Abroad

chapter 4-2

Dex didn’t blame him. He just didn’t want to talk about it.

“Did you … did you not want me to see it?”

Did he? Dex squirmed. “It’s not … it isn’t that.”

Fuck, he really didn’t want to be talking about this. Was this what it was like for Nick to have to explain himself? “It’s … look, it’s like this—when I first came to uni, I’d had quite a few people stare at me in halls when I had my hair wrapped, because I guess I hadn’t ever spent enough time with people who don’t have Black hair for it to be weird. It was just how my family is, how we all are. It got annoying, though, those double takes.” He blew out a breath, avoiding eye contact by staring intently at his own ankles. He needed to moisturise. “I think Izzy was my first white friend.” He didn’t think; he knew. “She’d asked about it, and not like it was wrong of her to ask, and I was glad to get it over with, I just … I wish it wasn’t a thing.”

Silence. He darted a look up at Nick’s face. Nick also appeared to be staring at Dex’s ankles, and his face was bright pink.

“My hair is my hair, but I keep having to explain it.”

He swallowed. That had come out … not quite how he had meant it to. f**k.

“I’m glad you know now,” he said, more softly this time.

Nick’s gaze flickered to his, then back down again. “Me, too.”

“I didn’t…” Dex reached out and grabbed Nick’s sweaty hand. He forced himself to talk. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

“I don’t—I mean. I’m sorry. For not knowing.”

Eurgh. This was not going well, and Dex was all twisted up. What should have been a lovely night of shagging and pillow talk was turning into a discourse on the politics of f*****g hair. “C’mere,” he said, tugging on Nick’s inert hand. A moment of relief as Nick leaned in, finally looked up. “It’s all right.” He almost apologised, but forced it down. They neither of them had anything to apologise for. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Nick, looking as serious as ever, whispered, “Me, too.”

Clearly, this wasn’t time for a discussion of any sort. Dex sent all of his doubting and dark thoughts scattering to the awkward wind. “Okay,” he breathed, and leaned in to kiss him.

Nick let him. He let him open his mouth with his lips and slowly take his breath away. Dex savoured it, each moment. Nick tasted like nothing more or less than himself, and Dex had always loved the way kissing tasted. Dark and private. When he’d kissed his first boy, he had felt like he’d been swallowed up by a tunnel of some sort, protected and dangerous all at once. It was the start of something that he hadn’t realised was peculiar to him, not until he’d mentioned it to Jordan, this boy he’d f****d a few times in his first year at uni.

What are you thinking? Jordan had asked after they’d both come all over each other.

And Dex, still hanging in the throes of euphoria, eyes closed and belly warm, had said, I’m picturing this beach I’ve been to in France. It was like a postcoital afterimage. And always the same beach.

When he’d opened his eyes, Jordan had been looking at him like he’d grown ten heads. You’re what?

Turned out, not everyone visualised things during s*x when their eyes were closed.

But Dex did. And kissing Nick felt like being embraced by that tunnel of his first kiss—intimate, gorgeous, lovely.

They wound up sideways on the bed, and Dex’s feet would have been hanging off it if not for them being currently tangled up with Nick’s, moving against each other. Dex could feel the hardness of Nick’s jeans against his trackie bottoms, and it was not enough. And Nick had asked Dex to show him things. Things that Nick didn’t know.

A surge of protectiveness shook Dex, and he broke off the kiss, breathing so hard he felt his breath gusting against Nick’s mouth. “Is—is this okay? You good?”

It took Nick a moment to respond. He was a furnace under Dex’s hands, his cheeks blazing, his breath as hot as Dex’s. “Uh—yeah. I’m—why?”

Dex touched their foreheads together, forcing himself to relax back into the bed. “Just checking.” He felt a bit stupid. It was just that he kept getting these reminders. Little things that showed how new Nick was to this. “I just…” He licked his lips. “I don’t want to spook you. Going too fast.”

It was like sailing him past the stratosphere and asking if Nick was all right leaving his flat. But the point stood.

Nick’s response was immediate. “It’s not too fast.” A kiss, and then a rustle of cloth as he moved closer. “Please. Please don’t stop.”

Well, then, Dex wouldn’t. Where to go from here, though? What wouldn’t be too much for Nick while satisfying the hunger so palpably coming off of him?

Dex kissed him again and again and again until they were both panting. His hands were everywhere now—under Nick’s jumper, clawing their way up his spine, then sweeping downwards to the slope of Nick’s bum, small and tight, fitting just so in the palm of his hand. Holding him felt both like holding something wholly delicate and—f**k—like holding a man, because despite his lack of breadth, Nick was so physical and present like this. His heart beat clearly in his chest, echoes of it pounding through the spots Dex dared put his mouth on. Like the spot behind his jaw and lower, the pulsating jugular, fluttering against his teeth.

Dex wanted everything at once. He wanted them to rut up against each other until they came in their pants again, he wanted Nick completely stripped of any barrier with his d**k down Dex’s throat, he wanted Nick to suck him off, he wanted—f**k, he wanted Nick inside him, wanted himself inside Nick. He wanted to cover his pale skin in bruises because he bruised so easily, like overripe fruit, so quick to darken under Dex’s touch.

“Nick,” he breathed, breaking the kiss off so he could take what felt like the first proper breath in a million years. He wanted to ask him what he wanted, but knew, too, he had to reframe the question, knew he had to show him, instead. “Can I just—” He tugged on Nick’s clothes with shaking hands.

