Rory and Sebastian

-- This is the first time the story is told from both Sebastian and Rory's point of view. The first half is told from Sebastian's. Both characters are over the age of eighteen. Thank you very much for all the really positive feedback this series is getting. It means a lot. --

The two weeks that followed mine and Rory's first weekend away together were not easy. Other fights we'd had before had erupted quickly and they'd then been followed by some angst and an emotional make-up/make-out session. But what had happened in Surrey wasn't really an argument and that made things different and difficult. Instead what had happened was the acknowledgement of a huge and fundamental problem in Rory's psyche. By demanding that he tackle his eating disorder solely to prove how much he loved me, I had been resorting to desperate measures. Okay, at the time it seemed like the only card I had left to play, but since leaving Surrey, I couldn't help but wonder (over and over again) if I'd done the right thing. I mean, it wasn't as if I'd had time to think through the practicalities of it -- particularly, what I was supposed to do if he failed. Did I end it with him?

Rory suffered in a different way. He kept his promise to stop making himself sick -- of that much I was absolutely and intuitively certain -- but the cost to him was often written all over his face and readable in his body language. There was a new kind of tension in him that came from the fact that he was fighting against all of his natural urges and that was not easy for him, obviously. The only natural urge he wasn't fighting against was love, which is what I'd counted on when we'd made the deal with each other back in Surrey. Luckily it was his love for me that won out in the end. But that didn't mean that there weren't still times when the pressures of the situation got to us both.

I felt like I had imprisoned him with an unfair promise that, if he broke it, would leave him not just sick and self-harming, but also quite possibly single and heart-broken as well. And if I lost him, I'd feel the same way. Somehow, I had stupidly made a bargain that even I wasn't a big fan of in the cold light of day.

Within two days of coming home, Rory had also made it quite clear that he believed that since he'd agreed to my ultimatum, I was in no position to demand anything else of him for the time being. He did it subtly, of course - even, in a weird way, politely - but he did it all the same, particularly when he dismissed out-of-hand my idea that he go see a therapist.

When I suggested professional help after school one afternoon, he fixed me with a very hard stare, then managed to make his mouth move with words of fairly polite incredulity: 'No, Sebastian, I don't talk to strangers. I have a hard enough time talking to people I love.' Any attempt to even mention a psychiatrist elicited a frosty reaction and eventually, I decided to drop it.

So for the first time, being with him was not easy. And by that, I mean that it was no longer easy to be in his company without feeling the silent presence of our obligations to one another: mine to help him, his to beat his bulimia solely in my name, rather than for his own. There was a new kind of awkwardness between us; as if the synchronicity I loved had been shattered, somewhere in the process of us both trying to do the right thing.

The situation was not made any easier, to be perfectly honest, by the fact that Valentine's Day was approaching; a day when we both felt under extra special pressure to be in love and coupley. Everything about it, particularly what to do on the big night itself, was now problematic. How do you go for a meal with your boyfriend, when food is his major problem? Since Rory would not make any suggestions about where to go or what to do on the day itself, eventually I had been forced into suggesting the supremely lame option of a cinema date. Which he agreed to, with something that I resentfully detected to be relief.

I wanted the weirdness to be over, but for the first time I didn't know how to do that. Luckily, it was Rory who ultimately saved the situation and dispelled the awkwardness -- on Valentine's day itself. The remarkable thing about him, then and now, was the personal strength he managed to pull out of the bag, especially during moments of great weakness and pain. He was capable of soothing, confident serenity; a quality I'd first noticed in him when we'd argued over Joshua Peterly's cyber-torturing of him back in November.

I was sitting upstairs in Rory's bedroom, leafing through a magazine whilst he finished getting ready in the closet next door for our shit cinema date on Valentine's Day. Jesus. He emerged and leant against the door frame. A navy sweater, jeans, a new beige belt, the irresistible, dark hair and beautiful eyes. The smile was the smile of the confident and clever Rory that I always associated with that day overlooking the sports' fields, back in September. I caught a vague whiff of his lightly sprayed cologne.

'Can we talk for a second?' he asked.

'Sure.'

