate accompanying phrase.
Not quite knowing how one should be responding to such a forward display of, well, adulthood, I'd paused by the bed with damp hair till the image and accompanying concept started to sink in and settle somewhere fast and equally thunderous.
Make no mistake, I was the one who initiated the events of the evening though, minutes earlier, under the influence of alcohol had perhaps come across as ridiculously indecent. Indeed, having gone out of my way to plan it all down to the very minute had taken its toll on my sanity but I wasn't about to deny the need I'd long supressed under the guise of 'having better things to do.'
To be honest with oneself about one's own feelings... admittedly, I was no expert. A single glance at the bed we were hopefully about to share had my nerves singed with the flame of a first. Twenty-two years and here I was experiencing something completely foreign.
I did not realize I had forgotten to breathe until emerging from the bedroom provided some form of surprise. The lounge was empty. Well, at least it appeared to be. From across the room, I spotted a glass of water on the coffee table which I certainly had not poured. With the intention of putting it away, I'd approached the centre of the room but it was upon passing the sofa that the figure lounging on it nearly startled me out of my bathrobe.
He was lying on the sofa, fast asleep.
"Well."
I sighed. A day's worth of work; of course he was going to be exhausted. It did not help that his seventy-two-hour shift had ended at six in the morning and for the entire day, he'd practically volunteered extra hours in the firehouse. To be alive and kicking at ten in the evening after a bottle of cognac and all that accumulated burden on his shoulders simply wasn't a possible feat.
I filled the space beside him, finishing the glass of water he'd poured for himself and then setting it aside. The lion's mane, once the shade of aged Bordeaux, had over the years been reduced to a deep, dark auburn that reminded one of the tip of an extinguished candle.
It was in a daze that I reached out to caress the top of his head. The past slipped through the gaps between my fingers and then it was staring down at his lips and then, further down to his neck. His shoulders. His arms.
A sign, then. Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps this was a little too much, too fast, and in a way, I was to be glad. And if so, dialling back a little should be the case? I could not tell.
Realizing that tonight was going to have to wait seemed to tear apart my defences all of a sudden and reveal the sheer height of anticipation I had been harbouring within throughout the entire evening. Disappointment began to settle in.
I retreated to the bedroom and returned with the quilt, draping it over him and the sofa before reaching for the room's telephone to ring for an extra set of covers. The idea, for some reason, did not seem very appealing.
I considered occupying the remaining space on the sofa and sharing the covers instead, which would have included the added convenience of a life-sized heater. After all, he did have a body temperature that slightly above the human average.
The idea started off perfectly within my zone of comfort. The space on the sofa was decent and did not feel cramped despite two adult male figures leaving the comfort of a king-sized bed for such an alternative.
Yes, indeed, it was all very fine until moments before I was about to drift into sleep, the bottom half of his physical existence began to wake and I could not, for the gods of rolling pins and grammar-correctors, comprehend what was going on in his sleep.
Not a single muscle above his waist had moved. The idiot had one arm, folded, under his head and the other lying limp on his side under the covers but the entire minute in which h-he was... well... becoming fully active, he did not appear to have the slightest awareness of reality.
I nearly punched him out of shock.
With the difficult situation pertaining to my companion's lower half, I was obligated to scoot further back, forgetting that the sofa had an edge and quite unfortunately falling to carpeted floor in a tangle of covers and robe. Even with the sound, Leroy did not stir.
Quite frankly, I would have very much liked to deliver a well-deserved smack to the back of his head for the awfully pleasant dream he must be having to choose the unconscious over a real, waking human being perfectly capable of satisfying his needs.
God was he an idiot.
At once, I called for room service and had an additional quilt fetched. Soon after, I retreated back into the bedroom and there, under the covers, had quite the pleasant dream myself. Of warm candles and melting snow.
*
His absence was the first thing I noticed getting out of bed in the morning. The room was colder and that was it; no walking out to check the lounge, no visual and auditory signs—just the room being colder than I remembered. I reached for my glasses on the bedside table, noticing the boxes of condoms stacked up beside it before wholly regaining my senses. Six unread text messages.
______________
From: Just Let Me Impress You
[05:45] Fuck
[05:45] I fell asleep
[05:45] Fuck
[05:46] I'm so sorry
[05:46] It's a forty-eight this time
[05:46] I gotta go
[05:46] Are you free Saturday?
_________________
I checked the time. It was half-past seven. Indeed, I'd vaguely recalled something about his shift starting at six in the morning and that most of his hours were either a two-day (forty-eight-hour) or three-day arrangement.
