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Percy wasn’t sure he could move anyway. He felt leaden with the weight of what they’d just done.
What he’d instigated.
What he’d begged for.
Albie came back with the rag and wiped Percy’s back clean, then his front. Then he took a clean cloth, and wetting it in the basin in their room, he wiped him down.
Albie studied Percy’s face for a moment before putting his finger to his chin and raising his face. Percy pulled away, unable to meet his eyes.
Albie went to his knees in front of him, in nothing but his long johns, hands on Percy’s legs, looking up into his face. “What is it? Did I hurt you?”
Percy shook his head. “No.”
“Then what? Please tell me. I thought you wanted that. I thought?—”
“I did want that,” Percy said. “Exactly that, and at the same time, not even that. I wanted more. I wanted such things that... dirty things, wrong things. I wanted...” He trailed off with a shake of his head. “Albie, I’m sorry.”
Albie put his hand to Percy’s cheek. “Don’t ever apologise. You’ve nothing to be sorry for. This is new to both of us, and we’re finding our way. If we do something you don’t like, we don’t do it again.”
“But I did like it. Too much. I wanted you to...”
He couldn’t even bring himself to say it out loud.
Albie held Percy’s face and brought him in for an embrace, holding him. “Whatever troubles you, my love, you can tell me.”
My love.
Oh, how Albie called him that warmed him through, every time. And perhaps hiding his face in Albie’s neck made it easier to admit.
“I wanted you to have me as you would a woman,” he whispered, his eyes squinted shut. Albie froze, and when he tried to pull back, Percy clung to him tighter. “Please don’t look at me.”
So Albie rubbed his back instead and let out a shaky breath. “I’m no expert in the anatomy of the female body,” he said. “But I don’t...” He froze again. “Oh.”
Now it was Percy who tried to pull away and it was Albie who refused to let go. “See?” Percy said. “I told you it was wrong.”
Then Albie gripped his shoulders, pulled him back, and met his gaze. Percy had expected to see disgust or blame in Albie’s eyes, but no. What he saw was anger.
“Percy Collins, you listen to me,” he said sternly. “Nothing we do is wrong. Not one thing. You cannot sit there and tell me, after all that we’ve shared, after all that we’ve found in each other, that any part of us is wrong.”
Percy blinked in surprise. He hadn’t expected such words or the honesty in which he’d said them. “I wanted you to sodomise me,” he whispered. “Albie, I wanted it so much I burned with the need of it. How is that right?”
Albie was surprised, clearly, but it was quickly replaced with that stubborn determination Percy had grown to love. “Percy, listen to me. I’m not a religious man, and neither was my father. He swore that any god that would take his wife and unborn daughter was no god worth praying to. And here I am now, saying to you that any god who would tell us our love is wrong is no god I believe in.”
Oh, how Percy wished he could believe that.
“Now, I don’t know if”—Albie continued, his cheeks now pink—“me taking you as I would a woman is something we’ll even do. To be frank, Percy, I hadn’t given it a thought. Everything we’ve done so far is more than I ever dared dream I’d have. If it’s all we ever do, I’ll die a happy man.”
“Die?”
“Fifty years from now,” Albie said with a smile. “Old and grey, here in this very house, with you.”
Percy could have cried at that. He almost did. His eyes watered and his nose burned. He could barely nod.
Albie cupped his face and searched his eyes. “All I want is you. And if you do want me to take you that way, I will.”
Percy gasped. “Albie!”
“What? You mentioned it, and now I’m not entirely sure I can think about anything else.”
