The Aristocrat

(Author's note: I don't think there's anything in this that should be a trigger warning for anyone, except that one character does get ill at one point, and it's gastric in nature. So if you find that that makes you feel ill, please skip. But it is part of the story.)

Climate change is so weird. Because when spring came, it was bakingly hot.

As the Easter break came closer, the string of people who were interested in Ciara dried up, and I waited with increasing fatalism for Adrian to call me. In the meantime, Ciara and I lay around our flat in various stages of undress, trying to stay cool.

Which in part is what led to the next development in our weird friendship.

It was a Sunday morning, quite late, about 11, and Ciara had been for her third lukewarm shower since getting up.

She was lying on her stomach on the sofa, wrapped from breasts to the tops of her thighs in only a small towel.

I was sitting in the armchair opposite, in only my boxers. We had the window open, but there was no wind.

'God, this weather,' she sighed. 'It almost makes me want to go for a swim.'

'Why don't you?'

'I said "almost".'

'Fair enough.'

'And I'm so bored. There's nobody around, we haven't even anyone to arrange to meet later. It's just you and me.'

'I'm sorry I'm not good enough for you.'

'Sandy,' she said.

'What.' I looked at her.

She glanced down at my lap.

'I can see your wing-wang. Put it away.'

'Oh. God. Sorry.' I hastily readjusted my shorts and folded my legs under me.

She folded her hands under her head and was silent for a moment, then she looked at me.

'I've an idea,' she said.

'What.'

'Let's you and I have sex.'

I stared at her.

'What?!'

'Come on! I'm so bored, there's nothing to do and I'm really horny. And it would give us both an excuse to have another shower.'

'I'm not gonna have sex with you!'

'Why not?'

'Because we aren't a couple.'

'I have sex with loads of people and I'm not a couple with any of 'em.'

'That's different.'

'How?'

I caught the warning look in her eye and shut up.

'Come on!' she said. 'It's just sex. You know how to do it, right?'

'Yeah, but it just seems wrong.'

'Why?'

'Because when friends are bored, they don't just decide to have sex with each other. They do something else.'

'Like what?'

'I dunno. Play Catan.'

'Do you want to play Catan?'

'Not particularly, no.'

'In all the time I've known you, you've never expressed the slightest interest in playing Catan.'

'I know.'

'We don't even have a copy of Catan.'

'I know that!'

'So let's have sex instead.'

'Ciara!'

'What?!'

I hesitated.

'What if it fucks up our friendship?'

'Why does it have to do that?'

'I don't know. It might.'

'Only if we let it.'

'Why sex? Why not... dance or something?'

'Do you feel like dancin'?'

'No.'

'So let's not do that then,' she said.

I was silent. I was actually quite horny, not having had sex in some time.

'How gay are you, exactly?' she said.

'About 50%, on average. But it changes day by day.'

'How gay are you today, then?'

'Mostly not, but, that's not the point.'

'So wouldn't you like to stick your manly penis into a willing vulva attached to a hot body?'

I stared at her. She was smirking.

'There is another problem,' I said gently.

'Mm-hmm.'

'You know what it is.'

'You don't fancy me.'

'Well... I think you're objectively sexy, but, personally, no.'

'That's okay,' she said brightly. 'I don't particularly fancy you either, cause you're so fuckin' annoyin'. But I would really like to get fucked today. And I'm saying, be a pal, and do a girl a favour.'

'What about the "not fancying you" part of it?'

'You may not fancy me,' she said, 'but could you fancy this?'

She unwrapped her towel and rolled onto one side, facing away from me, to show me her naked back and bottom.

She really did have a lovely body. Her broad shoulders and strong upper arms, her tight back, the gentle narrowing of her waist and the two ripe halves of her ass were having an effect on me. I noticed for the first time that she had a tattoo: a classic tramp-stamp on her lower back.

'You're so fucking weird,' I sighed.

'Well?' she said over her shoulder.

'And what we do when we're finished?' I said.

'We get on with our lives, fuck sake, what's the big deal? We don't have to canoodle.'

'You don't like canoodling?'

'I'll canoodle with the one I love,' she said.

We stared at each other for a moment.