Either way, I didn't need to be checking my schedule to know that I wasn't available on Saturday. One of the primary conditions for teaching at Le Cordon Bleu was to conduct Saturday classes for a select group of scholars on the specifics of culinary journalism. Although the exact timing of the classes had yet to be fixed, I wasn't about to make any promises and end up disappointing the both of us for the second time.
Strangely enough however, I was in the odd mood for ventures. After making a call to the office and speaking to Florence about my schedule, I calculated a decent total of two hours and twenty-two minutes till my first morning class at the culinary institute. Apart from the meeting with a TV broadcast company in the afternoon back at the office, the day was pretty much left to check off my list of restaurants to review at a pace of my own.
In minutes, I was typing out a search on our private chat for his station number whilst getting out of bed and heading for the bathroom. After going through a list of cafés I'd intended to review for breakfast occasions, I decided on a place with takeout breakfast bagels minutes away from his firehouse and packed my things. I wasn't going to make the mistake of getting him something sweet.
Admittedly, there weren't very much. Apart from my briefcase for work the previous day, there was only one—no, three—other items I had to struggle with. Oh, wait. Four. He'd left the bottle of lubricant on the pantry counter, as though he'd forgotten about it after pouring himself a glass of water last evening. Good heavens.
In his defence, he must've been in quite the rush considering the fact that his shift starts at six and the text he sent me was a mere fifteen minutes before that. I suppose then it would on me to... well... I suppose... return...? Them? After all, technically, they belonged to him. He paid for them.
And then a good hour later (ten minutes to check out, twenty to call for an Uber and ride down to a pleasant café, another fifteen to wait for the twelve breakfast bagels I ordered whilst enjoying a classic French almond croissant myself out on the patio, and then a final ten minutes or so to make my way to station twelve), I arrived with a takeaway bag in one hand and my briefcase in the other.
The first of concerns I had on my mind included worrying over the number of crew members on duty and whether twelve breakfast bagels were enough for them and their bureau chief. I hadn't quite texted him before coming since, well, I'd intended for this to be a pleasant surprise but standing outside the firehouse somehow made this out to be a poorly-conceived idea.
One, it was quite clearly out of the way. Le Cordon Bleu was up in Holborn and station twelve was in the middle of East Dulwich, which meant that I was certainly being far too sentimental after an evening of cognac and missed opportunities. And two, at present, the uniformed man standing before the guardhouse situated in front of the gate was staring me, the stranger in a suit, down.
Naturally, I wasn't allowed to walk right in.
"Good morning." I went up to him.
"Morning," the man in the booth seemed surprised as I neared. Already, his eyes were on the bag of heavenly-smelling breakfast bagels. "You need anything?"
"Well, no. Not really. I'm just here to see someone—although now that I've said it, it sounds perfectly ridiculous. They might be out on a call."
"Nah! We've been slow today. Who you looking for?"
"Um. He goes by Leroy Cox, I believe."
Again, the guard appeared taken aback. "Lad has friends outside the station? Now that's a miracle. A workaholic, that one is."
I smiled. "Thank you for looking out for him."
"Not much," he brushed aside before glancing, again, at the takeout bag. I made the decision to relieve him of anticipation. "I'll just... um. These are breakfast bagels. Just a little gift of appreciation for your service. It would've been odd to come empty handed, and even worse if I'd simply got them for a single person on the team. Please, help yourself."
"Aw thanks mate," the guard took the bag at once, reaching in to retrieve a serving wrapped in brown paper for himself. "Look, why don't you head on in to see him? I can't leave my post anyway, and I don't suppose the bagels could walk themselves into the station. Just sign your name and phone number on the visitor list and uh... you have a driver's license or some kind of identification?"
I was hesitant. Naturally, I hadn't meant to cause that much trouble or concern but a brief time check ensured I had ample leeway to arrive at culinary school on time and so I decided, well, why not. I presented my driver's license and wrote my name at the top of the visitor's list.
"Aight, go right in. Yup, just further down and then take a right. You'll see the engine bay."
I thanked him and passed the gate, crossing the car park before arriving at the iconic, high-ceiling garage-style loading bay I'd only ever seen in documentaries and news channels. Out front, several crew members were gathered around a mound of equipment with hoses in hand.
"Hello. Good morning." I interrupted amidst the roaring jets of water. All three stopped to stare. "Excuse me. Um, sorry to disrupt your duties... I'm looking for Leroy. Cox. Is he...?"
"Yeah he's in. I mean he practically lives here," laughed the lady who responded, nodding towards a door that was further in. Her hair was dyed a rich copper-bronze and chopped fiercely into short layers. "Through that door and to your left. If he's not in the commons, he's probably in the gym downstairs."
