"It's why you left school, isn't it?" Michael said.
"It was fucking torture," James choked, sobbing even harder. "A daily exploration of how fucking retarded I am! I just gave up. You must... someone like you must..." More sobs. "I can't believe you write fucking textbooks."
"Well, I sort of gave myself the sack yesterday," Michael said. "So just at the moment, I have no occupation at all." He explained the situation as James pulled himself together. James wasn't stiff about crying when he needed to. Sometimes a good cry was the best remedy, as his mum said, and he tended to agree. But he didn't want to spend every moment pissing and moaning to Michael. The man had problems of his own. And he was the sort of person who liked to help, who liked to feel useful...
"Could you teach me to read?"
"I'm not sure." Michael's tone suggested he was already weighing the question. "Were you diagnosed with dyslexia?"
"Severe," James said. "Rhymes with stupid, just means I get more from being hit over the head with a book than looking at what's inside it. Oh, and they said I have ADD, too." He lit a cigarette, his first of the day, and took a long, grateful drag. "But listen, mate, I once sucked a geezer for twenty minutes to get him off. The clock was just over his shoulder and I timed it. Attention deficit?" He blew out a plume of smoke. "I don't think so."
The appointment was easier than James imagined. The staff was pleasant, he flirted with everyone, including Dr. Beckman, and submitted to the molds, a cleaning and a lecture about flossing with good grace. It would take a week for the implants to arrive. Until then, James would confine himself to closed-mouth smiles and ducking his head. It was a strange feeling, being ashamed of his looks. Until his injury, they were the only attribute he was truly proud of.
He swung by his flat and found an eviction notice on the door. That was no surprise. Inside he loaded up two tote bags with his relevant possessions—three more pairs of jeans, two shirts, socks, underwear, condoms, lube, an MP3 player, ear buds, comb, shampoo, conditioner and a box of frosted cherry Pop-Tarts. He left his old toothbrush behind; Dr. Beckman's office had given him a kit with a fancy toothbrush and a tube of organic peppermint toothpaste. The rest, including his futon and his old TV, he never cared to see again.
When James returned to the flat in Shepherd's Bush, he found Michael sitting on the floor assembling a new piece of IKEA furniture. The flat consisted of a sitting room connected to a small kitchen, with a bedroom and toilet to the right. The only other room, hardly bigger than a loo, was doubtless meant to serve as an office or storage space. The twin-sized bed frame Michael was putting together would fit inside, but only just. There would be no room for anything else.
"Planning on asking your kids round?"
"Here? No. This will be yours, when you want it."
James didn't know what to say. No more crying, no more pissing and moaning, he told himself sternly. Noticing the MacBook on the coffee table, he went to it, studying the symbols on the digital desktop. Probably he'd never learn to actually read an entire book from start to finish. But if he could just pick up enough to have a proper e-mail address like the whole rest of the world, to search for cinema times and takeaway menus and porn...
He clicked around, opening and closing programs, wishing he could actually use the damn thing. "So you can search for a job online?"
"I could. But turns out I won't be. I told you about Peter. Well, his boss, Philip, called me while you were out. And apparently..." Michael shot James a sidelong smile. "I am now working from home. I'll have to go in occasionally for meetings and such. Otherwise, I'll compose my textbooks from here."
"You badass motherfucker," James grinned. "You know what you did? You cut off Peter's bollocks and fed them to him."
Michael only smiled. He was more than an attractive man, James realized suddenly. He was growing more handsome by the day as his ginger hair came in. He'd grown a little beard stubble, too. The moustache had made him look old and constipated. The all-over stubble made him look edible.
James was eating a frosted cherry Pop-Tart when he realized what Michael was installing on the inside of the small bedroom's door. It was a stainless steel deadbolt.
"Hey. What happened this morning—don't over think it," James said, alarmed. "I was just startled. I'm not afraid of you, Michael. That lock is way over the top."
Michael kept right on drilling the second hole. "The lock isn't practical. It's symbolic. If you want to shoot the bolt, you can. Simple as that."