'I mean,' she said airily, 'if you don't want to at all, fine. I'll live.'

'Okay,' I said impulsively. 'Let's do it.'

'Thank you,' she said, and stood up, holding the towel in one hand. She walked over to me with a determined expression on her face, and I stood up.

In one swift movement, she yanked down my boxers and I stepped out of them.

She held out her hand, her face expressionless. I took it, and we walked naked to her bedroom.

Five minutes later, Ciara was on her hands and knees on her bed and I was kneeling behind her, easing my condom-sheathed cock inside her.

'Aaaaahhh...' she sighed. 'Oh yeah. Mmm.'

We began to fuck, and I had to admit: she was really good.

She had a great sense of rhythm: how to push backwards when I was pushing into her. She moved her hips like a dancer. I could see her getting into it; losing her self-consciousness, and focusing on the pleasure she was getting.

We did that for a while, in silence broken only by our heavy breathing. I was hoping to cum, but because she was more into all this than I was, my main plan was to make sure that at least she did.

And, looking down at Clara's back, it wasn't hard to be aroused by her. I pushed into her up to the base. Her vagina fit snugly around my cock. I grasped her hips and pulled half out of her, then pushed in again.

'Ohhh...' I whimpered. I'm quite noisy when I have sex.

'Mmm,' she murmured. 'More.'

'What?'

'Talk to me. Fuck me with words.'

'You have a beautiful ass.'

'Mmmm.'

'And you're a warm and generous person,' I added, pushing hard into her.

'Oh!' she whimpered.

She moved her hips with me, getting into the rhythm.

'More,' she gasped.

'You're smart and together but you're not an asshole about it,' I said, pulling out of her, and then I added, 'and you've a great sense of humour,' and pushed deep into her.

Ciara moaned loudly.

'You're mad as a boot,' I said, speeding up the thrusts of my hips slightly, 'but not in a destructive way. '

'How, then,' she whimpered.

'In an imaginative way,' I said, reaching beneath her to stroke around her clit.

'Oh, fuck, yeah,' she panted.

'You're resourceful,' I said, pushing in with each adjective and pulling out after, 'and unusual... and tolerant... and broad-minded... and fun.'

'Oh, fuck,' Ciara moaned. With each thrust, her arse jiggled a little. Her breasts were swaying with each thrust of my hips into her naked rear end.

'And somebody...' I panted, 'is going to be very... lucky... to finally... grab you.'

I drove the last word home with a slow push and a stroke of her clit, but she was already there.

'AAUUHHHH!' Ciara squealed, throwing her head back. Her body flushed pink. I felt the moisture around my cock and I shut my eyes and smiled.

I hadn't come. Almost, but not quite. But from Ciara's ragged breathing, I sensed that she had.

'Oh Jesus,' she blurted out, and moved forward, sliding off my cock and then collapsing, prone on the bed.

I lay down next to her, propped up on one elbow.

No canoodling.

Her brown hair was covering the side of her face.

'Whervgmglss,' she mumbled.

'What?'

'Where the fuck are my glasses?'

I took them off the nightstand and handed them to her. She brushed her hair back, lifted her face and put them on.

'Mmmm,' she said contentedly. 'That's so much better.'

'You're a fuck-ing psy-cho,' I murmured.

'You didn't cum,' she said.

I shook my head.

She looked up at me for a moment.

'Want me to return the favour? I've a strap-on in the dresser.'

'It's very kind,' I said, 'but I'm saving that for my lover.'

'Who doesn't call you.'

'He will.'

'Of course he will,' she said, and rolled onto her side. We lay, facing each other.

'Does he make you happy,' she said.

'What kind of a question's that to ask me?'

'Seems reasonable to me.'

'It's not about... being "happy",' I said. 'It's about having something meaningful and serious in your life.'

'I see,' Ciara said, picking up her towel and draping it over herself.

'Not... just... having sex with people, because... you... like them.'

She looked at me thoughtfully and gave a little shrug and looked away.

I felt exposed. I rolled onto my stomach on an impulse to cover myself a little.

'See?' she said. 'This isn't weird at all. Just two pals who got naked and had sex.'