"I'll take you," her male colleague offered and she turned to him with a raised brow, rolling her eyes as soon as he dropped his hose and gestured for the crew member beside him to take over. The latter seemed oddly curious about me, staring rather intently as though trying to put a name to my face. "Probie, you listen to Zales."
"Right sir," nodded the ball of curious. I thanked the man who offered to help and apologized for the inconvenience.
"S'alright. Follow me," he led the way, glancing over his shoulder with a smile. I returned it rather stiffly. "You just here to see him?"
"Oh. Oh no, well. Actually, I have breakfast bagels for you all. Twelve of them—eleven, now that the guard out front has had his portion. Leroy... he left without having anything in the morning, so I thought..." I let the words hang; unsure of how else I could continue.
The crew member turned back in surprise, pausing in his tracks to look me up and down. "You live with him?"
"No, um." Goodness. How else to put it? "Not that. It's... never mind." I seemed to have given up a little too quickly, seeing how he put up both his arms to lay off all responsibility on the conversation.
"It's cool," he surrendered. "You made the right choice to not bring sweet stuff so I figured maybe you know him well." He continued leading the way, past the door and down a corridor. "Guess you're the one who almost burned his kitchen down, then."
The embarrassment nearly stopped me in my tracks.
"So you are the guy—"
"Jung, I need your report from yesterday's fire on sixth avenue," a man dressed in a different uniform emerged from an office to our right, coming to a stop as soon as our eyes met. "Oh. Hi. You need anything?"
"Hey chief, guess what, Cox has friends from outside," he had a finger pointed in my direction. I bowed my head in greeting. "And he's brought us breakfast bagels."
Taking that as a cue for action, I reached into the bag to hand who I assumed was the station's bureau chief a bagel and promptly saw his face light up. Albeit for a reason much more heart-warming than I was expecting.
"Cox? That mother fucker's got things on his mind besides fire? Best news of the century!" He clapped me on the back and I was, very naturally, slightly startled. "Thanks by the way. These smell real good. Jung, get your ass on the report. Ask Jaeger if you need help. He's sleeping on the couch in the commons."
"Aight chief. You enjoy your bagel." The crew member whose name was apparently Jung, did something with his fingers shaped into a gun, to which the chief raised his bagel in gratitude before retreating back into his office.
Hm, how... pleasantly close everyone appears to be with one another despite the odd use of insults as an expression of affection. Perhaps mildly related to the indecent finger-exchanged between him and Raul back in school...?
"Cox!" Jung called as soon as we arrived at the doorway to the common lounge. Heads turned. I hid behind the wall.
"Not here." "Nope!" "Check the gym."
I was led further down to the basement of the station where the gym was, and, after peering through the glass doors, Jung concluded that the idiot I was looking for was, apparently, not here either.
Not quite wishing to bother him any further, I was about to hand him the takeaway bag and simply leave a text when, upon coming back up to the ground floor and gazing out into the backyard, spotted a familiar figure in the distance playing frisbee with an equally familiar-looking dog.
Chicken.
Ah. So that's how he keeps an eye on him. Indeed, the whole idea of owning a dog despite the hellish shift hours he had and a constant need to be at the firehouse felt like something of a mystery from the start. It made sense that he would bring him here to the station. Chicken was incredibly obedient, either way, and wouldn't have posed much of a problem.
For some reason, the scene evoked an unwillingness to be disrupted. Even from afar, he appeared to be relaxed and quite naturally himself; in a state of complete peace and satisfaction. I was reluctant to change that.
"Could you just tell him I dropped by?" I held the takeaway bag out to Jung. "I hope everyone enjoys the breakfast bagels. I'll be making a move first."
"Wait. You not gonna say hi?"
"It's fine," I left with a smile, going back down the hallway and out through the door leading to the engine bay. The first thing I noticed was the absence of the previous two crew members who had been hosing down equipment out in the front. It was by the time I neared the gate where the guardhouse was that I understood why.
The two of them, together with the guard I'd met earlier on, were standing in front of a displeased woman in a lavish fur coat. I could not see their faces. I could, however, make out the words she was hurling aloud even from a distance afar.
"Oh that's bloody ridiculous! You can't go around smashing windows—it's a BMW for god's sake. Do you know how much I have to pay to get them fixed?"
The rest of the store was empty either way, so the only thing keeping me on the move was knowing he was somewhere down the street, upstairs in his hotel room, taking a shower. Waiting.
Size wasn't exactly the problem; I knew mine, just not his preference for function or comfort. These things should be bought together, with both sides playing a part in making the decision, but here I was scrolling through my phone for reviews. They didn't help very much. I ended up with three different boxes in my size. Also the only ones in my size. That, or I could have opted for what they were marketing as tighter fit but, whatever. Start slow.
