Platonic (28 page)

Mark lands at Heathrow early Saturday morning and Daniel meets him at King’s Cross Station before the midsummer sun has fully risen. They kiss right there at the top of the escalators, softly and simply because there are a million people watching and it feels strange, and then Daniel takes his hand and says, “Hello, boyfriend,” and leads him out to the cool, windy street.

They sit at the very front on the top level of a red double-decker bus, holding each other’s hands tightly, hardly speaking, simply exchanging quick glances and soft smiles. Mark stares at the buildings and the people, and Daniel drags his luggage for him when they switch buses and have to stand for the five-minute ride to Daniel’s block.

Daniel unlocks the front door of his new apartment and Mark drags him through, not giving him a moment to think or speak, just closing the door shut behind them and then pushing Daniel back against it, kissing him hard, as he hasn’t been able to do for months.

“Miss you so much,” Mark breathes and Daniel moans and tries to kiss him back. It’s off-center, more than usual, awkward. Their teeth click together and Daniel’s hands can’t quite settle on any one area of Mark’s skin.

Eventually Daniel pulls back, turning his head against the door until Mark takes the hint and stops trying to kiss him, a question in his eyes.

“It’s just weird, a bit,” Daniel says and smiles. “I got so used to not being able to touch you and now I can.” He runs a hand up Mark’s side, from hip to pectoral and then down the muscles of his arm. “Come with me?”

Mark follows him to the bedroom, to the crisp white sheets and the recessed ceiling lights that Daniel flicks on. They stand just inside the doorway, their fingers entangling but the tension between them increasingly awkward.

“I did miss you,” Daniel says.

“Then show me,” Mark challenges and turns to face him, leaning in for another kiss that is just as mistimed and awkward as the last.

Daniel, hands finally resting lightly on Mark’s waist, pulls back again. “I’m so sorry that this is weird.” What begins as a smile and a laugh fades into a frown.

“You need to tell me what’s happening,” Mark asks, fear and worry swirling to life inside him.

“Nothing,” Daniel responds immediately. “There’s nothing I’m not saying. I got so used to not having you, to getting off without you, and now you’re here and it’s weird. Just kiss me.”

So Mark does, kisses him over and over again until the kisses are no longer awkward but seem formulaic and do not lead anywhere. All his fantasies of being swept off his feet and ravished against the wall flee, and Mark just focuses on trying to pull Daniel back into the moment with him. It isn’t working, though. He pulls back and then leans forehead to forehead with Daniel at the foot of the bed.

“I get that it’s weird. I’m just happy to be here,” he mumbles and kisses Daniel’s cheek. “Tell me about London?”

Daniels cocks his head and sighs something that sounds like relief. He’s already told Mark every story he has to tell, in their constant emails and phone calls. But he can share some mundane nothings—from overnight, while Mark was on a plane.

Mark tugs him toward the bed but doesn’t touch his clothes, just settles down against the pillows facing him and holds his hand. “Seriously, just let me listen to you. We’ll work out the sex later.”

They talk food and fashion, and Daniel finally gives up all of the details of his tumultuous relationship with Brenton Wood, the corporate clown who oversees a lot of his collaboration with the Holly Martinez people and is kind of his boss. He’s a micromanaging know-it-all that Holly seems to love and trust, and he’s often left behind to run things—and Daniel—however he sees fit. It’s clear that the collaboration is not quite what Daniel had hoped for, but when Mark asks Daniel whether he still thinks it is worth it Daniel smiles and says it is, says that all the red tape and the bullshit deadlines and money management are there because the whole operation is just that big and that well-funded. And lots of the people who matter know which designs are Daniel’s, and which are Holly’s, and everyone who matters knows Brenton is a moron. Daniel is confident he’ll come back to New York with his name carrying enough weight in the fashion world to set him up for life, and that’s what really matters. Mark is so happy for him.

Mark admits he’s avoiding Rita because all she wants to talk about is him and Daniel and he doesn’t know how. The conversation circles back, and Mark eventually asks, “Are you not attracted to me right now?”

Daniel gawks and Mark grins in spite of himself. “I have no idea, it just felt awkward; there’s so much expectation and weight to it. I want you. I just wish it were easy. I want sex between us to be a footnote to a day together, not the exclamation point to months of being apart.”