“f**k, yes.” And that was f*****g hot as hell, Nick cursing like he had no filter left. “You, too—”

They managed to undress with minimal damage somehow, despite Nick being all elbows and knees. Even that felt sweeter than sin. In the light of Dex’s lamp, he was pale and shivering, and Dex had to tug him off the bed in order to pull the duvet back. He pushed him right down underneath it, the fresh scent of his sheets wrapping around them like a cocoon.

Nick clung to him as they kissed again, and God. Nick was so new to this, but it didn’t feel like he was new to it, it felt like he was f*****g made for it, all pliant limbs and hard, desperately clumsy kisses. Dex thought back to his first awkward time, how he had gone on instinct alone. Nick must have been storing this all up for years, and now he was unleashing it, all of it, on Dex.

Dex would take it, and probably demand a whole lot more.

God, his thoughts were a mess.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Dex felt like he couldn’t get enough of him. He covered Nick with his own body, hot against Nick’s chilled skin. He warmed quick enough beneath him. What felt like a dozen stinging zaps gripped his arms and he hissed. Nick’s nails dug deeper into his biceps, and Dex thrust up against him. “What can I do?” he panted, barely in control of his hips. He felt wild, as if he were free-spinning on ice. “I can—I can suck you off, d’you want—”

“Anything, f**k, anything,” Nick whined. “That, please—”

Nick was a wild thing now, trembling beneath Dex, still clinging to his arms like they were his only purchase. He was so f*****g beautiful.

“Yeah,” Dex breathed between kisses, grateful to have a direction now. “I’ll sort you out.”

Nick shuddered, and the pressure lifted from Dex’s arms as Nick covered his face with both hands. It was strange, the things Dex noticed. The tips of Nick’s fingers were still red with cold, but his wrists and forearms were pale, covered in light blue criss-crosses of veins pumping just beneath the surface. When Dex lifted himself up off Nick’s torso, he saw it was a palette of pinks and pale blues, dark spots like flitting shadows where Dex had gone at him only a few days before. He was a live watercolour painting, this boy was, and he was falling apart in Dex’s bed before Dex had even put his mouth on his c**k.

Once again, Dex forced himself to pause and attempt to unscramble his brain. Ask, don’t demand. Ask properly. “All right?” he panted.

Behind his shaking hands, Nick nodded, a spasm of assent, but Dex needed more than that. “C’mon baby, why are you hiding?” he whispered.

Nick pulled his hands away immediately, but his eyes were still closed. If he’d been a full-colour array before, now he was a f*****g supernova. His cheeks were pink, his mouth flushed so dark he might have been wearing lipstick. His eyelashes curved fluttery shadows above his cheeks. “’M not hiding. It’s just—just—” His chest was going up and down, his breathing clearly laboured. “It’s just—a lot,” he whispered. Dex’s heart jumped inside his chest. “You’re just … a lot.”

Dex forced himself to stay still. “Is that—is that all right?” he asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d been told this. He wondered if this time, too, it was in admonishment.

But Nick laughed, a single exhalation, and finally opened his eyes. “Dude, I know you know,” he said, pinning Dex with his blown gaze. So very little grey left around the inky black of his pupils. Dex’s pulse felt like it was liable to set the room on fire if he didn’t manage to contain it. “Please.”

Dex nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. He would have to take this as a positive enough response. It was possible this was the most Nick was capable of, even in the middle of s*x. Please was a clear enough directive, anyway. Dex took a deep breath.

Their first night together, he’d sucked Nick off with a single-minded sort of purpose, so fast he could barely recall the sensation of it. He just remembered how lovely Nick’s c**k had felt in his hand—compact, nothing remarkable maybe, but smooth and silky and hard just for him. He’d tasted a little salty, a tad sour as he came—all guy. Dex wanted to do it again, only take his time about it this go around. No more irrelevant thoughts, no more doubts.

“All right,” he said, reaching for Nick’s hands and pinning them above his head. Christ, he looked good like that. Debauched or something. Generously open. As Nick squirmed against him, Dex thought about how f*****g responsive he was with his body, if not his words. Dex’s every touch appeared to affect him, like a sensation feedback loop. Like sixty-nine was supposed to feel but never actually did.

So many things Dex wanted to do to him and make Nick lose his f*****g mind.

He started with another kiss. Their hips were more or less aligned, c***s lined up, but through the sheer power of will Dex thwarted Nick’s every effort to get friction. Instead, he slowed their pace. Nick’s hands still gripped in his, Dex kissed him deeply, learning how much Nick would give and how much he would take. He slipped their tongues together, then apart. He nipped at his lips, taking his time about it, and landed gentle pecks at both corners of Nick’s mouth until Nick was panting and whimpering. He wasn’t letting go of Dex’s hands.

When Dex moved lower down, l*****g at Nick’s Adam’s apple, Nick gave a strangled sort of breath. God, that was hot. Dex sucked at a spot under his jaw, stubble rasping against his lips, then slipped lower. He needed his hands now, so he released them from Nick’s grip with some reluctance, which melted away when he glimpsed Nick’s white knuckles as he clutched at the pillow.

Hrnghh. f**k.

Dex sucked on Nick’s n*****s, one by one. They pebbled against his tongue and lips and he got a little sidetracked with how nice that felt. Nick was making tiny sounds like gasps peppered with curses.

He really wasn’t muscular at all. Some definition, especially where the width of his shoulders met the slenderness of his arms, but his belly was a flat plane, his ribs prominent. The soft flare of his hips was a temptation in itself. His chest was smooth, but his treasure trail was full and f*****g gorgeous. Light brown and springy, it was the perfect arrow leading to Dex’s destination.