r_scribbles | Cabin Pressure Fic: And Never Been Kissed

Part 4

1 – Arthur

‘I don’t like anal.’

Both men froze, suddenly, awkwardly, their mouths centimetres apart.

‘Blimey, Skip. I was only going for your lips.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I mean. I’m not that bad an aim.’

The indiscretion in Douglas’ car had been six months ago. The therapy was going well. NHS, thank goodness. Nothing scary or invasive, just a small, bright room in a local clinic, with a box of tissues on the table, where he would sit and talk, and listen, and sometimes use the tissues. He and Douglas had had to have a quiet word with Carolyn one day when she’d tried to spring a last-minute booking over one of Martin’s early appointments, so she knew. She was much, much better about it than Martin had expected, but then so was Douglas. Martin rather got the feeling that he was actually proving the least surprising of the lot of them.

These happy surprises were nothing on Arthur. Martin had felt bad about the Steward being the only one who didn’t know what was going on, or even that he liked men as well as women. He’d plucked up the nerve to tell Arthur after a flight, one day. Arthur had blinked blankly and nodded when Martin mentioned about his appointment the next day, and stammered through a brief and heavily edited version of what it was for. Then, he’d decided that since he was in for a penny, he was in for a pound, and added that he was Bisexual to the end of his very roundabout and tangential admission.

Arthur’s face had furrowed with worry when Martin had told him about his sexuality. ‘That’s… that’s not what you’re having therapy for, is it?’

‘No, Arthur! No, that’s not the problem. That’s just… well, just what I am, I suppose.’

‘Oh, phew! Cause I don’t want to go to therapy – I think doing it with men and ladies is great!’

‘Well. See. The way I’ve been going about it hasn’t been “great”… Wait. What do you mean - you don’t want to go to therapy?’

And, out it had come, just like that. Arthur was cheerfully Bisexual as well – Pansexual in fact, as it turned out, and seemed much better at it – certainly found it far more enjoyable – than Martin. After that, they’d chatted about sex and romance far more often than they’d used to. At first, Martin was just glad to have somebody else around who fancied men and women alike, who he could talk with about that sort of thing. There hadn’t been anything there, Martin had argued with himself. After all – it was Arthur. He was his friend – he wasn’t even his type. Didn’t fit the category. Any reminders that his mutinous mind tried to give him of how Claire Welles hadn’t fit the category either were swiftly silenced with a brisk change of subject. After all – that hadn’t exactly gone well. But, sometimes there were these little moments. Little smiles, little squeezes of the shoulder that made him think. Not particularly of sex, but of sharing a bed, and touching, and kissing, and Claire Ruddy Welles all over again, no, stop it, Martin, stop it now.

There had been no Maltesers. No hours and hours of practicing how to broach the subject. There’d been no need. As it turned out, all Martin needed was to never have seen any Harry Potter.

‘You’ve never seen any?’ Arthur looked aghast.

‘They’re kid’s films, Arthur. The first one came out when I was 23.’

‘But… but. You’ve got to have seen them!’

‘It’s just not my cup of tea, Arthur.’

‘Tell me you’ve read the books, at least.’

‘No. Again – I was too old fort hem when they came out.’

Arthur looked horrified. ‘There’s no such thing! You’ve got to see the films, Skip. They’re brilliant. I’ve got them all. You should watch them at my house some time. Come round tomorrow! Mum’s out, so she won’t complain.’

‘I, er. I don’t know if that’s…’

‘Oh, you’ll love it, Skip. Harry Potter lives in a cupboard at the start, it’s a bit like your bedsit. And there’s flying! All right, it’s on broomsticks, but it’s still magic just like flying.’

‘Arthur, for the last time – aviation is not “magic”.’

‘Yes, but in this it is! Oh, you’ll like it, Skip, I promise, and if you don’t like it we can just eat KitKats all night, and we can be Kissing Friends, if you like.’

‘Wh… wait, what’s a “kissing friend”?’

‘Oh, just a thing I made up. See, with my Pony Club friends, I found there was a bit that went in between being friends and being boyfriends and girlfriends, and I wasn’t sure what the name for it was, so I went with Kissing Friends, because that seemed to sum it up quite well.’

‘So, it’s… you want us to be boyfriends?’ Martin tried to stop the colour from pooling in his cheeks through sheer willpower. It didn’t go well.

‘Not yet,’ replied Arthur, ‘because Kissing Friends comes before that, and if that works then that works, but if we want to go to boyfriends or back to normal friends then that works, too. Kissing Friends is nice because you don’t really have to make your mind up straight away if you don’t want to, which I thought would be best for you because when I asked Mum and Douglas about this they said you were venerable and you needed time and patience. Which I thought was great because Mum’s always saying I take a lot of patience too, and wasn’t it nice of them to call you venerable?’

Martin tried his best to shake off the horrible realisation that Douglas and Carolyn were already in on this. ‘I think they meant vulnerable.’