Other reasons for exceeding the thirty seconds had to do with fire thoughts burning low. Heat waves; they distort straight lines and clear images, rising up and pushing things out of the way inside. We had the entire bottle of cognac and an hour or so to finish it. Two to three glasses later, he was pouring himself another glass with his eyes glazed over the candlelight, raised to his lips—melted. I finished that glass for him only because his smiles were back to gentle innocence and that was a clear sign of his disarming. A lowered guard.
He wandered between the lines of clear- and fuzzy-headed nearing the end, tipsy, and with his top button that had somehow come undone. I'd never seen him with his top button undone, even back then. It was always up and in order. Like it was an unspoken rule of his. Half the time, I was staring at it—the triangle of skin between his collar bones, flanked by the white fabric of his dress shirt. The pleasant past was what we talked about and it was good. Words flowed. As they do with fond memories. Nice things are always easier to talk about; have a good laugh over.
He hadn't even seemed to notice the button for the rest of the evening and when it was time to leave, he'd slipped on his coat and left his vest unbuttoned too—guard completely lowered. As though cognac made him forget to be proper. I for some reason found something very wrong about him looking like that, at least in the back of my head, something wasn't sitting right. It wasn't a feeling I could explain. I considered making up some sort of excuse to get him to the bathroom, wait till he's sober enough to get into a cab but really. I didn't want the night to end.
The goodbye was all I could think about, going down the spiral stairs with him leading the way. Disappointment kept the flames extinguished but it was on impulse that I'd asked. Tried for something more.
No shit, though. It surprised me when that was exactly what he gave in return.
More; it came. The immense heat I never thought I could feel from the surface of a frozen lake. Of course, reaching out to skim fingers across its ripples was an entirely different thing from the lake, itself, lapping against the shore where I was—reaching out to me. The way his head had tilted with a step, closing the distance. Red dusting the pale skin below his eyes. The corner of the keycard running down the front of my shirt, an almost of his touch. His fingers—fuck.
"Having some fun tonight eh, mate."
I looked up. The guy behind the counter was done scanning the boxes, musing to himself. Responding to that wasn't exactly the easiest thing. I merely nodded. In the process, bottles of lube by the counter came into view. Strategic. I took one, scanned the label on the back, and added it to the bill. The skin. The almost. The eyes—
"Aight. You have a ten?"
I searched my pockets for coins. The almost. The fingers. The eyes. The lake. "No."
He nodded, cashing out the bill I gave him. Thoughts returned. The glasses. It could drive people insane, how they looked so good on him but also nearly begging to be removed. To reveal what he kept frozen underneath. To undo. To undre—
"—mate?"
I looked up.
The guy was laughing. "I asked if you need a bag."
Common sense tells you that people don't usually walk out on the streets with boxes of condoms in their arms and a bottle of lube stuffed into their coat jacket even if they had to be paying 5p for a plastic bag but I was an exception. As I often made myself out to be.
"It's fine," I told him, finding a pocket for everything and heading for the door. The lube stayed in hand. No space for that. It landed me a couple of stares down the street back to the hotel and even the guy at the lobby entrance, who looked my clothes up and down before standing back and holding the door open.
Up in my head, there was him. Down the hallway to the lift lobby, there was him. Waiting for the elevator, it was him. Getting in, heading up; it was him. There's this thing about visual imagination, some dual reality that comes with seeing two things at once. The view of the city going up the building; the him in the reflection of the glass. In the shower. In the shower, waiting. Fuck.
Movement listens only to instinct once thoughts begin to undress. Slow.
The rest of the evening unfolding in my head was practically what I'd dreamed of for god knows how long and all that I could really think of was the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years I'd fantasized about the crux that was this moment. The want. The need.
Somewhere along the way, I'd actually given up thinking it would happen in reality. Two years into the distance apart, I sort of caved in to the voice that said it was never meant to be. I mean, the feelings were one thing. Sex was a plus. Sure, it'd be nice if we ever got down to it but back then, it just seemed like a whole fantasy I'd been cooking up on my own. He never did raise a word about it. I never got around to asking.
You're still the idiot I know.
To think this was what I'd be up against in actuality... fuck, he was formidable. As if I hadn't known that already. The words; the slow, sensual workings of that hand with the card, sliding down; the soft, hazy look in his eyes; the tilt of his head; the dust of color on his cheeks; the slow, slow gaze following his hands—
Was he experienced? Hard not to entertain that thought with those moves he pulled on me. For sure. Whatever we had between us for the past seven years became ambiguous some four years later. Like in the letters, we talked about taking a break but on everyday text and the calls that stopped after a while, we'd never actually had a conversation about it.
