Just A Sip

It was autumn now, and the days were growing shorter, but they were still unbearably long. Dark could not come fast enough for Joshua Orel’s liking. He busied himself unnecessarily, trying to make the hours of sunlight tick away that much faster. He collected rents for his family’s properties in the morning, he audited the ledgers in which he recorded said rents, and he took it upon himself to go to the afternoon market for the next day’s meat and milk–a task normally reserved for his part-time maidservant, Margaret.

By late afternoon, Joshua’d run out of things to do. His flat was clean, his laundry done, and Maggie had left his meal evening meal warm and waiting so that he had only to remove it from the cast iron cookstove that sat to one end of the modestly sized kitchen. He sat, languished, and stared at the light pouring in past the open curtains framing the glass-inset doors that led to his tiny balcony. He tried to read, but he couldn’t focus. Over, and over again, his gaze swept to the curtains, to the doors, to the bare metal chair and table on the narrow balcony, to haze of the city sky beyond.

Slowly, slowly, the sun inched downward, setting over some idyllic view of fields full of haystacks and sheep, or calm ocean waters, or whatever it was painters so favored these days. Joshua was certain it wasn’t London’s rooftops bristled with chimneys and pouring out smoke. Though for him, then and there, it was good enough. Good enough for how evening came upon him at last.

Joshua ate because, well, He had said he should. It didn’t even occur to him to wonder when the last time he’d felt hunger had been. He scarcely tasted the perfectly cooked pigeon with its side of roasted potato generously coated with herbs and butter, nor even the extremely indulgent little bundle of green beans that was similarly treated. His meal was largely texture, a chore, a thing to be done because it ought to be done, and when he was finished he wiped his face, downed the end of his wine, and took the mess to rest on the side of the dry sink.

There, the sun, nearly set. Nearly set, and he felt the anticipation turn into bubbles and flutters in his belly. Nearly set, with the haze outside growing darker and darker.. He didn’t even stop to fetch his coat. Instead, Joshua drew open the door to the patio, pressing the curtain wider in the process, and stepped out into the growing chill. The cold bit through his waistcoat and shirt, and nipped into the room to chase all of the heat out, but he paid it no mind. It was as important to him as the taste of food.

And there, it was dark at last. Well, dark as the city ever got. His own flat was lit only by a single lamp in the main living space, and the embers in the woodstove. He’d not even dropped a fresh log into it, so preoccupied was he.

Dark. It was dark. The wind teased at a wayward curl of rich brown hair against his temple. Joshua stared, straining his eyes, his ears, holding his breath every so often. It was dark, dammit! Where was He?

Seconds became minutes. Minutes stretched one into the next. His body, taut with tension to the point that his stomach was a knot, took to shivering for the increasing chill. There were heavier clouds gathering above with the promise of rain later in the night. But there, in all of the darkness, despite all of the promise of Him here and now, here and now He was not.

The shivering evolved into something annoying, and Joshua relented his white-knuckled grip on the slim balcony rail. He withdrew indoors, and tempted though he was to leave the balcony door open in blatant and desperate invitation, he conceded to the need for warmth and latched it shut. In compromise with his desires and his needs, he left the curtains pulled wide.

A fresh log was added to the woodstove, and Joshua was made to sigh as the embers within proved not enough to catch it. Getting the fire going was a particularly arduous task with shaking hands, but he managed it with only moderate struggle. A few puffs of breath helped warm his hands, and he cursed his own foolishness even as his eyes began to sting and tear from something other than the chill.

An hour later, Joshua was still berating himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Ridiculous! Why would He come here? Just because he’d come the night before, and the night before that? That was no guarantee! What could someone like Him care for someone like Joshua, anyway?

He’d pulled a cap onto his head, slipped into his housecoat, and settled before the stove with a hot water bottle pressed to his belly. The shivering had stopped, but not his self-loathing, his self pity. Why hadn’t He come?? Tomorrow night, surely, he tried to console himself. He would come tomorrow night. Joshua had done everything he was supposed to. Oh, but it was all he could do not to tear at his hair and scream at the ceiling!

