Big Man Page 14

  That hadn’t been here; that had been near Land’s End, ten years ago now. But the dry rock felt the same, and the gentle rush and swell of the sea, the salt in the air, the breeze tugging at his hair in friendly swipes, was all as it had been then.

  The moment Max’s feet hit the beach, he toed his shoes off.

  It was rocky—made of a thousand shades of blue, grey, and white—and a bright blue sea, shallow and serene, lapped at its edge. The cove was sheltered; beyond it, Max could see the white foamy tops of proper waves.

  “It’s so quiet.”

  “Nobody comes here.”

  “Why?”

  “All the other coves down here are sandy. This one’s not.”

  “Why?”

  “Dad says the cliff collapsed and the sea’s not had time to wash it all away yet. Too sheltered.”

  Max could believe that. The cliffs were sheer but suspiciously bereft of weeds, tiny trees, and birds’ nests. A couple of huge boulders jutted crudely from the beach. Rock pools littered the surface, murky and—he was sure—teeming with life.

  “It’s so still.”

  “The next one up—towards Falmouth—is where all the surfers go. And the next one back towards Plymouth is where all the families go. This one? Nobody. During the day, you get bonfires and campers up in the fields at night sometimes.”

  Max stared out at the sea and felt the pull.

  He wanted to swim. Wanted to feel the salt on his skin. Wanted to be cool and hot at all once. The slide of sand between his toes, invisible. The weightlessness. To bob along the surface, powerless and trusting.

  To let the sea take control.

  He dropped his bag and his jeans.

  With only Cian for company, the shame of the changing room was a distant memory. Max simply stripped. And when he was naked as the day he was born and opened his bag to find his trunks, Cian’s soft laugh disturbed his focus.

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t?”

  “Go naked,” Cian said and a grin widened across that freckled face.

  Max paused.

  “It’s just you and me.” Cian licked his lower lip. His gaze dropped—as did Max’s blood. “Trunks might get in the way later.”

  Whatever blood remained in Max’s face left it, and he coughed.

  “Well. Uh. Swim naked. Okay.”

  Cian’s laugh followed him down to the water. But only when Max had waded far enough that the water reached his shoulders—thereby hiding his overkeen response to Cian’s words—did he stop walking and turn around.

  “Is it cold?” Cian yelled from the shoreline.

  “Not bad!”

  It was cold, but the heat of the sun on his head and neck was a pleasant counterpoint. Max experimentally swam a couple of strokes further into shore and decided to sit on the shallow rock and sand seabed to wait for Cian.

  Who seemed to hesitate.

  For what seemed like an age (though really it was probably only five minutes or so) Cian hovered on the shoreline. He’d changed his shorts for swimming trunks, but seemed to dither about his T-shirt. Eventually, he turned his back to Max and the water and removed the shirt and the vest underneath. And, to Max’s surprise, put the T-shirt back on.

  Then Cian turned and waded into the water with a speed that spoke of sheer determination.

  “You’re going to swim with your shirt on?” Max called.

  “Not all of us tan, Max!”

  Somehow, Max felt that wasn’t quite why, but he left it. Cian sprawled out in the water like a starfish and then turned on his front and walked on his hands to Max, dragging his floating body along behind like a boat. Max grinned at the sight and mimicked it until a gentle wave rushed them both and they had to swim for real.

  “And it is cold,” Cian complained, but he was grinning.

  The T-shirt was forgotten, as was Max’s lack of clothes. Max hadn’t gone sea swimming in an age, and Cian was a self-confessed water baby. They…played. Like kids. Cian was mean with splashing, and Max’s retaliation of dunking didn’t seem to do anything to stop it. And in the cool water, rushing and swelling gently around them, Max felt—

  Home.

  He felt at home. Good. Happy. Relaxed. And it felt like the first time since Grandpa had died. The salt was clinging to his face, tingling and pleasant. The power of the ocean between his fingers and toes. The edge of warning even as the sea toyed with them peaceably enough. It could turn. It tolerated their presence, appreciated their happiness, but nothing more. It wasn’t there for them.

