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“Your mobile’s been buzzing,” Livy says tossing Nick’s BlackBerry on the sofa by his thigh.
Nick glances at his messages. They’re all from Harry. Even though he knows he shouldn’t, he excuses himself to the kitchen to call him back.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” Harry answers.
“No, my phone was in the other room,” Nick says. “How was skiing?”
“Good, busted my chin,” Harry slurs. Nick can hear laughter and party noises in the background. He wonders how many drinks Harry had before he decided to call Nick.
“Sorry to hear it,” Nick says. “You’re all right, though?”
“I’m okay,” says Harry. “Bit drunk and I don’t really know where I am. Some house party in Stretford. A friend dragged me here, but I’m ready to go now and I can’t find him.”
Nick closes his eyes and hates himself as he asks, “Did you want me to come for you?”
“Yeah,” Harry says. “I know it’s Christmas Eve, but I’m just –“
“Can you figure out where you are?”
He hears Harry moving through the party and then silence.
“M’ walking to the corner for the street name,” Harry says.
Nick gets his keys and his coat and covers his speaker with his palm when Aimee raises an eyebrow at him.
“Harry,” he mouths and knows it’s all the explanation Aimee needs, even if the look she sends him is dark and worried. Nick understands her concern because while Nick’s been getting up at half five for the past three months, Harry’s been getting up to other things – namely going off to America and landing himself Taylor bloody Swift as a girlfriend.
When he and Harry started sleeping together over the summer Nick thought it might be going somewhere serious, but whatever Nick suspected was happening between Harry and himself had clearly all been in his head. Nick wishes desperately that that realization had somehow changed how easy he is for Harry.
“Vernon Avenue off Edge Lane,” Harry says, rattling off the house number and interrupting Nick’s wishful thinking.
“On my way,” Nick says. “Go back in the house. It’s cold and wet out.”
It takes Nick twenty minutes to get there. Harry’s standing in the yard soaking wet and huddled into his coat. He slides into the passenger seat, teeth chattering and legs shaking from the cold.
“I thought you were waiting inside,” Nick says.
Harry looks over, but he can’t quite meet Nick’s eyes. Nick doesn’t know if it’s because he can’t focus from too much drink or if it’s something else altogether, something going on inside Harry’s head that Nick isn’t privy to.
“Harry?” Nick pushes again because it’s freezing and it’s Christmas Eve, and he didn’t come all this way just to be ignored.
“Sorry,” Harry mumbles as he leans across the gear shift. He puts one cold hand on the back of Nick’s neck and presses his equally cold lips to Nick’s.
Nick is resigned to it – has been since he made the conscious decision to call Harry back. He suspected this was going to happen and still wants it, despite how much he knows it’s going to hurt later. Nick has never been very good at denying himself.
He kisses Harry back, sliding his hands up to cup Harry’s face and sucks on his lower lip until Harry’s skin feels warm under his palms. Harry is still shaking, but Nick doesn’t think it’s from the cold anymore.
“Take me somewhere,” Harry says.
Nick nods and drives toward Manchester. It’s quiet, but for once Nick doesn’t feel the need to fill up the empty space with words. He supposes there’s not much to say.
He pulls into the car park of the Premier Inn and lets the engine idle. Harry’s palm is hot against his thigh through his trousers and Nick doesn’t want to go out into the cold. He looks at Harry and Harry looks back, more focused now that he’s warm and has had an extra fifteen minutes to sober up.
“I’ll just be a tick,” Nick says.
The rain is still coming down. It’s Christmas Eve and there’s a fire burning in the hearth at his parent’s house not twenty minutes from here. Everyone he loves is curled up on the sofa watching Die Hard and eating popcorn. He shouldn’t be here.
He pays for the room in cash and lets Harry go in first while he moves the car around to the other side of the building. It’s bitterly cold. Nick didn’t bring his gloves, so he shoves his hands in his pockets on the walk back to the room.
Harry opens the door when Nick knocks and then sits on the edge of the bed looking down at his hands. Nick takes off his coat and his shoes. He leaves his jumper on because the room is still freezing, although Harry appears to have turned the heat on while Nick was parking the car. Harry hasn’t taken anything off, so Nick gets down on his knees and starts on the wet laces of Harry’s shoes. They’re grey suede. Nick wants to chastise Harry for ruining a perfectly good pair of shoes before he remembers that Harry is eighteen and a millionaire. Everything is replaceable to him.