Some of the crew back in station twelve tried to set me up couple of months after I came on board, thinking I was single and had no way of finding release. Jaeger was all for that lifestyle. He'd slept around pretty much and liked the idea of three to four sex friends at a time.
He preached the importance of protection and whatnot but I'd given zero fucks about that sort of thing as a virgin. A couple of them even asked. I was long over hiding my inexperience by then, so I'd told them up front and surprisingly the teasing stopped after a day. They got bored, I guess. That, or they somehow figured out I was the serious type. Or that the idea of just, sex, wasn't appealing to me.
It stayed that way for pretty much the rest of the time we were apart. Seven years down the road and not a single drop of experience.
Would that bother him? I scanned the key card he'd handed me before I'd left for Tesco's and fuck he wasn't kidding around with the expenses. The suite featured two and a half rooms in the style of some vintage Victorian furniture I couldn't put a price on. The fancy shit was not something I could afford in a lifetime and whether this was coming right out of his pocket or part of the hotel's scheme to have him leave a five-star review (wouldn't work, by the way), I'd have to ask.
I headed down the entrance hall—mahogany-panelled—into the living room, removing my jacket and leaving it somewhere on the satin sofa thing, standing in the middle of the room to take things in.
The first thing in my head was the sound of a running shower that had my mind in a crazy blank for a good minute. Through the double doors was a grand-ass bedroom. I left the boxes on the bed where he'd see them. I mean, the choice was up to him, whichever he preferred, anyway, so.
Then I was just standing in the middle of the bedroom again, listening to the fucking shower and staring at the king-size, wondering how his bare skin would look against that shade of satin blue.
It wasn't long before it started to sink in; the fact that we hadn't, not once, prior to this, talked about sex—which was ultimately the entire reason I came to terms with eventually having to be the one pushing for it, or so I thought.
Now that he'd exceeded my expectations and thrown me off my game, I realized: well, fuck. I don't actually know what to do.
Sure, the statement's figurative. I mean, I'd done my fair share of research over the years to know what was supposed to happen but knowing him, he had the tendency not to fit in textbook instructions despite actually having a textbook-oriented brain.
There was that.
And then there was the fact that we were about to fuck on our first night after seven years; which wasn't the best idea considering the untouched subjects we had yet to cover. Sure, we talked about the past over dinner but whatever really happened back then in our private lives, who we were and what we were—stuff like that, we'd left out of the loop for some other time. Those things. They were far too heavy for first-day conversations.
I got out of the room and poured myself a glass of water at the pantry, taking a couple of gulps to wash the alcohol down and hopefully sober up a little. It didn't exactly work wonders.
I was feeling the weight of the day on my shoulders and then, my eyes. I was also dumb enough to sit on the sofa because at this point, there was no way I could get up after taking a second and closing my eyes. The cognac was in my veins but it was quite the task trying to differentiate the heat and the beat in my chest. Whichever came first.
The next thing I knew I was looking at the shade of pale skin like a blanket of snow over my mind and at this, I stirred. No surprises—he was hard to resist. Soft layers of white, untouched, begging to be marked with a touch; to have fingers running across its surface and sinking deep, down, where it was
wet.
Closed eyes was not a good idea. I resumed reality, keeping them open but also struggling to ground myself. The heavy weight of the day's MVAs, EMSs were catching up on the eyelids and added up, sank into the sofa. In fact, even just the thought of him; the fantasies; the image; the feelings, they were all so heavy.
Just so many things we had to be talking about that were hard to even raise and not necessarily something that I wanted to be raising, if, at all. It didn't make sense to bring up all the unhappiness, all the harsh conditions of the cold winter we'd had to experience and recall memories that were better off being forgotten. That's what I like to tell myself. Heavy things are a burden. And most of the times, people liked to leave their baggage behind.
=============
[Vanilla]
A shower does wonders for the clouded mind and while steam was yet another obstruction to clarity, it was, at the very least, bearable in the absence of anyone else. And now that I wasn't as intoxicated as I had been twenty minutes ago before stepping into the shower, the thunderous beat of my heart was all-too-obvious underneath the bathrobe. Good god, if any form of fabric could conceal such a thing.
Midway, I'd even had the sense to prepare myself after sitting in the tub with the water running down my head for ten minutes straight. Recalling textbook ideas soon made way for clear thoughts and clear thoughts soon made way for the usual mode of thinking: multiple simulations of the next hour or so unfolded in my head which, eventually, necessitated some form of nervous.