As a boy James would have given anything for a place of his own to sleep, a way to keep people out. For a moment he was stunned that Michael understood. Then it came clear to James, as basic words occasionally did if he stared at them long enough and really tried.
"What my uncle did to me. Something like that happened to you."
Eyes still on his work, Michael nodded.
James didn't try to touch Michael, didn't try to make him discuss it. Michael had loosened up considerably, but he was still stiff and robotic at times, the way he'd been when he stripped for Deepak's massage. With Michael, confessions would never come easily, if at all.
"If you ever want to tell me, you can." James let the invitation hang between them for a moment. Then he thrust the Pop-Tart box under Michael's nose. "Fancy one? Healthy stuff. Nine essential vitamins and minerals."
James saw Michael's eyes shine as he removed a foil-wrapped packet, but James pretended not to notice. The afternoon passed companionably without further mention. Around five o'clock, Michael took the tube back to Brixton. James sat up watching action movies and eating the rest of the Indian takeaway. He tried to have a wank, but not even fantasies about Kevin stoked his engine. He was too aware of his missing teeth, afraid of what Kev would think to see him this way. Finally James sorted through the streaming service until he located some porn. It was boy-girl, not his usual cup of tea, though the woman's tits were natural and quite nice. And the man, Mr. Horse Cock, was slim yet well muscled, with short hair and a slight beard...
One of these days I'll fuck Michael blind. Give it to him like no one has. Make him glad to know me
, James thought, surprised by his own randiness, and came in record time. Then he stretched out in his tiny new bedroom, closed the door, shot the bolt and fell into perfect dreamless sleep.
***
James awakened around seven, not long before Michael turned up. They had breakfast in a café, then went grocery shopping.
"It's weird, the things I can make sense of," James confided. "I know that sign says milk. I know that box says Frosted Flakes. I've seen them on telly so much, the pictures and the words, I get it. But give me a long sentence or a whole page and I lose the plot straight away."
"I read up on dyslexia last night," Michael said, frowning at the meat section. "Can you cook?"
"Sure. Mum taught me."
"Then pick out whatever food you'll feel like cooking. Anyway, I'm not qualified to teach you. There are specific strategies for dyslexics. We need to hook you up with an adult literacy program. A certified tutor should help a lot."
"I'd rather you do it," James sighed, weighing one package of minced beef against another.
Michael shook his head. "James. You're not stupid. But you have a disorder and you'll get frustrated trying to overcome it. I'd rather you get frustrated with a stranger, take out your anger on him, then come home to me."
As Michael worked on his survey of world religions textbook, James whipped up bangers and mash for lunch. When they sat down to eat, James was pleased to watch Michael savor every bite, then swoop in for seconds. Fit as he was, the man verged on too thin.
While Michael resumed his work, James took the tube to the section of Wapping Michael had identified, following the drawing Michael provided. James found the Adult Learning Annex with no difficulty. Part of him suspected he'd be turned away within a week for stupidity. Part of him fantasized about becoming their most distinguished pupil, absorbing his remedial lessons in record time. Each idea was frightening in its own way. But in the end, James forced himself to enter, started by apologizing for his missing teeth, and let an intern assess his needs. He gave his details and was swiftly accepted. The program directors sent him home with several slim books, each individual page featuring several related photos and one or two words.
"Figured they'd start me with Winnie-the-Pooh," James admitted to Michael. "But look." He opened a book to a photo of a large bottle of milk. Beneath it the word MILK was printed in capital letters.
"Already know this one," James said, tapping a finger against his temple. "Ahead of the curve."
"I'm proud of you."
"Because I know the word milk?" James scoffed, wondering if Michael meant to take the mickey.
"No. Because you went and signed up. When I was a boy, I never learned to swim. But when my kids were little, they kept begging me to take them to the pool. I finally had to sign up for an adult swim class." Michael smiled. "It was one of the hardest things I ever did. Giving up my dignity, flailing around and letting an instructor teach me something most kids do instinctively. The instructor told me adults usually give up after one lesson."