'Okay - just listen. I want you to know that I don't feel obligated to you, at all, and that what you did in Surrey was the best possible thing you could have done. No matter how awful it felt at the time. Or since. There are moments when it's difficult to stick to what you asked and there's nothing I can do about that. You're just going to have to bear with me and not take it as a personal insult. Please, don't interrupt, Sebastian; I want to say this to you. Baby, I honestly don't mind forcing myself to do things for the sake of loving you and I think that's the way it should be. Shouldn't it? You said yourself that for months you've done things for me to help with the way I see myself, because you love me. It's okay to ask me to re-pay the favour, particularly when it's in my own best interests to do so. I don't resent you. At. All. I don't feel awkward around you. I'm honestly feeling much better right now than I have done in a long time. I won't lie to you or exclude you from things again. Okay? So please stop looking at me like you're sorry all the time. You've done nothing wrong.'

It was the perfect speech. Of course it was. Even in moments of emotional crisis, he was still too clever to deliver a dud oration. I got up and crossed over to him. I put my arms around him and kissed him on the lips. Then we rested our heads together, touching our noses at the side. I held him hard and tight. I felt the relief shooting through me, as the tension left - the tension that was the uniquely awful by-product of when Rory and I were not in sync; when we were fractured from one another.

I was happy again.

*

--From Rory's point of view--

The weekend after Valentine's Day, my parents went away for a weekend together. It was the first time they'd done that in years, since with me and my three younger brothers, life was quite the handful for my mother. Any other time, they'd had to take the boys with them. But I was eighteen now, Dermot was sixteen, Michael was thirteen and Patrick was eleven. Patrick, the wildest of the four of us, had been shipped off to stay at my grandmother's and Michael was staying at his friend Tom's nearby, but Mummy and Daddy assumed that Dermot and I could now be trusted alone together for two nights. Initially, both of us did quite seriously consider throwing a joint party -- obviously -- but after a lengthy discussion, we decided that tactically it was stupid to do so. Our first time house-sitting together would be meticulously inspected when our parents got home and if we wanted a free house again, then we'd needed to make sure nothing went awry this time round.

Sebastian had a rugby team social that night, but I'd told him it was okay to come round and stay over afterwards. Dermot knew about my being gay and after an initial bout of weirdness when he'd first found out three years ago, he was now totally fine with it. He also liked Sebastian, very much, and the two of them had quite similar senses of humour. They played video games together, which I thought was adorable until the point where it passed into the second hour of gaming and I got bored.

On the Friday night when my parents left, I went to see a movie with Virginia and then came home to do some homework, while Dermot hung out in the living room with his new girlfriend, Tanya. (Who was so pretty that she obviously didn't think she needed to develop a personality. I've seen plants less boring. Anyway...) She went home at about eleven and at half-twelve, I went to bed, leaving the door unlocked for Sebastian when he came back.

Just after one a.m., Sebastian lurched into the darkness -- quite clearly hammered. He stumbled over to my bed, pulled his shoes off and tried to get undressed. Hearing his difficulty, I stepped out of bed, grinning, and turned the bedside light on.

'Having trouble, sailor?' I asked.

He nodded. And I undid his belt. Usually, he'd be grinding or making sex jokes, but tonight he just stroked my arm drunkenly. I made him sit and pulled his jeans off him, then removed his shirt. I folded everything, got him a glass of water from the tap in my bathroom and came back into the bedroom -- turning off the light as I got into bed. Sebastian sidled up to me under the covers, lifted my arm up and put his head on my chest, in the crook of his neck.

'I take it I'm big spoon tonight?' I asked.

His only response was a mute nod and to start patting my chest with his hand. 'I love you,' he slurred.

I stroked his hair. 'I know you do.'

He shook his head. 'No, you don't. Not really.'

'Sebastian, of course I do. Don't be silly.'

To my surprise, I felt a few tears spill out onto my t-shirt. This was extremely unlike him. And so I tensed slightly, wondering what was wrong.

'I love you so much,' he whispered. 'When I wake up in the morning, you're the first thing I think about. And I think about you all day and I dream about you night. And I love you. And I'm so obsessed with you, Rory. And I'm so sorry.'

'What do you have to be sorry for? Sebastian, shhh. Don't cry, baby. I know you love me. I love you too. You don't have to say sorry to me for anything.'