I started to laugh. I completely lost it, actually. I rolled onto my back and held my stomach, it was so bizarre and so beyond my experience.

'You laugh,' she said, smiling, 'but people should be more like me.'

'I agree,' I panted, 'but... why specifically?'

'Cause you're gonna get all weird about this,' she said softly, 'but I'm not.'

'I'm not gonna get weird,' I said.

'We'll see,' she said, and pursed her lips.

Then she abruptly sat up.

'I'm havin' a shower,' she said. 'Out of my room, ya perve. You're naked and you're my roommate. It's scandalous.'

'I'm going, I'm going,' I said. I got up and headed for the door.

'Sandy,' she said. I looked over my shoulder.

'You've a beautiful ass too,' she said.

I winked and went out.

*

She was right, though.

I couldn't help getting weird about it.

I thought of myself as someone who was improving himself. Rising to a better life. I had a hot boyfriend who was classy (if a bit of a dick).

But I had become one of Ciara's one-night stands. With the difference that we were continuing to live together. I was on the same level as those schlubs and losers who she had pity sex with.

I couldn't help it. It became something I didn't want us to talk about. Ciara made a few jokes about it in the following days, but I couldn't. She and I had finally been completely intimate with each other, and I couldn't just shrug it off the way she did. I felt the pressure of being one of her lovers (was I, though?) while still being her friend, the person who shouldn't be involved with all that stuff.

And I was annoyed with her that, for her, it seemed to be so much simpler.

She started to tiptoe around me, a bit, and give me odd looks when she thought I wasn't noticing.

Finally, one Sunday evening--always the most depressing part of the week, because next day is Monday--she came into the kitchen while I was washing up and leaned against the counter.

'I told you,' she said.

'What?'

'That you'd make it weird.'

'I'm not making it weird.'

'Sandy. Come on. It doesn't have to be weird.'

'How is it not weird?' I said. 'How can you just act like it was nothing?'

'It wasn't nothin',' she said. 'It was us doin' each other a favour.'

'Is that what you call doing someone a favour?'

'We don't ever have to do it again.'

'But we already did it.'

'So?'

'So I'm not making it weird, Ciara. It is fucking weird. You're weird.'

'I like to think in a good way,' she said.

'Look, I meant everything I said about you, but one other thing, you're fucking weird if you think it's just something that friends do.'

'So maybe we shouldna done it.'

'Maybe we shouldn't have.'

'Hm,' she said, and picked up a stray teaspoon and inspected it. 'Pity. We were good at it.'

'Ah, just fuck off,' I burst out, 'with all you're I'm-so-easygoing bullshit! Is there something wrong with you? What the fuck is wrong with you? Don't fucking lump me in with your...'

I stopped. She was staring at me.

'My what.'

'Nothing. Fuck off,' I said, and stomped out of the kitchen towards my bedroom.

'All the losers I give pity fucks to, right?' she said bitterly, to my departing back. 'That's what you meant, right?'

'Just fuck off,' I said, and slammed the door behind me.

I walked over to my bed and flopped onto it. Ciara opened the door.

'You coulda said no,' she said, in a hurt and angry voice. 'You coulda just have not done it. But you wanted to. Don't fuckin' blame me for what you wanted, Sandy.'

I didn't look at her, but I sensed her still standing there.

'Prick,' she spat, and she turned and slammed the door.

*

That night I texted Adrian.

Ciara was just too much, with her bizarre morals and her inability to have boundaries. At least it was easier with someone who made it clear that he thought that me being with him was a supreme privilege.

I apologised for being weird with him (we were all using the word 'weird' in lots of different ways at this point) and I made it clear that I was ready for anything he wanted to do. Or not. But to let me know what was going on.

Finally, a couple of nights later, he called me.

We had a long conversation, which started out cold, and then warmed up, as he told me how sorry he'd been about the party, he'd been selfish and he'd drunk too much, and he still wanted to see me. He told me how sexy he thought I was and how he was dying to get me naked and do things to me.

I asked him what, and we talked about what we'd do to each other.

And then he said, 'Come over.'

'Now?'

'Now.'

I quickly washed and dressed and almost ran to his place. He opened the door and started kissing me. We were pulling each other's clothes off on the way to the bedroom.

