False Start Read online

  “Not Robin,” Jarrod growls, reaching forward to bite and suck at Clive’s neck with a possessiveness he hasn’t felt since he was sixteen with his first serious boyfriend. “It’s Jarrod. Jarrod’s the one fucking you. Say it, Clive. Say my name. My name.” He picks up the pace. Trying to make love to this stranger had clearly been a serious mistake. His hips snap against Clive’s and his moans grow louder and more appreciative.

  “Jarrod - sorry, I - sorry. Jarrod,” Clive moans, eyes clearing up a bit. He sees him properly now, Jarrod can read it in his eyes. It isn’t going to happen again.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Jarrod orders anyway, “I want you to know who’s doing this to you, and it isn’t Robin fucking Bartholomew.”

  “Okay,” Clive cries, “I just need you. Jarrod, please!”

  He kisses him again, on the mouth, harsher than before. His hand is rough on Clive’s cock as he starts stroking him, fast - he doesn’t care about dragging this out anymore. Clive can feel the calluses at the bases of his fingers, like an athlete’s hand would have, like his own hands have, and later, when he’s not struggling not to come, he’ll wonders how Jarrod the medical student got them.

  Jarrod, meanwhile, barely even cares about getting off at this point. He just wants to give Clive the best sex of his life, and he just wants to imprint his name into his mind forever. Jarrod. Jarrod Franklin. Not Bartholomew.

  Jarrod fucks him harder and faster until Clive lets out sounds that aren’t even words anymore, interspersed with his name. The right name - he’s careful to make sure. He can see every inch of Jarrod’s face as he pushes into him. They’d left the lights on, and Clive can finally see his eyes - they’re vaguely ocean-colored, that strange stormy blue-green-gray.

  “Please - please, Jarrod, I’m so close - “

  “Come for me, Clive,” Jarrod say softly as he leans down to kiss him again, a little kinder this time. He keeps pounding into him, and something about him, about his cock, about the angle, is perfectly suited to hit Clive’s prostrate every time, and he just can’t hold it off anymore - even this much is an achievement given how long it’s been -

  Clive’s entire body tenses and he wraps his arms around Jarrod’s neck to prolong the kiss as he comes in three long spurts. It’s all over his own stomach, and some gets on Jarrod’s stomach too, because there’s almost no space left between them, and Jarrod pushes him further, keeps thrusting until he spills too, into the condom.

  This is exactly what Clive had needed - the closeness, the fucking, the tenderness of kissing juxtaposed with the harsh possessiveness - that sense of belonging to someone. He’d never had that with a man before.

  Jarrod pulls out after he comes, stripping the condom off and tying it off before throwing it away into the bin by the bed. When Clive looks, he sees little notes in the bin too, on brightly-colored bits of paper.

  Get milk.

  Meet Mickey?

  Juice expired.

  Call Mickey.

  Eggs.

  Call Mickey’s mum?

  Pick up extra shifts.

  There’s one that just says ‘fuck you too, Michael.’

  “You are single, right?” he asks Jarrod, half-afraid.

  “Free as a bird, love,” Jarrod says airily, “let me just go get something to clean you up.”

  He gets up and heads into the bathroom to dampen a wash cloth to wipe them both off. He comes back and cleans Clive’s stomach off first, and then his own, tossing the washcloth into a laundry bin. He crawls back into bed and wraps his arms around Clive again. Clive’s so warm, and it’s been so long since he was held by someone during his afterglow, and he might like this Scouser, just a little bit, and he’s tired…

  “Stay the night? I make a good breakfast.” Jarrod’s kissing his neck again, soft, sleepy kisses that Clive’s never been lucky enough to have before, and even though it’s risky, even though Clive doesn’t much like the thought of this Mickey lad, he agrees.

  “Will you tell me about these?” he asks, pressing his fingers against the scars on Jarrod’s belly.

  “I was just a baby.” He has a good storytelling voice, Clive notes. He presses a hand to Clive’s stomach, low on his abs. “You know your intestines are in here, right?” He moves his hand up, “your liver’s up here, on your right, bigger than you think, and your stomach is here, just under this wall of muscle called the diaphragm that helps you breathe, and then down here are the intestines.

  “Some of the organs, your heart,” - he places his finger over Clive’s heart and traces a little cartoon heart shape, making Clive melt a little, “ - your lungs,” he moves his finger to either side of his heart and draws long ovals over Clive’s chest, and it feels brilliant, especially when his blunt fingernails graze over Clive’s nipples, “ - they have their own little protective sacs. To protect them. Your intestines have one too, Clive. I was born with mine on the outside. Like a water balloon with my intestines just sort of… hanging out through a hole in my abdomen. I just grew that way, when mum was pregnant with me.”

  “Shit.”

  “Kind of, yeah. But everything was fine, everything was functional, but they just needed to - it’s like opening up a teddy bear to put the stuffing back in. Surgical technology is a bit better now, they could have done it with less scarring, but. I survived, is the important thing. I didn’t lose even an inch of intestine.”