‘Oh. I see.’ He paused. ‘So that football coach from the 90s – was his name actually Terry Vulnerables?’

-x-

That had been three days ago. And now, here they were, a breath away from one another, frozen. Martin had even made the first move, for goodness’ sake. He’d slid his hand across to Arthur’s. Their hands had met loosely at first, then fingers had curled gently over palms and thumbs brushed over the sensitive veins on inside wrists. If he was being honest, Martin had lost track of what was going on in the film ages ago – there wasn’t nearly enough flying for his liking, and what there was was on broomsticks, which was just plain silly. He was, however, all too aware of Arthur’s close presence, and of the years of friendship that had preceded them sitting together like this, and his enthusiasm and his sweetness, and the way that he made Martin feel wanted – feel special.

They had looked at one another for a moment, and then shifted their mouths a little closer. And then Martin had panicked and messed everything up and all of a sudden they were talking about anal sex, which was the last thing Martin actually wanted to discuss at that moment.

‘I just,’ Martin stammered, ‘I just. I don’t. Sorry. I thought you should know, before anything… I’ve tried it, and I don’t. Either way. Sorry.’

‘That’s OK. I wouldn’t like it, either.’

Martin sighed, relieved. ‘You don’t enjoy it either? Anything else you don’t like?’

‘Oh, no, that’s not what I meant. Bum fun can be brilliant! But I don’t like doing what the other person doesn’t like. That’s my not-liking-doing thing. So, we won’t do that! Because we wouldn’t like it. So what would the point be? And anyway, Mum made me promise her we wouldn’t go further than kissing tonight even if you said you wanted to, because of relapsing and taking our time and stuff.’

‘Oh.’

‘And we haven’t even done kissing yet. Would you like to?’

‘Um.’ Martin licked his bottom lip, anxiously. ‘You know, I’ve never actually…’

‘What?’

No. No. It was too embarrassing. And too sad. God, he’d been fucked every which way but Sunday, but he’d yet to have his first kiss? That was awful. Appalling. No, he wouldn’t mention that to Arthur. It was just too upsetting.

‘Have you not done kissing before?’

‘Er…’

Arthur’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, brilliant! First time! Mine was a bit rubbish - Pixie with the Piebald, round the back of some bracken. It was her first time as well, and it was a bit slobbery, and the ponies kept snorting at us. But I’ve been practicing loads since then, so we can make your first one good. If you like, I mean.’

‘Um.’ Martin said.

And then, he said ‘OK’.

Light touch, lip on lip, the tiniest exchange of moisture as their mouths parted slightly, and then it was over. Just like that. It had taken less than a second.

He had been kissed. He was an official kissee.

Good God, he wanted to do it again.

‘That nice?’ asked Arthur.

‘Hallahumyssmm,’ managed Martin.

‘Want another go?’

‘Yes! Yes. Sorry. But yes. Yes. Please. Yep. I’ll stop saying yes. But, yes.’

Arthur rolled enthusiastically on top of him. ‘Hey! If you’ve never kissed before just now, then you’ve never kissed with tongues, either, right?’

Martin could feel his face heating up, but he wasn’t sure that he minded. ‘Tongue? No. I… no. But yes, I’d like to, yes.’

‘So many first times! First time I did it, it felt like I was trying to swallow a really angry oyster and not doing a very good job of it. But I’ll see if I can make it a bit nicer than that.

He lowered his mouth, and cupped the back of Martin’s head at the same time. Martin opened up his mouth to a gentle tongue that ran over his own, teased at the roof of his mouth; his gums; his lips. Nothing rammed down his throat, just a gentle suggestion of what could be yet to come, and an invitation to join in. He managed a couple of little licks to Arthur’s lips before the other man pulled away and propped himself up on his elbows again.

‘Great, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes. Very yes.’ His fingers started automatically fumbling with the buttons of Arthur’s shirt. ‘Do you… did…’

‘Nope!’ Arthur batted his hand away, cheerfully. ‘I’ve got a list. No tops off until next time at least. That’s what Kissing Friends is. Kissing for the time being and tops off later. That would be the Kissing Friends Motto, if we had one. Maybe I should make a motto. Maybe it should be that.’ Arthur paused, and blinked. ‘Oh, sorry, Skip. All this kissing and talking about kissing must be outing you off the film. Did you want to just kiss now and watch it later, or watch it now, and kiss later?’

‘Yes, and no,’ replied Martin, ‘and no and yes. In that order.’

‘Eh?’

‘Could we just kiss, and forget about the film?’

Arthur frowned, as Martin pulled him back down. ‘Well, you’re the guest. What you say goes, I suppose. But you can’t “just forget” about Harry Potter.’

The rest of his words were mumbled against Martin’s lips.

‘I mean – I do think you should watch it, some day. It’s got owls in it.’

THE END