I peered out into the bedroom before exiting the bath completely, slipping on the bedroom slippers I'd left by the mat and registering the empty bedroom—along with what appeared to be three boxes of condoms laid out, displayed on the bed for all to see. 'Take your pick' seemed to be the accurate accompanying phrase.
Not quite knowing how one should be responding to such a forward display of, well, adulthood, I'd paused by the bed with damp hair till the image and accompanying concept started to sink in and settle somewhere fast and equally thunderous.
Make no mistake, I was the one who initiated the events of the evening though, minutes earlier, under the influence of alcohol had perhaps come across as ridiculously indecent. Indeed, having gone out of my way to plan it all down to the very minute had taken its toll on my sanity but I wasn't about to deny the need I'd long supressed under the guise of 'having better things to do.'
To be honest with oneself about one's own feelings... admittedly, I was no expert. A single glance at the bed we were hopefully about to share had my nerves singed with the flame of a first. Twenty-two years and here I was experiencing something completely foreign.
I did not realize I had forgotten to breathe until emerging from the bedroom provided some form of surprise. The lounge was empty. Well, at least it appeared to be. From across the room, I spotted a glass of water on the coffee table which I certainly had not poured. With the intention of putting it away, I'd approached the centre of the room but it was upon passing the sofa that the figure lounging on it nearly startled me out of my bathrobe.
He was lying on the sofa, fast asleep.
"Well."
I sighed. A day's worth of work; of course he was going to be exhausted. It did not help that his seventy-two-hour shift had ended at six in the morning and for the entire day, he'd practically volunteered extra hours in the firehouse. To be alive and kicking at ten in the evening after a bottle of cognac and all that accumulated burden on his shoulders simply wasn't a possible feat.
I filled the space beside him, finishing the glass of water he'd poured for himself and then setting it aside. The lion's mane, once the shade of aged Bordeaux, had over the years been reduced to a deep, dark auburn that reminded one of the tip of an extinguished candle.
It was in a daze that I reached out to caress the top of his head. The past slipped through the gaps between my fingers and then it was staring down at his lips and then, further down to his neck. His shoulders. His arms.
A sign, then. Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps this was a little too much, too fast, and in a way, I was to be glad. And if so, dialling back a little should be the case? I could not tell.
Realizing that tonight was going to have to wait seemed to tear apart my defences all of a sudden and reveal the sheer height of anticipation I had been harbouring within throughout the entire evening. Disappointment began to settle in.
I retreated to the bedroom and returned with the quilt, draping it over him and the sofa before reaching for the room's telephone to ring for an extra set of covers. The idea, for some reason, did not seem very appealing.
I considered occupying the remaining space on the sofa and sharing the covers instead, which would have included the added convenience of a life-sized heater. After all, he did have a body temperature that slightly above the human average.
The idea started off perfectly within my zone of comfort. The space on the sofa was decent and did not feel cramped despite two adult male figures leaving the comfort of a king-sized bed for such an alternative.
Yes, indeed, it was all very fine until moments before I was about to drift into sleep, the bottom half of his physical existence began to wake and I could not, for the gods of rolling pins and grammar-correctors, comprehend what was going on in his sleep.
Not a single muscle above his waist had moved. The idiot had one arm, folded, under his head and the other lying limp on his side under the covers but the entire minute in which h-he was... well... becoming fully active, he did not appear to have the slightest awareness of reality.
I nearly punched him out of shock.
With the difficult situation pertaining to my companion's lower half, I was obligated to scoot further back, forgetting that the sofa had an edge and quite unfortunately falling to carpeted floor in a tangle of covers and robe. Even with the sound, Leroy did not stir.
Quite frankly, I would have very much liked to deliver a well-deserved smack to the back of his head for the awfully pleasant dream he must be having to choose the unconscious over a real, waking human being perfectly capable of satisfying his needs.
God was he an idiot.
At once, I called for room service and had an additional quilt fetched. Soon after, I retreated back into the bedroom and there, under the covers, had quite the pleasant dream myself. Of warm candles and melting snow.
*
His absence was the first thing I noticed getting out of bed in the morning. The room was colder and that was it; no walking out to check the lounge, no visual and auditory signs—just the room being colder than I remembered. I reached for my glasses on the bedside table, noticing the boxes of condoms stacked up beside it before wholly regaining my senses. Six unread text messages.
______________
From: Just Let Me Impress You
[05:45] Fuck
[05:45] I fell asleep
[05:45] Fuck
[05:46] I'm so sorry
[05:46] It's a forty-eight this time
[05:46] I gotta go
[05:46] Are you free Saturday?
