Rory and Sebastian Ch. 20

"Just make it special," Rory quipped. "How do you it may as well be a surprise, since we already know what the answer's going to be!"

I made love to him twice that night and again in the shower in the morning. At four a.m., as I was riding him bareback and his legs were draped over my shoulder, I planted two hickies on him as he bit down on the pillow, half-laughing and half-groaning at the juvenile gestures, and nervous of waking my parents up, four doors down. The next morning, I watched him as he slept and I pulled him, naked, into me, nuzzling my dick against his ass. I felt contented as he half-stirred next to me and that feeling lasted for the next week until it was time to separate. We drove together to London with Evan, who dropped Rory off at Heathrow for a flight north to Edinburgh. I felt nauseous as he pulled away from me to pass security. He turned round and smiled encouragingly, but there was pain in his smile as I think he realised just how upset I was to be away from him. We started texting by the time I was back in Evan's car and for the first few weeks, we kept up the schedule we'd agreed upon.

But the thought of Rory returning to halls adjacent to his ex-boyfriend gnawed away at me, despite Evan's words, Robbie's texts of encouragement and Helen, my Northern Irish flatmate's, joy that this guy who she'd never met had gotten back together with me. I guess my friends had heard so much about him that they couldn't help but know how excited I'd be that we were a couple again. But the images of Alisdair being near to Rory were not helped when I began a stupid perusal of his Facebook page; the guy was quite goodlooking and he had that compulsively well-bred look that the British upper-classes, English, Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish, can all simultaneously pull off.

Rory's visit to me in London put Alisdair right out of my head for the time being. The only way to describe Rory that week was radiant, that charm that he used so self-consciously to make people enamoured with him was on full display, he was the life and soul of the party, he was funny, he was charming, he was interested in everything people had to say. Within fifteen minutes of meeting him, Helen liked him more than she liked me. I jest. Kind of. The only fly in the ointment was my flatmate Pete, who was good friends with Daniel, the guy I'd ditched the second I ran into Rory in Edinburgh and who had taken it very badly, to my surprise. Pete was chilly with Rory, which I thought was understandable but pretty unfair. Rory affected not to notice for the first two days but after repeated attempts at politeness, his cold snobbery reared its defensive head again and he repaid Pete's coldness with similar behaviour.

Sexually, Rory and I were right back to where we had started, with me always on top, and even throwing in a few new moves from what I had learned in his absence, most of which brought him screaming or cooing into cum-splattering - and we had a 50/50 split on blowjobs and rimming. The sex was fantastic and Helen gave me the cheekiest wink in the kitchen when she'd woken up the sound of Rory and I going at it one morning, when we assumed they had all left for class. I smirked and winked back. If Rory was making noise while I was making love, then I was doing my job right.

When we met in Leeds, a few weeks later, a city between London and Edinburgh, there were a lot of our old schoolfriends around for Robbie's birthday. Because of the number of people showing up, there obviously wasn't room at Robbie's halls and so Rory and I had booked into a cheap and cheerful Travel Lodge room near the city center. I checked in first and he arrived an hour later; I swooped him up into arms, feeling how cold his cheeks were from the February air, and kissing him on the lips, before giving him a little peck on the nose. It was going to be a messy weekend, which we were both looking forward to, since the whole group hadn't properly been together since A-Level results' night at the end of final year, but it was also nice to have a room to ourselves and to spend a few hours on our own.

As I caught up on a paper I had to read for class, Rory lay on the bed with me, his head on my stomach, stretched out and reading "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens, one of my favorite reads. I stroked his hair with my spare hand as we read in silence and from time to time, I'd glance down from my pages to look at him, engrossed in his novel, his eyes intensely focused on what he was reading. I loved him so much and it'd be a wonderful feeling telling him that my uncle had given us his cottage to stay in for a few days at the end of semester, so we'd be going right from my trip to visit him in Saint Andrew's south to the cottage. It was the same cottage in which we'd once argued, spectacularly, about his eating disorder, but here's hoping this time round it'd go a lot better. I couldn't wait. Rory has a quality that I've always loved, in which once you've achieved total familiarity, total comfort, with him, you're always kind of hankering to be back in that state again.