He nodded, but in disagreement.

'I do,' he countered. 'For Josh. For not noticing how unhappy you were with the way you looked. For not helping sooner. But I couldn't have noticed, Rory. I think you're so beautiful that I thought you must be able to see it too.'

The tears were spilling, hot and fast, and I heard him choke a sob. He must be indescribably wasted to be behaving like this, but equally it must also be things he thought and felt deep down when sober. I felt awful and rolled him over onto his back, where I started wiping the tears away from his face. He was silently weeping.

'Sebastian, don't. Please don't.'

'I let you down.'

'No, you didn't,' I said firmly. 'You never have and you never will.'

'I'm so sorry!'

I kissed him on the lips, but he kept crying.

'Don't be sorry,' I comforted. 'You mustn't be sad. Poor darling. Why are you sad for me? I'm only really happy when I'm with you.'

'Rory -- I completely worship the ground you walk on and I let you down. You don't understand... how fucking shit I feel about it.'

'Sebastian. That's enough.'

I kissed up and down his face and then rolled back over onto my back, bringing him with me. I cradled him on my chest, where he'd put himself when he first got into bed; our roles weirdly reversed for the evening. But I suppose that's one of the main duties of true love, isn't it? To make sure you look out for each other, equally.

After a few minutes, during which I rubbed his back, his tears subsided and his finger reached up to trace circles in my chin. 'Rory?' he whispered.

'Yes?'

'I want you to fuck me, some day. Someday soon.'

That really threw me. 'Pardon?'

'I've taken it before and I want to take it from you. I ... want to give myself to you. I trust you. I want you to own me, too. I want it. Up the ass. From you.'

'But...'

'I want to be the one you had both of your first times with.'

I swallowed. 'Okay,' I agreed. 'Well, let's talk about this in the morning. Do you want a drink of water before sleep?'

He nodded and I sat him up, giving him his glass of water and holding it whilst he drank. He looked so endearingly helpless. I wiped a little drop away from his lips when he was finished drinking and brought him back down onto my chest, where, in a few minutes, he drifted off to sleep. Or unconsciousness. Telling me he loved me as he faded away.

*

I had been deeply relieved when none of my school friends took against Sebastian. That would've been hellish. Robbie, I knew, was already friends with Sebastian independently of our relationship; the girls, on the other hand, seemed to find him slightly mystifying but not friend-worthy.

Virginia seldom commented upon him and me -- although when she did, she was a good enough friend to concede that it was quite clear that he loved me. Virginia judged Sebastian's worth solely through his utility to me and she made absolutely zero effort to get to know him in any meaningful way. To some people, that might make her seem like a bitch, but in a way, it was clever. It meant that her loyalties were always one hundred per cent on my side and she never faltered in supporting me because of conflicting feelings she had for Sebastian. Later, I'd find out how true that was.

The other girls were less consistent in their policy towards my relationship than Virginia was. Claudia, who lived for gossip in the way other people lived for oxygen, was initially thrilled and titillated that the school had its first functioning gay couple and that Sebastian, who was a good looking rugby player, was part of it. My rivalry with Joshua Peterly and Sebastian's flammable hatred of him had also kept her merrily occupied in the first few weeks of our dating. But once that died down and Joshua shrunk back off to whatever bridge he'd lived under before, she'd rapidly lost interest and the only time she evinced any interest in Sebastian was when she sensed I wasn't happy -- at which point I knew she secretly wanted me to re-ignite her gossip fire with the news that all was not well.

Judith hardly ever mentioned him and when I did, she was inclined to get pissy. Judith liked to bitch in the same way Claudia liked to gossip, so I was keen not to give her any excuse to turn on Sebastian. Or me. Caroline, the last member of our group, seemed to quite like Sebastian and she was the only one who actually admired his confidence. But, like Virginia, she seldom brought him up in conversation, except for cursory polite queries now and again about how everything was going. 'He's very sexy, Rory,' she said once. It was the highest compliment she ever gave him and she finished it off with a little wink.