Harry’s ankles feel small and bony in Nick’s hand. Nick has got big hands, but he’s gentle when he removes Harry’s socks, balling them up and tucking them into the ruined shoes.
“You look really good,” Harry says.
Nick’s spent all day eating and lying about in second day jeans and a jumper he picked up off of the floor. His hair is a frizzy mess and he’s pretty sure he has a gravy stain on his sleeve.
Harry doesn’t look much better. He’s rumpled and pale and his chin is bruised. There’s an ugly gash – a scab, still raw around the edges – running through the center of the bruise.
Nick leans up and presses his lips to it as gently as he can.
Harry shivers and makes a small whining noise, and then he digs his fingers into Nick’s jumper and pulls in an effort to get him up off of the floor.
Nick shushes him and gives him what he wants. He spreads Harry out on the bed and lies half on top of him, kissing up Harry’s neck to his mouth. They make out while the heater finally nudges the room toward a bearable temperature. Harry puts his hands under Nick’s jumper and runs his fingers over the notches of his spine, hooking his hands under Nick’s armpits to squeeze his ribs.
“I want to touch you,” Harry says. “Wanna suck your prick, get you hard and wet, and then turn over and let you fuck me.”
Nick puts his palm over Harry’s mouth and takes a deep breath. He has a condom and a packet of lube in his coat pocket, but he can’t think clearly when Harry says things like that. Nick doesn’t want to be the kind of person who checks his mobile half a dozen times a day for a text message or drives out in the middle of the night to pick Harry up from parties just because he asks, or fucks Harry when he begs even though he knows Harry has a pretty new girlfriend tucked away on the other side of the world. He supposes he is that person nevertheless.
“Take off your clothes,” Nick says, getting up off of the bed to dig in his coat for supplies.
Harry is out of his jumper and half out of his jeans by the time Nick finds the lube and the condom. Nick throws them on the bed and says, “Get yourself ready.”
Harry kicks his jeans off onto the floor and rips into the packet of lube with his teeth. He lies back and slicks two fingers. Nick watches the muscles move under Harry’s skin as he bends his wrist and pushes the first finger inside. It’s so fucking hot, the way Harry’s body just takes it, opens right up for his fingers as he feeds them into his arse.
Finally, Nick can’t stand not touching Harry. He grabs him by the hips and pulls him to the edge of the mattress before he leans over and traces Harry’s bottom lip with his fingertip. Harry licks over the pad and sucks Nick’s finger into his mouth.
As Nick watches Harry’s face, the flutter of his eyelashes, he can’t stop thinking about the summer, when Harry was practically living at Nick’s flat and Nick had had this every day. They’d had so much fun together that Nick forgot himself. He was stupid. He’d got used to always having Harry about and forgot that Harry wasn’t his, that he couldn’t keep him – that he shouldn’t want to anyway.
Nick has never wanted anyone the way he wants Harry. He’s never had a problem pulling, sex has always come easy for him, but the desire always flares and fizzles out as soon as the sex is over. Harry is the anomaly. Harry is the one person Nick can’t seem to stop wanting, and, in a cruel twist of irony, he is probably the only person Nick can never really have.
“M’ready,” Harry says when he’s done sucking on Nick’s finger.
The room feels overly heated now. Nick is warm all over. There’s sweat on his brow and on Harry’s neck and upper lip. Nick leans in closer and licks over Harry’s mouth kissing him hard and dirty, and Harry just opens up and gives it back to him by setting his teeth roughly into Nick’s bottom lip.
“Roll over,” Nick says. Fucking Harry is always easier if Nick doesn’t have to look at him. It hurts less. Nick can focus on the way they affect each other’s bodies and ignore the scooped-out, hollow feeling in his chest.
Harry pulls his fingers out of his arse and says, “No, I want to see you.” Nick’s throat feels tight at those words, choked from all the things he wants to say to Harry but won’t.
He takes a deep breath and gets on the bed, resigned to giving Harry what he wants the way he wants it. Nick still can’t look at Harry so he focuses on getting the condom on and using what’s left of the lube to slick his cock before he grabs Harry by his hips, pushing Harry’s knees back until Nick has him bent in half. Nick closes his eyes and fucks into Harry, trying his best to focus on his own pleasure, but Harry moans and digs his nails into the back of Nick’s neck, pulling him down for a kiss. Harry’s never been easy to ignore.