That day in Leeds, I planned to have sex with him before we went to meet the others; it turned me on to know we'd been that close only moments before he turned up so prim, so proper, so well put-together, with everyone else.

"You know he nearly changed the ending?" he said, from his spot on my stomach.

"Dickens?" I asked, although it seemed a fairly fucking obvious question.

He nodded, "They very nearly didn't get together in the end."

"Hmmm. It doesn't make sense," I mused, "that they'd just meet up in that garden and then not get together."

"I don't think they did meet in the garden in the original ending, actually," Rory said, adjusting his head slightly, for comfort's sake. "They met in Piccadilly, or somewhere in London, I think, and they bumped into each other by accident but nothing ever came of the conversation. They kind of just admitted they'd loved each other once and moved on."

"Fuck, that's a depressing ending, after reading the whole book to find out they couldn't make it work and his whole life had been a lie."

"I know. Some people think the ending he went for was a cop-out, a play for popularity," Rory said, getting up to pour himself a glass of water, "but I think he made the right choice. It makes more sense and sometimes it's best to listen to people."

"It doesn't even make sense, though, that they'd not get together."

"I know, but in the original ending, Estella had re-married in the time they were apart. She'd found someone else."

Rory resumed his place on my stomach and re-opened "Great Expectations". I felt a slight twinge of irrational hatred towards Alisdair again, a guy I'd never met.

***

Saint Andrew's is a beautiful place, set north of Edinburgh in the magnificent Scottish countryside, somewhere between a fantasy of Westeros and a Sir Walter Scott novel, and in the two years I dated and visited Rory there, I came to love it deeply. It's small, insular, with an air of a town slightly unsullied by the world beyond. You could kind of believe that Prince William and Kate Middleton had been able to fall in love there and get to know each other without the whole world knowing their business and stalking them the whole time. People were nice there, I liked it and even the biting cold that blasted through there at the tail-end of February when I first set foot there just seemed to add to how stunning the town was in its own rugged isolation. I had driven up, since we would need the car to make the very, very long journey to my uncle's and it would help with me having to take so many clothes and books from my student house at the end of semester, and likewise Rory's. I love driving, so I didn't mind too much and it felt great to wrap my arms around Rory when I got there.

He took me towards the residential halls where he was living. "Do you like it?" he asked.

"The town is beautiful. It's so different to London. Dumb point. An obvious one," I said, looking at him as we walked through his gates.

"Good different?" he pressed. "Or just a factual observation different?"

"Good different, dickhead," I smiled. "It feels more like a college town than London does."

"Well, that's not hard."

I rolled my eyes at his cockiness and he swiped us in. We walked up two flights of stairs and I outright laughed in derision when he offered to carry my weekend bag for me.

"Rory, there have been nights out when I carry you home! I think it's safe to say I should be okay with this bag!"

As he was turning the lock in his bedroom door, the door on the opposite side of the corridor opened and a tall, good-looking guy with sandy hair and a soft Edinburgh accent stepped out: "Hey, Rory."

Rory glanced over his shoulder, "Hello, Olly. Olly, this is Sebastian. Sebastian, this is my friend, Olly."

Olly shook my hand with a firm and confident grip. "So, you're the famous Sebastian?" he smiled. "We've heard a lot about you."

I shot Rory a smirk, "Really?"

"Oh my God, how embarrassing," he sighed.

"Yeah, wee Razza here never stops talking about you," Olly teased.

"You are both incredibly annoying. If Erica came up and I told her that, would you thank me for it?"

"But I'm not as in love with Erica as you are with Sebastian. Who could be?"

I laughed. This was on the one hand very, very nice to hear and on the other it was hilarious to see Rory getting teased by someone who wasn't me.

"Don't you have class to get to?" Rory retorted, with a smile he was trying to hide.

"I do. Good to meet you, Sebastian, and I hope you two will be coming out for a few drinks for the end of term, pal?"

"Definitely," I nodded, along with Rory. As Olly left and Rory opened the door, he held up his hand, "Don't. I can't even bear to look at what your grin must look like."

I shuffled in behind him, "No, no. Just nice to hear that you've such good taste, baby."

"You're so pleased with yourself. Kiss me."

I dropped my bag and kissed him. His hand affectionately rubbed my lower back until I pulled away to take in his room - impeccably tidy apart from a slightly crumpled bed sheet and a few books strewn across his desk, which had a fantastic view out the window of the town and countryside beyond it.