_________________
I checked the time. It was half-past seven. Indeed, I'd vaguely recalled something about his shift starting at six in the morning and that most of his hours were either a two-day (forty-eight-hour) or three-day arrangement.
Either way, I didn't need to be checking my schedule to know that I wasn't available on Saturday. One of the primary conditions for teaching at Le Cordon Bleu was to conduct Saturday classes for a select group of scholars on the specifics of culinary journalism. Although the exact timing of the classes had yet to be fixed, I wasn't about to make any promises and end up disappointing the both of us for the second time.
Strangely enough however, I was in the odd mood for ventures. After making a call to the office and speaking to Florence about my schedule, I calculated a decent total of two hours and twenty-two minutes till my first morning class at the culinary institute. Apart from the meeting with a TV broadcast company in the afternoon back at the office, the day was pretty much left to check off my list of restaurants to review at a pace of my own.
In minutes, I was typing out a search on our private chat for his station number whilst getting out of bed and heading for the bathroom. After going through a list of cafés I'd intended to review for breakfast occasions, I decided on a place with takeout breakfast bagels minutes away from his firehouse and packed my things. I wasn't going to make the mistake of getting him something sweet.
Admittedly, there weren't very much. Apart from my briefcase for work the previous day, there was only one—no, three—other items I had to struggle with. Oh, wait. Four. He'd left the bottle of lubricant on the pantry counter, as though he'd forgotten about it after pouring himself a glass of water last evening. Good heavens.
In his defence, he must've been in quite the rush considering the fact that his shift starts at six and the text he sent me was a mere fifteen minutes before that. I suppose then it would on me to... well... I suppose... return...? Them? After all, technically, they belonged to him. He paid for them.
And then a good hour later (ten minutes to check out, twenty to call for an Uber and ride down to a pleasant café, another fifteen to wait for the twelve breakfast bagels I ordered whilst enjoying a classic French almond croissant myself out on the patio, and then a final ten minutes or so to make my way to station twelve), I arrived with a takeaway bag in one hand and my briefcase in the other.
The first of concerns I had on my mind included worrying over the number of crew members on duty and whether twelve breakfast bagels were enough for them and their bureau chief. I hadn't quite texted him before coming since, well, I'd intended for this to be a pleasant surprise but standing outside the firehouse somehow made this out to be a poorly-conceived idea.
One, it was quite clearly out of the way. Le Cordon Bleu was up in Holborn and station twelve was in the middle of East Dulwich, which meant that I was certainly being far too sentimental after an evening of cognac and missed opportunities. And two, at present, the uniformed man standing before the guardhouse situated in front of the gate was staring me, the stranger in a suit, down.
Naturally, I wasn't allowed to walk right in.
"Good morning." I went up to him.
"Morning," the man in the booth seemed surprised as I neared. Already, his eyes were on the bag of heavenly-smelling breakfast bagels. "You need anything?"
"Well, no. Not really. I'm just here to see someone—although now that I've said it, it sounds perfectly ridiculous. They might be out on a call."
"Nah! We've been slow today. Who you looking for?"
"Um. He goes by Leroy Cox, I believe."
Again, the guard appeared taken aback. "Lad has friends outside the station? Now that's a miracle. A workaholic, that one is."
I smiled. "Thank you for looking out for him."
"Not much," he brushed aside before glancing, again, at the takeout bag. I made the decision to relieve him of anticipation. "I'll just... um. These are breakfast bagels. Just a little gift of appreciation for your service. It would've been odd to come empty handed, and even worse if I'd simply got them for a single person on the team. Please, help yourself."
"Aw thanks mate," the guard took the bag at once, reaching in to retrieve a serving wrapped in brown paper for himself. "Look, why don't you head on in to see him? I can't leave my post anyway, and I don't suppose the bagels could walk themselves into the station. Just sign your name and phone number on the visitor list and uh... you have a driver's license or some kind of identification?"
I was hesitant. Naturally, I hadn't meant to cause that much trouble or concern but a brief time check ensured I had ample leeway to arrive at culinary school on time and so I decided, well, why not. I presented my driver's license and wrote my name at the top of the visitor's list.
"Aight, go right in. Yup, just further down and then take a right. You'll see the engine bay."
I thanked him and passed the gate, crossing the car park before arriving at the iconic, high-ceiling garage-style loading bay I'd only ever seen in documentaries and news channels. Out front, several crew members were gathered around a mound of equipment with hoses in hand.
"Hello. Good morning." I interrupted amidst the roaring jets of water. All three stopped to stare. "Excuse me. Um, sorry to disrupt your duties... I'm looking for Leroy. Cox. Is he...?"