  But the sea took more energy than the pool, and eventually Max tired. He dragged himself to some rocks below the cliffs, enjoying the refreshing spray of waves breaking softly over his stomach as he propped himself up and stretched out his legs to float, white and wobbly under the waves.

  “Tired?” Cian called, starfishing in the swell.

  “Yeah.”

  “Could always sunbathe. Get an all-over tan.”

  “Too hot,” Max complained.

  Cian rolled over in the water and struck out for him. His hands were cool and alien under the water when they gripped Max’s ankles and peeled his legs apart, and then he was resting his chin on Max’s chest, far too close and far too tempting, and grinning.

  “You,” Max said seriously, “would in no way help cool me down.”

  “No,” Cian agreed.

  “Unless you were on Mars.”

  “Even then, I’d just send you dick pics.”

  “From Mars?”

  “Nothing else to do.”

  Max laughed. Cian grinned, drifting away again, and then he surged back and scrambled up on the rocks. He came completely clear of the waves, water streaming from his clothes, and Max—

  Stared.

  The trunks were a solid dark green, and though they clung, they gave very little away. But the T-shirt was white, rendered see-through from its soaking. And suddenly there was shape where he’d never seen shape before.

  Cian shifted a little and hunched his shoulders.

  “Um. Sorry. Sorry.”

  Max tore his gaze away towards the open ocean and tried to breathe. But—he’d seen them. The dark shadows of…well. The soft swell of—um. Shape. And. They were—nice.

  Really nice.

  And Max was human. And humans sort of…stared at stuff. And wanted to touch stuff. Especially the nice stuff, with dark shadows and shape.

  He gulped for another breath and sank a little deeper into the water. That would help. Or at least hide it.

  “You were brave yesterday,” Cian said softly above him, “and I’m going to be brave today.”

  “You don’t have to,” Max said.

  “If I can’t be brave with you, I might never be.”

  Max wasn’t sure what being brave even was, for Cian. He’d told a total stranger in a boxing gym what he was. He’d made a lesbian joke to another stranger in a bus stop. That was, like, the bravest thing ever.

  “Come up here.”

  “Um. I might need a minute first.”

  Cian chuckled. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

  “Um. Okay. Just—sorry.”

  Max hauled himself up to sit beside Cian without looking, his movements a little stiff and awkward thanks to his predicament—and the moment he did, Cian slid down into the water, the darkness swallowing him whole. He bobbed back up, shaking water from his now dark-blond hair.

  “Okay,” he said, as if to himself. “I can do this.”

  Max said nothing.

  Then Cian performed some sort of—wriggle.

  And threw his trunks up onto the rocks.

  Max’s brain stalled. “Uh,” he said. Uh, indeed. Cian had entered the water wearing trunks and a T-shirt. Now the trunks were on the rock. And Cian was in the water. So. Yeah. Mathematically speaking—

  Cian ducked under the water entirely. For a moment, all Max saw was a pale, indistinct motion under the gentle rocking of water around the rocks.

  And then
, sopping wet white slapped the rock, and the maths equation was completed.

  Cian plus T-shirt plus trunks had entered the water.

  Now the water held Cian, and the rock held the T-shirt and the trunks.

  Ergo.

  Yeah.

  Cian surfaced—a little. Only his head and neck cleared the water, but it was hardly a filthy river, and Max could see the hazy, water-distorted skin below.

  “Uh,” he said.

  Cian kicked out and drifted a little farther away. Another kick.

  And Max slid down into the water.

  Silently, he struck out, and they came back together in the middle, away from the rocks and the shore, just two souls drifting in an infinite sea. And Max wanted to—

  What? Touch? Talk? Examine and explore, or enthuse and excite?

  Cian’s arms looped around his neck. Cian’s mouth was wet on his own, marked with salt and sweetness. He tasted of the sea.