  Clive traces the scars with a new reverence. “That’s a lot, Jarrod.”

  “Yeah. Didn’t even know babies normally came with belly buttons until my little brother came along, I thought everyone looked like me.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  Jarrod hums a response, kissing his temple and holding him close.

  “Was that what made you want to be a doctor?”

  “It was part of it, I guess, though I didn’t really think about me. Thought about me mum. She used to talk about it a lot, how the doctors had saved her baby. I wanted to save people’s babies. It’s weird, but I kind of thought I had to, to pay the world back, for letting me live. I thought it was my destiny or something. Kids think in weird ways, I guess. Anyway, I became a paramedic, before I started university. I still pick up shifts at a few hospitals now, between classes and clinicals.”

  “You’re incredible,” Clive whispers, turning to look at him, searching his eyes for some sort of sign, “I don’t think enough people have told you yet that you’re incredible, and you - you just are.”

  “Thanks, love.” Clive’s afraid, for a moment, that Jarrod will ask him about himself, about his work, but he doesn’t. He just lays there next to Clive, fingers running through his hair in a gesture that is by far too tender for a one night stand.

  “This is just - this is just a one-off,” Clive says cautiously.

  “I know. I could tell just by looking at you.” Jarrod doesn’t seem to care, though, and Clive’s suddenly aware that as tall as he is, as strong as he is, as much as he’s seen - and Clive suspects he’s seen a lot - he’s still three years younger than him.

  “I wake up early. Might be gone by the time you wake.” He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but they’re sharing a twin mattress and he’s doing his absolute utmost to try to lower Jarrod’s expectations for reasons he doesn’t quite understand himself.

  “Okay.” Jarrod reaches across him for something - no, it’s to take off his glasses. He folds them carefully and puts them on his bedside table, far enough from the edge that they won’t fall.

  Clive closes his eyes. It was supposed to be a quick fuck - hell, he’d just been hoping for a kiss, even the sex had been more than he’d expected. And yet, here he was, in a student housing building, sharing a single bed with possibly the most incredible man he’d ever met. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t ever supposed to hurt.

  If Clive could afford to fall in love -

  There is no if. He can’t, end of story.

  Jarrod’s making soft shushing noises and holding him clo
se, and he’s warm, but not too warm, and his fingers are in Clive’s hair. It’s almost like a dream, but Clive has to fall asleep before he can wake up and run away, so he does.

  The sun is what wakes him - the bed is right next to the window, probably exactly for this reason. He stirs, stretching himself awake with no thought as to the other person in the bed with him. He wakes suddenly, at the realization that there is nobody else in bed with him. Instead Jarrod’s in the kitchen, humming softly to himself as he makes breakfast - it smells like eggs.

  Clive loves eggs.

  He lets out an inarticulate grunt instead of saying hello, and Jarrod smiles at him.

  “Morning, Clive. Poached, fried, or scrambled? I like mine scrambled with little bits of bell peppers and mushrooms and such, but I didn’t know how you took yours.”

  “Sunny side up, please.” Clive croaks, getting out of bed and looking for his clothes.

  His boxers are right near the bed, so are his jeans, but his t-shirt is… gone.

  “Behind the closet door,” Jarrod says helpfully.

  That would do it. The closet door had been shut last night, but Jarrod must have needed to get dressed this morning…

  Clive stops suddenly, taking in the poster of Michael Starling on the inside of the closet door.

  It’s signed, too.

  To my favorite twat

  - With love, your Mickey Mouse.

  Something else sinks in, a horrible truth that feels like ice down his spine.

  “I told you my name was Robin, in the club,” he says slowly, “but you called me Clive just now. And last night.”

  Jarrod looks concerned, and a little embarrassed. “I know,” he says quietly, “I know who you are. I just thought you deserved a good night, for once. And being called the wrong name in bed doesn’t feel good.”

  Clive flushes at the reminder. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. And I won’t tell anyone, just so you know. You can have breakfast, I’ll give you a cap and some sunglasses, or a sweatshirt or something, nobody will recognize you. That’s what Mickey does, when he visits.”

  Mickey of the post it notes. That was Michael Starling. He hated Michael Starling, mostly because he was young and perfect and Scouse and a bitch to mark, but now for a whole other world of reasons he doesn’t want to look at too closely.

  “How do you even know him? Is he your boyfriend?”

  “Mickey? No! He’s just a kid! He’s a friend. He’s just a friend, Clive. We grew up together. Used to play together on the streets. I’m a couple years older than him, I used to mark him, that’s what made him so fast, you know. He, uh - never mind.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t use it against him. He’s just a kid, Clive, and you’re twenty-three. It’s not fair to pick on someone five years younger than you.”

  “I won’t!”

  “He kissed me. Once. He was sixteen and I was eighteen. But I told him I couldn’t, that we’d have to wait until he got older.”

  “And this poster?”

  “A gift from him. So I’d have something to remember him by when I left home.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t have to answer that, Clive. I met you last night. Mickey’s an old friend and he’s none of your business. And if I hear about you messing with him or, God forbid, trying to seduce him, when you’re away, you’ll be sorry. He’s a good friend.”