“That’s very romantic,” Mark admits, and feels his insides settle as he starts to believe that there’s nothing more to work out. “Do you wanna go out and do stuff?” he asks, keeping the disappointment out of his voice because, try as he might,
he
still wants Daniel desperately.

“No. I wanna make you feel good. I just feel like I don’t know how.”

“Oh, sweetheart…” Mark doesn’t get it, not a bit; he sees the splay and the angles of Daniel’s body and knows exactly how to fit them together and make him come. “Whatever you need, okay?”

Daniel huffs and raises his chin in the air. “No, this is about you, I know how much you miss it, how you ache for something physical—”

“You don’t?” Mark asks.

“Not quite the way you do. Maybe I forget it more easily than you. I miss you, but not quite the same way you miss me.” Daniel shrugs and stares at him. “It’s not a bad thing, not a lesser thing. Just different.” Then he pulls his shirt up over his head and bends himself in half to reach his shoes. He kicks them off and then slides all the way down onto his back on the bed. “On top of me, please,” he says.

Mark stares. He isn’t sure what to do. He wants him, of course he does, he has since a week before he got on the plane and realized he’d be able to touch Daniel and elicit all the noises he’s missed so badly. But this isn’t what he imagined. He rolls from the bed, keeping as much eye contact as he can with Daniel as he tugs his off his shoes and then his shirt. He toys with the button of his jeans and shucks them down his legs and is left wearing a relatively demure pair of blood-red boxer briefs.

“Come on,” Daniel prompts and stretches out seductively for him.

Mark drops to his hands and knees on the bed and crawls toward him, watching his face for discomfort and just finding calculation and anticipation. He straddles his hips and bears down with all his weight.

“You don’t miss this?” Mark asks, tracing his fingertips up Daniel’s sides.

“I do,” Daniel admits. “I panicked. I still wanna make it perfect and we’ve only got the weekend.”

“I just wanna make you come.”

Mark falls forward against Daniel’s body, covering him and pinning him to the bed, heavy against him and hot. He kisses up his neck and across his chest from one nipple to the other and back again, licking and sucking them both to peaks and making Daniel squirm. Mark kisses along Daniel’s chin and sucks on the hinge of his jaw and then finally kisses his mouth, hard and open, tongue licking in and finding Daniel’s, tasting and taking and biting at his lips while his hands splay over his cheeks, holding him in place the entire time.

“Is this what you miss?” Daniel gasps, hips rocking as he slips down into getting lost in it. Mark’s hands leave his face, find Daniel’s hands and hold them down beside his head.

“I miss all of you,” Mark says against his lips and kisses him again. “I have you, I get to talk to you and know so much about you and everything you’re doing and I love you. But I miss all of it.” He kisses him again, sucks on his tongue and his top lip and then arches and lets Daniel get his teeth against his neck. “The smell of you in the morning and the taste of you at the end of the day. I miss the tactility of it—oh
fuck.”
He grinds down, thighs tight around Daniel’s and so much hot skin where he hasn’t felt anything for months. “The warmth of you beside me in my sleep. God, I don’t even know, I just miss you and it aches. I don’t get how it doesn’t ache for you, I don’t.”

“It does,” Daniel says against his neck, his own breath suddenly catching and short as he moans and angles his hips to meet every press of Mark’s. “I promise it does.”

“I get why coming back together is awkward, I do, but I don’t want it to be. I just want you, just want to touch you. Tell me what you need. Next time just tell me.”

Daniel swears under his breath and arches. He wrestles his hands free and gets them between their bodies and down to his pants, which he pulls open and shoves down, his cock hard, and then he pulls Mark’s dick from his underwear and they’re hard together. Daniel gets his hands on Mark’s cheeks and pulls him in, kisses him deep and dirty as they rock together. “I needed you to take me with you,” Daniel says into his mouth. “Need you to just fuck me and make me remember how good this feels.” He kisses him and kisses him, gets his legs around Mark’s waist and pulls him down so they slot together perfectly and it’s all just dry, too much friction. “I get so stuck in my own head, too much thinking, too much worrying, just too much,” he gasps and his heads falls back so Mark can keep biting and sucking at more skin. “Next time just fuck me however you want and I’ll remember you and be able to feel it.”