  And under the water, Max could feel—

  Feel.

  Instinct wanted to touch the shadow and shape he’d seen through the wet T-shirt. But something else—something smarter, something Max hadn’t even realised was there—whispered that maybe it wasn’t the time for his instincts. Later. But not right now.

  So he deferred to the second one. To the one that had struck him in the gym, what seemed like a thousand years ago, when Cian had so shamelessly turned his back and stripped.

  He stroked both hands down an uninterrupted back, a column of skin and spine, soft and smooth.

  Pulled.

  They fit together like puzzle pieces, tight and sure.

  Between them, Max could feel—everything.

  But it was against his lips, around his neck, in the grip on his shoulders, in the way the chest against his own hitched when his hands settled in the small of that unblemished back, that Max could feel Cian.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “CIAN?”

  “Mm?”

  “You’re burning.”

  Cian didn’t move but for the faint quirk of his lips into a smile.

  The sun was dipping towards the horizon, but its heat had dried their naked bodies on the shore, collapsed mere feet from the sea like landed fish. Maybe whales. The tide was creeping inwards in tiny inches, the surf kissing their feet now. Max hauled himself onto his back and sat up to watch the water stroke at Cian’s calves.

  His eyes, completely dismissive of his brain’s demand not to stare, drifted higher.

  Cian was the picture of serenity now—arms tucked under himself, freckled back and endless legs (and everything between) exposed to the sun, fair hair burned almost white and stiff with salt—but there had been something in the death grip on Max’s neck that had been nothing to do with trying to kiss and tread water at the same time.

  Max knew he ought not to stare at the naked body Cian had been careful not to show him.

  But—

  He tore his gaze away again and picked up a pebble. Flung it. It punched through the water with a satisfying plunk.

  “What you doin’?” Cian mumbled, not opening his eyes.

  Max’s gaze flickered down to Cian’s elbow, relaxed by his side, and the gentle swell he could just about glimpse between rib and rock beyond.

  He glanced away guiltily.

  “Sorry,” he said on autopilot, and then a prickle of awareness trickled up his spine.

  Even without looking, he knew Cian was watching him.

  “For what?”

  Max’s brain wanted to ask questions. Max’s body wanted to extend a foot and nudge Cian over onto his back and get another look. Or a first look. Apart from that glimpse of shape and shadow through the T-shirt, Max hadn’t seen a thing. And there was something scary and dangerous skirting around the edges when it came to that sort of thing. Something he didn’t understand.

  “Staring,” he said eventually.

  Cian let out a long breath. His arm moved. Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw those long, pale fingers begin to toy with a couple of pebbles.

  Silence.

  Then, so quiet Max barely heard it, Cian said, “You looked at me like you wanted to bite me through my T-shirt.”

  The thought had occurred.

  “Uh—”

  “You touched me like you wanted to get right inside me and find out all my secrets.”

  That thought had occurred too.

  “And you’re always staring.”

  Max swallowed. His tongue felt thick and clumsy in his mouth.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “What?”

  “Your eyes. Close them.”

  Max obediently closed his eyes.

  “Keep them closed.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you peek, I’ll drown you.”

  Max wasn’t entirely sure that was a threat rather than a promise, so he scrunched up his face, demonstrating they were properly closed and all.

  Then—

  “Oh.”

  Skin. Weight. Warm and heavy. Smooth but for the faintest catches of salt.

  He knew this position. It had been a changing room then, and there’d been clothes. But now—

  Cian’s thighs were bracketing his hips. Those shadow-shapes were touching Max’s chest. A hand was kneading Max’s stomach lightly, like a cat flexing its claws. Warning.

  And there were lips against his own.

  Max’s fingers twitched—as did something else. Was he allowed to touch? Please say he was allowed to touch.

  “Cian,” he breathed. “This is a really, really dumb idea.”

  “Why?”

  Max whimpered when the question was kissed into his jaw, and he felt the faintest touch of teeth.