  “Yeah? I can tell. Must be a great friend, considering you didn’t even watch the Championship for him!”

  “First of all, fuck you. You know less than nothing about me and Mickey - “

  “I know he signed off on your poster as Mickey Mouse, and if that’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard - “

  “ - And second of all, I did, actually. I didn’t watch the group stages - I was working. You probably haven’t worked a real job since what, your paper route when you were twelve? Nobody wanted to work during matches, but people still get sick and die, so my supervisor offered us overtime. It broke my heart, but I needed the money. You wouldn’t understand. He got me a ticket, but I couldn’t go travel. Watched it in a pub by the hospital instead.”

  “He made it, though.”

  “I knew he’d make it,” Jarrod says simply, “that was never my concern. He shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with.”

  Clive instinctively doesn’t like the disdainful tone - he finds himself caught between the initial instinct to defend his best mate and the fact that he secretly agrees with Jarrod on this. He wants to ask more about Starling, too. But Jarrod’s made it pretty clear he’s not talking about it anymore. He’d seemed okay, the kid, but now that he thinks about it, he’d been kind of an ass.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” he says eventually, looking around for a place to sit.

  “I know. It’s never the fault of the ones we love,” Jarrod says quietly, “clear a space on the sofa, would you? And be careful with my notes? I really don’t want to have to redo clinical pharmacology of liver disease. And I have to loan these out to my mates to photocopy, too, the lazy dickheads.”

  “You have a lot of notes about him in your bin. About Starling.” Clive is careful with the notes as requested - he won’t be able to help fix them if he ruins them. He tries to keep them in some sort of order based on the numbers at the top right corner of the pages, but some of the pages don’t have numbers at all and some have letters and eventually he just makes a semi-orderly pile and sticks them on a corner of the coffee table where there are loads of medical textbooks.

  “I was trying to get ahold of him. He wouldn’t answer my calls, and then when I called his mum and she made him call me, he shouted at me over the phone. That’s just how he is. Said if I’d just been there, we would’ve won. He’s always won, when I’ve been in the crowd. But I had to work. I didn’t have a choice. And he’s young, he always takes things so personally... His mum said he kept going on about having disappointed me. As if I could ever be disappointed in him! He just - he doesn’t have anyone else, to take things out on. I knew he would take it out on me, that’s why I kept calling. He needs… release, sometimes. Emotional release. Still upset me, though.”

  “Are you going to tell him about this? About me?”

  “No, Clive, I’m not. As far as I’m concerned, I had a decent one night stand with Robin, the history student who knew nothing about history.”

  Clive’s grateful, in a bone-deep, profound way he almost can’t articulate.

  “I wish I was Then I could see you again.”

  Jarrod doesn’t respond, but he comes over and hands Clive a plate with two toasts and a couple of fried eggs. “Salt and pepper are on the counter, if it’s not to your taste. Butter for your toast should be on the counter or in the fridge.” Clive finishes up his breakfast - there’s coffee too, and he thinks regretfully that this boy is perfect.

  “Do you want me to walk you back to the bar? I’m guessing that’s where you left your car? Seeing as how Birmingham’s a bit beyond walking distance away from Bury.”

  “I don’t want anyone to see,” Clive says quietly, hating himself for saying it.

  “I understand.” Jarrod smiles at him, and in the light of day, he really does look his age, though he is undoubtedly handsome.

  “It’s just a couple of streets over.” Clive shrugs a little.

  “I know.”

  Clive finishes the rest of his breakfast, asking a polite question about being a medical student, about Jarrod’s clinicals, anything to make conversation.

  “One of my patients died. Day before yesterday,” Jarrod says bluntly, as if he’s forcing himself to be dispassionate and it’s killing him, “I didn’t sleep all night, kept obsessively researching different meds, different therapies, even though it was too late. She was young - her mother was in there with her, and her boyfriend, it was - they were so young, so in love… She was fine, until all of a sudden she wasn’t anymore, and - it kind of broke me. I’ve gone over her c
ase a thousand times - so I don’t miss it next time I see it. She wasn’t my patient - I’m just a student, but. One day I won’t be, and it’ll be on my head if the next one dies, when I am responsible.” He goes quiet for a moment.

  Clive doesn’t know what to do, so he moves in close and lays his head on Jarrod’s shoulder. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been bothered by the age gap - Jarrod’s intense, in a way that Clive can knows all too well and simultaneously can’t even fathom.

  “Sorry,” Jarrod mutters, slumping against the sofa, “it’s been a hard week. I just - I told you, I get insomnia. It’s pretty common, when you’re starting out in clinicals. I need to be tired before I can fall asleep. Physically tired. I go to the gym, I go boxing, but that wasn’t - just wasn’t enough the past couple days. Sex is better than sleeping pills, and there’s no hangover. Medicine… medicine breaks you down and forces you to remake yourself, and it’s still breaking me down.”