Mark breathes, “God,” and realizes too late that he’s close to coming just from rubbing up against his boyfriend, just like he’s sixteen and overly sensitive again. “Are we okay?” he asks, trying to slow the rut of his cock up against Daniel’s.

He pulls back. Daniel grins at him. “Better than.” Another desperate, messy lick into Mark’s mouth and a full arch of Daniel’s back lifts them both. “Mess me up.”

“Fuck,
Danny
, I’m gonna come.” Daniel lets slip a guttural moan and wraps his legs tighter around Mark. “Promise me you’ll fuck me tonight.”

“Wake me up tomorrow with your mouth,” Daniel tells him and keeps grinding up against him, keeps kissing him until they come almost together, wet and sticky, so hard and so much. The finesse is nonexistent—their hips just hump up against each other and their cocks jerk and spill over their bellies and it feels so damn good, the pulse of blood and pleasure in their veins, and their skin vibrates with it.

Afterward, they don’t let each other go straightaway but stay wrapped up together in a sticky, sated mess, trying to catch their breaths and avoid the cramps that start to twinge in their thighs.

Eventually Daniel’s legs unfurl from Mark’s back and his fingers slip from his hair. His limbs fall back on the bed, starfished over the covers, and Mark wriggles until he slips down onto his side, still pressed against Daniel and still a sticky mess.

He kisses him just under his arm so that it tickles and Daniel starts to laugh, and then Mark joins in.

“Can we stay here for a while?” Mark asks.

Daniel grins and reaches to smooth his hair back off his forehead. “Now that we’ve worked that out, we’re gonna stay here all day.”

Mark hums his happiness, and Daniel pulls him in closer to his side. “You called me Danny,” he says after a little while.

“You said you liked it,” Mark says, burying his smile against Daniel’s skin. He had said he didn’t mind it, but the more Mark calls him Danny in emails, whispering the name out loud as he types, the more
he
loves it.

“I just never heard it out loud. Not from you.” Daniel starts to play with Mark’s hair, twisting it between his fingertips. “I do kind of love it.”

They spend hours after that getting reacquainted, searching each other with their mouths and hands and bodies, laughing and barely talking at all except to tease and try to make the other laugh. Mostly they take in sounds and tastes and, for a second date, a level of intimacy even more unbelievable than their first. When Mark points that out, Daniel just laughs again.

Mark naps and when he wakes up the corners of the bed are pulled taut and Daniel’s hands smell faintly of detergent. He tells Daniel off for letting him sleep at all. They leave the apartment and walk for hours, as far as they can, Daniel leading and Mark following, staring up and bumping into tourists.

When it starts to get dark, Daniel takes Mark to an expensive restaurant near Cambridge Theatre and orders wine and food for them both.

“Was that too presumptuous?” Daniel asks once the waiter has left.

Mark shrugs and smiles. “I’m supposed to say yes, aren’t I?”

Daniel shrugs back.

“You know what I like because I tell you what I’m eating pretty much every single night. This sounds delicious.”

Daniel grins. And the food is perfect.

“What are we doing tonight?” Mark asks as the hazelnut chocolate cake is placed between them.

They’re splitting it, of course. Daniel laments the lack of good cheesecake in London, and Mark asks again, “Tonight?” He kind of hopes they’re just going back to bed.

“It’s a surprise,” Daniel tells him, eyes dancing mischievously.

***

Daniel walks close to Mark as the night gets a little cooler, the heat of the summer’s day finally breaking. He leads him through the loud, crowded streets of the Saturday night theater district and Mark lets him, saying more than once how different it is from New York. He wonders aloud how lost he would be without Daniel to guide him; he is so very used to a grid and London is all back alleys and dead ends and curving roads.

They stop, eventually, in front of a dark, boxy building wedged between a theater and a café and lit up with fairy lights. People mill around in front. Daniel waits and watches for Mark to realize they’ve stopped with purpose and that smooth jazz trickles out of the door every time it’s opened.

Mark looks up and reads the name of the establishment:
The Ivymount Jazz Club.
He’s heard of it, read reviews and seen photos of musicians he likes playing there. He’s immediately excited and then he reads the blackboard leaning against the wall beside the entrance: “Saturday Night: Duelling Pianos” and a card reading “Sold Out” plastered over that.