They fuck hard. Harry clings to Nick. He bites Nick’s shoulder hard enough to sting and scratches Nick’s back with enough force that he cries out.
“Don’t stop,” Harry begs like that is something that might actually happen.
The problem is Nick can’t stop.
“Please shut up,” Nick mutters, kissing Harry to try and keep him quiet.
As soon as he pulls away Harry looks at him, eyes wide and shiny, and says, “I want you so much, all the time.”
Nick feels pulled apart. He keeps giving Harry everything he’s got and somehow Harry still finds a way to take more. Tonight won’t be the end of it. Nick’s still going to be wearing the evidence on his skin tomorrow. A week from now Harry will be ringing in the New Year halfway across the world and all Nick will have of him is a half faded bruise on his shoulder. A week after that Harry will come home tanned and relaxed. He’ll show up at Nick’s door with an easy smile and Nick will let him in, same as always.
Nick snaps his hips harder, so hard that he worries he might be hurting Harry, but that might be what he’s after anyway. There’s a dark part of him that wants to cause Harry pain, to punish Harry for making him feel this way. Harry doesn’t seem to mind. He writhes on Nick’s cock and makes pretty little noises in the back of his throat.
“Do you want to come?” Nick asks.
Harry shakes his head side to side, his hair rioting around his face, tendrils clinging to his cheek and brow.
“You first,” he says.
Nick is so close. He bites his lip and pulls his stomach in tight, fucks into Harry a handful of times and comes with his cock buried as deeply inside Harry as he can get it.
He takes a few deep breaths before he pulls out, rolling over and away. The guilt finally begins to feel heavier than the lust; now that it’s done, Nick wants to put as much distance between them as possible.
Harry’s shaking. He works his own cock with a grip so tight it looks painful, but Nick can’t look away. He watches Harry thrust up, his hips leaving the mattress on every stroke. Harry scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip and sucks in a deep breath before he goes taut and spills across his stomach. His spunk splashes over his belly and his chest and Nick has to resist the urge to roll back toward him and lick across his messy skin.
Instead, Nick gets up and goes to the bathroom to splash some cool water on his face. When he gets back, Harry is still sprawled bonelessly against the duvet.
“’S’good,” Harry slurs sleepily. “Come back to bed.”
Nick doesn’t want to stay, but there’s really no way to check out now without raising some eyebrows and the last thing either of them needs is to be seen skulking out of a hotel together in the middle of the night.
“Shove up, then,” Nick says. “You’re taking up the whole bed.”
Harry grumbles but doesn’t put a fight. He gets up and they fall into the covers together, Harry rolling close and tangling their legs. It doesn’t take Nick long to fall asleep.
In the morning, Nick sends Harry out first, handing him the keys while he does a final scan of the room to make sure they haven’t left anything behind..
“It’s round the side of the building,” Nick says. “I’ll follow in a few minutes.”
Harry leans in and kisses him softly. He leaves Nick’s lips tingling as he slips out the door. Nick follows a few minutes later, as promised, handing the key back to the front desk on his way out.
Like the night before, neither of them has much to say on the drive back to Holmes Chapel. This time, Harry fiddles with the radio. Nick is happy to hear that Dan and Phil are on, the distraction of their banter filling up the silence.
The lights are on in Harry’s house. It’s Christmas morning and Nick imagines that Anne, Robin, and Gemma are all up, awaiting the return of the prodigal son.
“Tell your family I say hiya,” Nick says.
“You could come in. Mum probably has the kettle on.”
Nick doesn’t know what possesses him in that moment, but he says, “I can’t, but you should come round later. I know Mum would love to see you.”
He blames it on the few manners his mother managed to bestow upon him during childhood.
It’s almost worth it just to see the way Harry lights up. Nick is so angry with himself for falling in love and making everything stupid and complicated.
“Yeah?” Harry says. “Maybe after dinner.”
“Yeah,” Nick says, resigned once again to giving Harry whatever will make him happy. “You can make me a sandwich out of all the leftovers.”
Harry smiles and leans in to kiss Nick sweetly on the mouth.
“See you tomorrow,” he says. He gets out of the car and walks to the door.
Nick watches until he’s safely inside, and then he puts the car into gear.