"Yeah he's in. I mean he practically lives here," laughed the lady who responded, nodding towards a door that was further in. Her hair was dyed a rich copper-bronze and chopped fiercely into short layers. "Through that door and to your left. If he's not in the commons, he's probably in the gym downstairs."
"I'll take you," her male colleague offered and she turned to him with a raised brow, rolling her eyes as soon as he dropped his hose and gestured for the crew member beside him to take over. The latter seemed oddly curious about me, staring rather intently as though trying to put a name to my face. "Probie, you listen to Zales."
"Right sir," nodded the ball of curious. I thanked the man who offered to help and apologized for the inconvenience.
"S'alright. Follow me," he led the way, glancing over his shoulder with a smile. I returned it rather stiffly. "You just here to see him?"
"Oh. Oh no, well. Actually, I have breakfast bagels for you all. Twelve of them—eleven, now that the guard out front has had his portion. Leroy... he left without having anything in the morning, so I thought..." I let the words hang; unsure of how else I could continue.
The crew member turned back in surprise, pausing in his tracks to look me up and down. "You live with him?"
"No, um." Goodness. How else to put it? "Not that. It's... never mind." I seemed to have given up a little too quickly, seeing how he put up both his arms to lay off all responsibility on the conversation.
"It's cool," he surrendered. "You made the right choice to not bring sweet stuff so I figured maybe you know him well." He continued leading the way, past the door and down a corridor. "Guess you're the one who almost burned his kitchen down, then."
The embarrassment nearly stopped me in my tracks.
"So you are the guy—"
"Jung, I need your report from yesterday's fire on sixth avenue," a man dressed in a different uniform emerged from an office to our right, coming to a stop as soon as our eyes met. "Oh. Hi. You need anything?"
"Hey chief, guess what, Cox has friends from outside," he had a finger pointed in my direction. I bowed my head in greeting. "And he's brought us breakfast bagels."
Taking that as a cue for action, I reached into the bag to hand who I assumed was the station's bureau chief a bagel and promptly saw his face light up. Albeit for a reason much more heart-warming than I was expecting.
"Cox? That mother fucker's got things on his mind besides fire? Best news of the century!" He clapped me on the back and I was, very naturally, slightly startled. "Thanks by the way. These smell real good. Jung, get your ass on the report. Ask Jaeger if you need help. He's sleeping on the couch in the commons."
"Aight chief. You enjoy your bagel." The crew member whose name was apparently Jung, did something with his fingers shaped into a gun, to which the chief raised his bagel in gratitude before retreating back into his office.
Hm, how... pleasantly close everyone appears to be with one another despite the odd use of insults as an expression of affection. Perhaps mildly related to the indecent finger-exchanged between him and Raul back in school...?
"Cox!" Jung called as soon as we arrived at the doorway to the common lounge. Heads turned. I hid behind the wall.
"Not here." "Nope!" "Check the gym."
I was led further down to the basement of the station where the gym was, and, after peering through the glass doors, Jung concluded that the idiot I was looking for was, apparently, not here either.
Not quite wishing to bother him any further, I was about to hand him the takeaway bag and simply leave a text when, upon coming back up to the ground floor and gazing out into the backyard, spotted a familiar figure in the distance playing frisbee with an equally familiar-looking dog.
Chicken.
Ah. So that's how he keeps an eye on him. Indeed, the whole idea of owning a dog despite the hellish shift hours he had and a constant need to be at the firehouse felt like something of a mystery from the start. It made sense that he would bring him here to the station. Chicken was incredibly obedient, either way, and wouldn't have posed much of a problem.
For some reason, the scene evoked an unwillingness to be disrupted. Even from afar, he appeared to be relaxed and quite naturally himself; in a state of complete peace and satisfaction. I was reluctant to change that.
"Could you just tell him I dropped by?" I held the takeaway bag out to Jung. "I hope everyone enjoys the breakfast bagels. I'll be making a move first."
"Wait. You not gonna say hi?"
"It's fine," I left with a smile, going back down the hallway and out through the door leading to the engine bay. The first thing I noticed was the absence of the previous two crew members who had been hosing down equipment out in the front. It was by the time I neared the gate where the guardhouse was that I understood why.
The two of them, together with the guard I'd met earlier on, were standing in front of a displeased woman in a lavish fur coat. I could not see their faces. I could, however, make out the words she was hurling aloud even from a distance afar.
"Oh that's bloody ridiculous! You can't go around smashing windows—it's a BMW for god's sake. Do you know how much I have to pay to get them fixed?"
End of Wax Chapter 6. Continue reading Chapter 7 or return to Wax book page.