"I really hate to leave you right after you got here," he apologised, picking up a notepad, fountain pen and a copy of a medieval prayer book. "But this lecture is mandatory."

"Don't worry about it! I'll take a nap when you're gone."

"Please don't masturbate in my bed."

"Haha. As if I'd waste good cum when I have you back in ninety minutes."

Rory winked and kissed me, before sweeping out the door. I unzipped my jacket, kicked off my shoes, peeled off my socks, wiggled my toes as they enjoyed their newfound freedom after hours of driving and lay back on Rory's single mattress. Well, this was going to be interesting for the next two nights. But any possibility of a much-needed nap was shot to shit about five minutes after Rory left by a knock on the door, which I bounced up to get, fixing a polite smile on my face and trying to look energised. I answered it to a curvy girl with a cloud of long blonde hair, immaculately glossed lips and a cableknit top half encased in a gilet, with matching knee-high riding boots and beige chinos.

"Fuck me sideways," she exhaled in an accent so preppy it could shame Rory and Virginia combined, "you must be the boyfriend. You are absolutely delicious! Hi, I'm Rory's friend, Tessa. I live on the floor above."

"Sebastian," I smiled, proffering my hand, which she took. I liked this girl. "Good to meet you. Rory's not in. He just left..."

"I bet he's gone to a lecture," she sighed, popping into the room and sashaying past me. "Oh, he's so diligent I can barely stand how much I adore him for it! So, when did you get in?"

Her eyes, even though they were blue, reminded me of Rory's in a way, because they were, right there and then, full of total interest in the person they were focussed on.

"About fifteen minutes ago," I answered, closing the door behind us. "I drove up, so it's been a long day, but Saint Andrew's is ... gorgeous."

"Isn't it?" Tessa asked, with passionate earnestness. She pointed to the chair at Rory's desk: "May I?"

"Please!" I said. "And yes, it's a big change to London. I was just saying that to Rory."

"I'll bet it is. And you drove up? That must have taken ages! And Rory says you two are off to a little house in the countryside once term is over? I think that's such a sweet idea and it's so great that you're here. I hope we can all show you a good time. Everyone's just dying, and I mean dying, to meet you, darling. Especially, or except, Alisdair - fuck knows which way he falls on the spectrum of expectation! You know about Alisdair, I assume? Or have I just put my foot in an error the size of a black hole?"

I enjoyed Tessa's no-bullshit approach to conversation and I was actually relieved someone had brought Alisdair up, since I couldn't really ask any of Rory's college friends in case they either reported back to him and everyone else that I was jealous, or they were close friends of my rival's, and let him know.

"Yeah," I muttered, ruefully. "I've heard of him. What's he like?"

"Oh good! I assumed you would have heard about him and Rory, one way or the other, and God knows that if I went somewhere and encountered my boyf's ex, I'd want to be filled in on him. Well, Alisdair is, how do I put this, and I like him, you know, but he's not a patch on you in the looks department. Not even close. Photographs don't do you justice," she enthused, breathlessly, "you are just a total hunk! I'm into my 1980s' lingo at the minute."

I laughed and took a seat on the bed.

"It's more that I have slight difficulty in imagining Rory with anyone else but me, which probably seems egotistical and douchey, but it's true. I mean, romantically. It's just a bit weird for me."

"It was never very passionate, although a lot of people had thought they'd get together at some point, especially people on their course, which is where they first met because Alisdair doesn't live in our halls and didn't back in first year, either. But, anyway, they sort of fizzled out at the end of the year and didn't keep in much touch when they went home. They were beige, together, and Razzy glows more about you in absence than he ever did when Alisdair was standing right next to him."