“Surely it’s not so bad as that,” purred a voice from behind Joshua as he raised the felted cuff of his sleeve to dab at his eyes yet again.

Joshua’s heart leapt into his throat. He’d neither seen nor heard the door open. He’d not felt any draft! Yet He was here! Here, with a voice like velvet that pulled at something psychic or cellular, that compelled his nerves and his heart and scattered his thoughts to the wind. He stood, ignoring the weighty thump and slosh of the bottle at his feet, and near tripped over himself in his haste to get around the chair. To turn and face Him! Except there was no Him. He stared at the wall, at the dark hollow of the end of the little hall leading to the privy and his bedchambers. Silence roared into his ears. Had he imagined it?! Was he that desperate??

“You may very well be,” the voice agreed with his unspoken thoughts, and Joshua’s breath caught anew as arms encircled him from behind.

He was shorter than Joshua by only a handful of centimeters, but it was enough that it was a cheek that came to rest against his shoulder, and not a chin. Joshua eased slowly, relaxing back into the firm, slender frame, and draping his warmed arms over the dark black sleeves that had ensnared him.

He was here. He was here, and now everything was right in the world. Calmness settled over Joshua’s nerves, a contentment that he’d never known before, a peace that transcended pleasure. This was a sense of belonging and of home that even his family and temple had never managed to evoke within him. With Him here, Joshua, who had never felt fractured or broken before, nonetheless felt himself feeling mended and whole.

Joshua let the feeling well up within him, and then he turned within the other man’s hold. His appearance made Joshua gasp softly. Instead of the deathly pallor he’d come to know over the past week, there was a near rosy glow to the cheeks. His shining green eyes, ever bright and entrancing, seemed somehow all the moreso. Joshua found himself caught in them, unable to speak, scarcely able to think.

“Come along then,” the man purred, his pink lips seeming ever so sensuous and alive along the relative stillness of his face.

They were moving. His hand had hold of Joshua’s, and Joshua’s feet and legs seemed intent on following without any conscious decision made on the matter. The rest of him swayed a little to catch up. The dark of the hall seemed to blur past him, the paintings that lined it unattended as he all but drifted along. The light in his bedchamber was so scant he could scarcely even make out the silhouette of the figure before him, and then it was largely a resplendent cascade of tight curls that picked themselves out as darker against the darkness.

The pad of a thumb and the curl of a forefinger took hold of Joshua’s chin, and just the right exertion of pressure angled his face to meet the warm press of mouth against his. It was almost strange, given how accustomed he’d become to the cool crush of His lips. The belt at his waist loosened, and his housecoat fell open once released. Joshua slid it from his shoulders to let it crumple to the ground without a thought, for how he was focused almost entirely upon the sensuous slide of tongue along his own.

Joshua’s nerves fluttered and danced with excitement as hands slid over his arms and along his shoulders. Lips brushed lips as the kiss parted, and he was left panting, shivering again in the dark for reasons other than the cold. He brought his own hands up to pass over the trim, tailored shoulders of His jacket, to drag his palms down along sleeves, and then go picking one at a time at the large buttons that secured the middle of it.

“Won’t you tell me your name?” Joshua breathed the question, the yearning of heart and body twisting through the intonations of his speech.

“Perhaps eventually,” came the same patient reply that had come every single time Joshua had asked in the past.

Joshua’s further questions were forestalled by another kiss, and another. Hands wandered, sweeping over clothing, clever fingers working at buttons, then sliding aside layer after layer. They were made to part, Joshua panting and eager, his counterpart all but lost in the dark of the room. Shoes were shed, socks and trousers and undergarments. Nothing could come off or away fast enough!

Entirely too long for Joshua’s liking passed before bodies were crashing together, Joshua caught in surprisingly strong arms. Up he was hoisted, lifted, up and carried, so that he was laughing even as he was dropped upon the bed. He was upon Joshua before Joshua could be made to miss his presence. A little cool, but still relatively warm, and sprawled atop him from thigh to hip, through a grind of rigid cock to rigid cock, to a brush of chest along chest as lips again pressed, dabbed, parted to permit more panting.