  “I’ll—you know. I’m—”

  Cian’s weight shifted back slightly and brushed the problem. Max groaned.

  “I know.”

  Max balled his hands into fists by his sides and clenched his jaw. Eyes closed. Eyes closed.

  “This,” he mumbled decidedly, “is cruel and inhumane.”

  Cian laughed.

  “What?”

  “This is against my human rights.”

  “Get you, lawyer-boy. Screw the Navy, you ought to be in Parliament.”

  The flash of levity helped—kind of. Because when Max laughed, Cian’s weight shifted, and then his brain short-circuited. All he could feel was skin and soft hair and want, Jesus, so much want.

  “I stare because I want you all the time,” Max blurted out into the self-inflicted dark. “And you don’t really like it, so I’m sorry, and I’m trying not to, but it’s hard.”

  “It’s definitely hard.”

  “Shut up,” Max whined.

  Cian kissed him. But it was soft and tentative, nothing like the flash of humour and flirtation.

  “I’m all scrunched up inside, Max,” he whispered there.

  “What?”

  “In my head. I want things. I like things. But then I hate myself for wanting them. Hate the way I like them. Does that make sense?”

  No. “Um…”

  “Give me your hand.”

  Max raised it uncertainly. Cian smoothed it out, spreading the fingers flat—and then Max shivered when his palm was pressed to something unmistakeable.

  “Um—”

  “You like that?”

  Max fought not to squeeze. Oh God. Holy hell, he was touching Cian’s—

  “Y-yes.”

  “Me too.”

  Max sensed a but. Sweat was breaking out in the small of his back. His libido was on an ecstatic loop, but he ruthlessly crushed it. Not. The. Time.

  “But it makes me feel like something I’m not, too. Makes me feel like—I’m not real. I’m not right.”

  Max tugged his hand away and closed it into a fist around the air.

  “It didn’t feel like that in the water.”

  Wait.

  What?

  Cian’s lips hovered close. Max could feel his breath.

  “Co
me back in the water with me?”

  Max licked his lips, nearly catching Cian’s.

  “To do what?”

  “Maybe you could get right inside of me and find out all my secrets?”

  Max whimpered.

  “Oh God.”

  Cian’s smile against his skin was as clear as if Max had seen it.

  “Let’s play hide and seek. You count to ten. I’ll go hide. Then you come and find me. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Max said quickly, his heart pounding somewhere way lower than his chest. “One. Two—”

  The weight on his hips disappeared. Pebbles crunched. Feet splashed clumsily through water, and Max felt a momentary coolness at being left behind.

  He counted. Opened his eyes. Staggered to his feet and crashed into the water.

  The pull to the sea had never been so strong.

  “OH DEAR LORD,” was the first thing Mrs Williams said. “Aloe vera for you.”

  Cian rolled his eyes, but Max had to privately agree. He was going to look like a red lava lamp by the morning.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked as they clambered in the back seat, dumping their wet bags in the footwell.

  “Yeah. Swam. Sunbathed. Had to defend lunch from seagulls. The usual. Right, Max?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Cian smirked at him and turned away to stare out of the window. He kept shifting in his seat, maybe uncomfortably and…maybe Max couldn’t entirely blame him.

  Okay. Fake nothing was up. Max could do that. He copied, peering out of his own window, but he felt laughably obvious. His skin felt too small, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t the dried salt crackling along the hairs of his arms.

  It felt rather like he’d left his ability to breathe in the ocean.

  And maybe his ability to stop grinning.

  But who the hell cared how stupid he looked, beaming out of the open window at swallows diving over the fields and the streaks of silvery blue as the very first hints of dusk splayed out across the sky?

  His phone beeped, and he fumbled for it. It would be Mum. Should he go home? He should go home. But—he stole a glance at Cian out of the corner of his eye—he wanted to not, too. But then there’d be no, uh, bodies of water at Cian’s house. Not big enough for two, anyway. So he should go home. He didn’t want to make Cian—