*

I had started going to Sebastian's rugby games quite early on in us dating. In fact, technically before that, since lots of school people came to support the team. It had actually been at one of those games, long before we started dating, that I'd first noticed, objectively, how attractive Sebastian was. Back then, I hadn't given it much subsequent thought. Anyway, Dermot, Virginia and I went to watch him play on the Saturday afternoon after he'd stayed at my house. It was a friendly game against King Edward VI Grammar, which was presumably why the boys had felt it was okay to organise drinks the night before. Saint Edmund's won, narrowly, and Sebastian looked quietly pleased with himself when he emerged from the changing rooms. He dropped Dermot home and then we went out to get some dinner. We chatted about the game and about Dermot's new girlfriend, who Sebastian had been teasing him about; after dinner, he drove us up to a car park overlooking a forest that he loved. It was raining again, now, but it made that green I love so much about Kent stand out even more.

'I don't know how on earth you weren't hungover today,' I said. 'You played so well.'

'I don't really get hangovers,' he said, with a cocky grin. 'If I did, I'd stop drinking. That much. Maybe.'

'You were very drunk last night.'

'I know,' he said. There was no hint of shame, thank goodness. I hate when people act as if getting drunk was somehow a mortification.

'You remember what you said?'

I didn't really need to ask him; the question was simply a matter of course. I knew he'd never forget anything like that, even if the alcohol did make him hazy on the exact details.

'Yes,' he answered. 'Of course.' I did see a hint of embarrassment creeping into his face, 'Sorry for crying.'

'You'd lose your shit if I said that,' I reminded him. 'Don't be. It was nice. Even the bits where you were beating yourself up. It was nice to hear again that you care that much, even though it's just awful, Sebastian, to see you upset.'

'I've never felt like this before about anyone,' he said, with a quietness that was uncharacteristic of him. 'Never.'

I agreed: 'Well, neither have I. It's frightening, I suppose, sometimes. But in a good way.'

He nodded. I hesitated. He spoke. 'I remember the other thing, Rory.'

'Oh, thank God!' I exhaled and laughed.

He smiled. 'I meant it. I want you to take me, at some point. I want you in me. I bet you could do some damage.'

He winked and I gasped slightly. Like a lovesick teenage girl. And he burst out laughing. 'Did I just legit take your breath away?'

'Fuck off,' I laughed.

'Oh my god -- Rory, I'm sorry. But you actually fucking gasped.' He kissed me on the mouth and it turned into a proper kiss, then a making out session. 'Have we ever done it in the rain?'

I looked at him, in my best thoroughly-unimpressed way. 'Eh, no, we have not and that statement is still going to be true an hour from now.'

'C'mon,' he pleaded, running his hand up and down my face. 'We're young. Let's be stupid. Leave your super-expensive jacket here, so it won't get wet and let's just go do it.'

'Where?'

'In the trees, over there. No-one'll see us there, ever. You know that. C'mon. Please!'

I don't know what possessed me. In fact, that's a lie. I know exactly what possessed me: Sebastian did. As he leaped out of the car, I pseudo-reluctantly followed behind him and let him take my hand and lead me into the semi-shelter of the trees. There, he kissed me and pressed me up against the trunk of a tree.

'The first time I ever kissed you was in the rain and up against a tree,' he said, softly, 'It was one of the best moments of my entire life.'

I stared into his eyes and, as unbelievably cheesy as it sounds, I actually did feel myself melt slightly. When we kissed again, it was soft yet possessive. I gave myself over to the situation, like I always did with him during sex. We were pressed completely up against one another and getting lightly soaked by the rain that managed to pierce the cover of the trees, as their foliage returned in time for a very wet Spring.

'We don't have any lube,' he reminded me. I took the hint and dropped to my knees. I didn't want to take him today; not here or now. I would some day and somewhere where there was more time and an easier situation. This was novel enough.

I unbuttoned his trousers and pulled his penis out of his boxers. He was already close to fully hard and I began spitting and bobbing up and down on it. When it was fully soaking, he pulled me up, turned me around, pulled my trousers and boxers completely off me and made me put my hands up against the tree as he rimmed me. By then I knew that he was right - this was a good idea. Half-naked, in the middle of the trees and the rain; it was unbelievably bizarre and almost painfully erotic. I felt strangely alive. I'm being melodramatically inarticulate here, but I don't know how else to entirely describe what it felt like.