"They told me the same thing at the Learning Annex," James said. "Most people bugger off as soon as the lessons shift from single words to sentences. So can you swim now?"
"Yes."
"Brilliantly?"
"No. But good enough not to embarrass my kids. And that was the point."
James cooked dinner—squash casserole, his mum's recipe—and then they settled back on the sofa for a movie. Afterward, James slid into Michael's arms. He wasn't sure how far he wanted things to go. But he wanted to be held, and he wasn't disappointed. They watched another movie like that, Michael on his back, James on top on him, cheek pressed against the other man's chest. He liked the feel on Michael's fingers against his scalp, down his neck, along the length of his spine. He hardly paid any attention to the movie, enthralled by being held without any sexual overtures, without dirty talk or traveling hands. Michael was semi-hard, had been that way for a while, yet he said nothing.
"Want to watch some porn?" James whispered as the movie's credits began to roll.
Michael nodded. Shyly, he kissed James's forehead. James responded by pressing their mouths together, kissing the other man until they were both breathless. Then he took the remote and started searching. As he'd noted the previous night, the streaming service's basic porn feed was geared toward the mainstream. Currently two blonde women, one lithe and delectable, the other curvaceous with huge enhanced tits, were having a food fight in a kitchen. Covered with batter, flour and sugar crystals, they started to make out, then to clean each other with their mouths. The lithe girl spread her legs as the curvaceous one licked thick yellow batter away, revealing the pink beneath.
"Fancy a little girl on girl, do you?" James whispered, caressing Michael's hard-on.
"It's nice," Michael murmured, gaze shifting to James. "I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything I don't fancy."
"We could find a girl and share her," James said. "You take her pussy. I'll take her ass. Fuck her so hard our cocks meet in the middle."
Michael made a little sound. James grinned.
"You are so easy. I swear I could make you come just by talking," he whispered in Michael's ear. "But I'd rather..."
"What?"
James finished the sentence that had come spontaneously to his lips. "I'd rather have you the old-fashioned way."
Michael undid his belt, sliding out of his trousers. He was slipping off his boxer shorts when James realized his condoms were in his little bedroom. "I need..."
"Please," Michael said, lifting his face for a kiss. James couldn't deny him, couldn't deny his own urgency, but he had to repeat the truth.
"I don't have a condom or lube..."
Michael already had James's jeans around his ankles, had his shorts down and cock out. He guided that hard member down to his asshole and pressed against it, opening himself, letting a millimeter of James slip inside.
James moaned. They both knew he had HSV-2. Part of James considered unprotected sex ludicrous, indefensible. The other part thought this was Michael's way of expressing something he couldn't put in words. The pleasure enveloping the head of James's cock, slightly inside Michael, was radically different without that familiar latex shield. Michael was hot, tight and rough, exciting James all the way back to his own asshole. When he pushed in harder, Michael cried out, teeth clenched.
"Does it hurt too much?"
"I like it," Michael gasped. "Harder."
James took a deep breath. Then he pushed into Michael as hard as he could, burying himself up to his balls. Michael made a choked sound, pain mingled with pleasure, even as his cock jerked and emitted a molten white pearl.
"You want my cock, don't you?"
Michael nodded, eyes shut, torso lifting as he wrapped his legs around James.
"Say it."
"I want your cock."
"Say it!"
"I want your cock so bad—oh—oh God—"
Michael broke off as James hit his rhythm, thrusting according to Michael's gasps.
"You want my cock more than those sweet little pussies?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Fuck me," Michael moaned, lower half lifting even more, gripping James's upper arms with both hands.
"What?"
"
Fuck me
," Michael cried, almost sobbing with desire.
James was committed then, pounding in and out like a jackhammer, pressure rising in his lower belly. He's so close, James thought, biting his lower lip with pride.
"James," Michael said distinctly. When James heard his own name, something happened. His inner landscape tilted and his hidden mechanisms halted, tripped by some mysterious kill-switch. As James came, cock pumping, belly hard as a rock with shocked pleasure, he felt Michael clamp down inside, his own member squirting hard.