I was grateful to Tessa and I really warmed to her candor. She was completely forthright, no beating about the bush, and I liked that, but this was the second or third time someone had told me that that Rory and Alisdair had fizzled into nothingness and it made me feel uneasy. On a rational and mundane level, I knew that it was a good sign, because it suggested a total lack of passion. However, the other side of me worried that it all sounded like loose ends, a story without an ending, with no firm reason why they would never think of getting back together. I cannot adequately explain, even to myself, what had happened to me in the two months since Rory and I got back together but it was not good. I was so happy when he was next to me, and so relieved, that I had become innately and terrifyingly conscious that this contentment was fragile. I could not shake the feeling that he would leave me again and these feelings of nervousness and insecurity were so new to me, so out of character, that I was processing them badly. I could tell that Rory was aware of them, to what extent he took them seriously I did not yet know, but because we saw each other in the flesh so infrequently the only signs of irritation I'd picked up on were the occasional eyeroll over Skype, but that's transitory, difficult to pick up on, and even harder to question or discuss. It's only when you're next to someone that it's real and that weekend at Saint Andrew's was likely to be the one where the issue boiled over, or rather, came out into the open. I knew I had to say something to him, but I didn't know what words to use. Nor how justified I was. Or how I could confess insecurity to him when he had managed to gamely suppress any signs of resentment or insecurity towards me, after I had slept with about ten times as many people as he had during our separation.

As we got ready to go out that night, I was standing topless before I pulled a t-shirt and rugby sweater on; I caught Rory staring at me.

"What?" I asked, fondly.

"Nothing. Your body's different, since the first time we dated. I noticed it at the wedding, when all kinds of lust took over us, remember? You're just completely ripped. I thought once you stopped playing rugby so regularly it'd go the other way, but, you are ripped. It's the only word for you. I'm just getting used to the difference."

I was a bit embarrassed and smiled, looking down as I fidgeted with my t-shirt.

"Is that it?" Rory asked, incredulously. "No, 'You'll thank me when I'm fucking you' response?"

I laughed, but Rory didn't press the conversation and I could feel him getting slightly annoyed, or confused, with my behavior. En route to his friend Tessa's room, he kept up the flow of conversation. It lasted for about two minutes, but I'd heard him do this before. At a dinner out one evening, when we'd fought over his quarrel with Joshua Peterly. Rory could just keep going with inane pleasantries and while he wasn't anywhere near as strained as he had been that night, there was faint trace of effort in his voice as he tried to cover up something he didn't fully understand but knew existed. As we rounded the corner to Tessa's room, there was a guy waiting to go in, who had just knocked and was standing in a tweed blazer, a white shirt, trousers and expensive-looking shoes. His hair was combed to one side and he was holding a bottle of wine in the hand boasting his familial signet ring. I knew from his photographs on Facebook that this was Alisdair. He was standing next to a tall ginger guy in bright green linen trousers, a kid who had the expression of someone permanently surprised by life.

"Good evening," Rory greeted them, in his brightest tone, a clear sign that damage control had already kicked in. "Chaps, this is my boyfriend, Sebastian Carson; he's visiting from London for the end of term. Darling, this is Alisdair Paisley and Boris Aronson. They're both on my course."

Alisdair looked faintly wounded by how he had been introduced in comparison to me, which I took as a sign that his feelings for him were not quite dead and that any disinterest in the relationship had flowed from Rory, rather than him. Boris extended his hand politely, "Ah, I didn't know Rory was seeing anyone!" he said with artless honesty.

"Yep," I answered, shaking his hand, then offering mine to Alisdair, who took it perfunctorily and asked how my journey from London had been. The door swung open to reveal Tessa in a cocktail dress, "Sorry, guys, I had my hair wrapped in straighteners when you knocked. Come in, come in! I say, Boris, nifty trousers!"

Over the next forty minutes, we were joined in Tessa's room by Olly, who I'd met earlier, by Tessa's next-door neighbor Rita, a half-Sicilian girl who was so beautiful that she could legitimately have passed for a model and who was also one of the sweetest girls I'd ever had the privilege of meeting, then by Colby, a muscular Australian studying German and Spanish who was Olly's best friend; they shared an acid, teasing sense of humor that was quite like my own. And Colby's girlfriend, Monica, who was over visiting from her year abroad at university in Dublin. As the two outsiders, Monica and I chatted for a bit while the others caught up on Saint Andrew's news, but they were all very polite, and Olly and Colby both made a real effort to include me in the conversation. A lot of questions about Rory's school days were asked and I responded with the funniest stories I could think of, including a very good impression (if I say so myself) of the girls Rory was friends with in school - "Oooh, we've met Virginia," Olly said. "Who knew someone that beautiful could be so evil?"