More thoughts managed to sort themselves out in his head and point in generally the same direction. They raised, somehow, through the murk and mire, past the consuming heat of arousal and lust, and pushed a last, urgent message through to his tongue.

“Tonight could be eventually,” he entreated even as his thighs were gathered in slender arms.

“Perhaps,” came the noncommittal purr from the dark somewhere above him.

The cooling warmth of His mouth might have been enough to flag Joshua’s erection once, but the very proximity of Him in the dark of his bedchamber, in the softness of his bed, of lip and tongue to firm and jutting cock, was enough to leave Joshua aching, seeping, rolling his hips in search of more. His head fell back, and he let a muted whimper, stifled a groan. He doubted the half-deaf old widow next door might hear, but the possibility of being discovered was ever present, ever a horrifying prospect. He dug his teeth into the swell of his lower lip, swallowed, and reined his breath in as best he might as warm bursts and silvery sparks of delight played along his nerves, built pressure in his belly and low between his hips. Joshua’s fingers twisted into his blanket, curled more kindly into the thick layers of His curls, and he bit his lower lip to bleeding as pulsing pressure drew along him until he very nearly came.

And then the glorious pull and ripple of mouth and throat were gone. They were replaced by cool air, though He was kissing, nuzzling, hair tickling at Joshua’s skin all the more. Joshua could not help but release his lip and laugh softly for the brush that left different shivers running along his spine. There was movement, body shifting against his own, hair dragging, and as Joshua peered through the dark, he felt that the man must be looking at him. His hand slid, fingers extending, to brush–ah, there, brow, temple, to slide fingertips over cheek.

“Gabriel,” the rich velvet of that voice supplied after a long moment of silence, of allowing Joshua’s touch to traverse the sharp angles and soft curves of his face.

Joshua’s heart spasmed against his sternum. It fluttered, twisted, leapt and cavorted and he was certain, absolutely certain, that He, Gabriel, had just bestowed upon him the most rare of gifts. His hand fell away that he might brace himself upon his elbows in the bed. He strained his eyes to try to focus in the dark, to see the figure that was even then petting his thighs, that was surely staring at him. He felt that the man must be!

“... it is a pleasure to meet you, Gabriel,” Joshua murmured after a long pause, and he turned his leg inward to stroke the soft skin of Gabriel’s side with the inside of his foot.

“The pleasure has only just begun, Joshua,” Gabriel purred in muted promise.

Gabriel’s lips descended again upon Joshua’s cock and took the head into another tight, suckling embrace. Joshua’s head fell back, eyelids fluttering. Oh, but that was nice. Gabriel. His name was Gabriel! Joshua was still glowing in it, basking in the knowledge, so that even when the man’s mouth swept abruptly down and up again in a swift plunge and draw, Joshua remained distracted!

Joshua nonetheless grunted for the firm ticking of his cock, and hissed a breath as Gabriel’s tongue trailed along the belly and lapped the gathering fluid welling at the head. It was the sharp nip to the inside of his thigh that had his mind focusing entirely on the hear and now, however. It provided clarity to the moment, emphasizing the shadows, the musk of his own body, the floral scent that wafted from Gabriel’s unbound hair. He realized he was quite chilled, and drew a breath to suggest they draw the covers over them, when Gabriel bit him! Joshua yipped, and pushed up reflexively to reach for the man’s head when the bite proved to be sharp, piercing, drawing forth a stinging barb of pain rather than a too-hard crushing pressure.

Joshua’s fingertips didn’t even graze Gabriel’s hair. Pleasure burst through him in a warm tide, surging from his belly, pulsing through his neck and into his head. It left clouds of pink and purple colliding in his vision, and his chest burned through the strangled gasp he’d managed to take as his shoulders crashed into the bedding. He was floating, and silver, throbbing from head to toe, certain he’d cum though he couldn’t distinguish pulses of his cock, nor the rapid trilling of his heart. He was adrift in a sea, afloat in the sky, subsumed by the sun and engulfed in darkness all at once. He was drawn and threaded through a torrent of ecstasy that threatened to become pain, the colors all blowing out to white, a heavy rushing wind blowing through his senses until everything was consumed by a child’s giggles.. And then darkness that had no texture, no quality, no sense of time, only the frightening chasm of nothingness.

~
Joshua came to himself in the morning. He was aware of light against his eyelids first and foremost, for the red of them, and the near pain of it. His vision was blurry at first as he broke his gaze upon the room. He was tucked neatly away under his blankets, and a roll showed his clothing was in a haphazard strew beside the bed. There was no sign of Him. No, Gabriel, he corrected himself. There was no sign of Gabriel. Gone again. And oh, how it ached within him. It was grief, surely. What else could hurt so?

A knock to the door startled him, both for not having expected it, and for how very loud it seemed!

“Mister Orel, sir? I hate to wake you, only I’ve done your breakfast and it’s been getting cold, sir. It’s nearly eleven, and it’s Tuesday, sir. I’ve got to be getting on t’me ma’s, see. Since it’s Tuesday and all, sir,” a voice entreated through the door.

Nearly eleven! Joshua groaned and rubbed at his brow. He pushed the pillows about, then paused. He hadn’t even his undershirt on! He drew the blanket up to his chin, covered his shoulders, and called for the door.

“That’s very kind of you, Maggie. Bring it in.”

The young woman edged inward with the breakfast tray carried between two hands, its thin metal legs extended in preparation to be deposited over his lap. He let her place it, rather than reach to take it from her, and attempted to smile reassuringly in response to her look of inquiry.

“Are you feeling yourself, Mister Orel? Only you look a right bit peaky.”

“Quite fine, thank–”

In addition to the plate of eggs and meat before him, there was a small crystal vase on the tray, and an envelope tucked just beneath it. The vase he recognized from one of the cabinets in his flat, but the single rose within it was a rich, brooding black. It hinted at red where the petals curled, and stirred some semblance of memory within Joshua that he could not quite place. He slid his bare arm from beneath the blanket to touch it gingerly with the pads of his fingers.

“It was left on the table, sir, I hope you don’t mind me taking the liberty. The–ah, the note was there with it, sir. I thought perhaps you’d, um, er, entertained last night.”

Joshua nearly dropped the blanket from under his chin. He cleared his throat, turned his rich brown eyes and best boyish smile upon Margaret, and gestured in what he hoped was easy dismissal.

“Very good. Thank you for the tray, Maggie. Would you be so kind as to take this lot from the floor to launder as well?”

“Yes, sir!” Margaret replied with a grin that said, I know what you’ve been up to, mister, and I don’t at all disapprove, why I may even encourage it!

Joshua issued a startled little laugh when the woman was bold enough to wink at him! He waved her off. “Give my best to your mother!” he bid as the maidservant took her leave.

Joshua was again left alone in a quiet flat, though the noise of the city seemed to be pressing in against the headache that had been his gift for waking. The light through his curtains remained too bright, though he could see through the so-slight gap that it was actually overcast. He squinted against it as he plucked up the letter. It shook between his hands as he prised the folds free of their thin dab of sealing wax, and he nearly dropped it as he unfolded the crisp tuck of triangles from the center to read the tidy cursive script printed at its center.

Midnight. Regent’s Park. West Entrance.
-G

Joshua stared at the letter, dropped it to his lap, and plucked the rose from the vase. He ignored his entirely unappealing letter, and sagged back against the pillows to brush the fragrant blossom along his lips and nose. Tonight, he would go to Gabriel. Tonight, he would not have to sit pining and hoping. Tonight, he would call the man by name. Tonight.

But first, a nap. Nevermind that he’d just woken. His head was pounding, and he felt half drunk on his giddiness. Breakfast could wait. Everything could wait. All that mattered was tonight. Midnight. Regent’s Park. West Entrance.

Gabriel.