We fell on the bed and we were kissing. Our hands were all over each other. I had Adrian in my arms and I held him down on the bed and drank him in with my eyes. He smiled up at me. I leaned down and kissed him and we folded into each other.

We rolled on that bed, tasting the inside of each other's mouths and pulling on each other's cocks. His skin was so golden and so smooth; he had Mediterranean DNA on his mother's side. I was so pale by comparison.

He lowered himself down me and put my cock in his mouth, and even though I don't like blowjobs I thought I was going to really enjoy that one, just looking down at his head with his floppy bronze hair as he worked on me, but then, with perfect timing, he lifted his head and came up and smiled and rolled me over, and I gasped as he lubed up the crack of my ass, and then, putting his arms around me and kissing me and whispering to me about how gorgeous I was, he entered me, and was pushing inside me, and I was moaning in his arms with abandon because it was where I had longed to be for months.

And he had got me right where he wanted me, because within only a couple of minutes of him penetrating me, I was cumming helplessly from the pleasure of his cock inside my ass, but he still hadn't finished, so after I'd cum I still had to lie there and whimper as he came to his own climax, which gave me, besides my own orgasm, the piercing pleasure of being used by someone else. When he finally came inside me, I had got hard again, and almost had another one.

But then he was done, and I was panting and sweaty in his arms, and blissfully satisfied, and he was holding onto me, breathing heavily and coming down.

I fell asleep in his arms, happy and at peace. I put the whole situation with Ciara out of my mind.

At least one thing in my life was working as it should.

*

Ciara and I avoided each other for some days.

Then, late one afternoon, I was shopping on the way back to the flat when I got a series of texts from her.

The first one seemed like an order.

-Dont come back to the flat

I thought, this is it. She's had enough. She's kicking me out.

But then came the next one.

-sick as a dog

-norovirus from work

-waves of puke right now

-actually both ends going, i know tmi right

-Ill be fine but youll get it. If you could leave some k. towels outside flat door that be kind

-let you know when all clear

I stared at these for a moment.

Then I went around the supermarket, putting half the food in my basket back on the shelf, and bought tons of kitchen towel, and disinfectant and cleanser, and some disposable rubber gloves, and a packet of breath masks, and some fruit squash, and I went straight to the flat.

Outside the door, I put the mask on, and a pair of the gloves, and then I let myself in.

The flat smelled of puke. I have a pretty strong stomach, but all the same, it wasn't that great. I immediately opened some windows and the wind came in.

I walked through to the bathroom. The toilet bowl was not, as I'd feared, full of vomit but it was speckled with brown droplets. I sprayed it with cleanser and poured plenty of water down it.

Then I braced myself and headed for Ciara's room.

Sure enough, the smell was particularly bad in there. There were two bowls on the floor, and Ciara was an indistinct shape on the bed in a baggy t-shirt. The blinds were drawn.

'Ciara?' I said.

She rolled over.

'The fuck are you here?' she said weakly. 'Toldja to stay away.'

'You didn't think I would, did you?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, tough.'

She laughed weakly and then coughed. I braced myself. But she let out a belch.

'Oh god,' she sighed. 'I may actually die.'

'You won't die,' I said. 'I'll look after you.'

'Great. Then you'll get sick and I'll have to look after you.'

'I'm taking precautions.'

She fumbled for her glasses and put them on, and peered at me in my breath mask and rubber gloves.

'Oh.'

I came forward and looked down at the bowls.

'I'm just gonna empty these,' I said. 'Try to not need them for a couple of minutes.'

'Okay,' she said.

I managed to pick up one in each hand and took them to the bathroom, averting my eyes from the contents. I emptied them into the toilet, rinsed them in the flush, squirted some cleanser in, rinsed them again, then took them back to her room.

Ciara was sitting up in bed. I was pleased to see that she was more upright, but as soon as she saw me, she pointed to the bowl and snapped her fingers. I went over to her quickly and gave her the bowl, and she leaned over and threw up into it. Not much, at this point, because she'd clearly emptied her stomach. It took about four heaves to get it all up. Then she handed the bowl back and I put it on the floor and sat on the end of her bed.

'And then I'm fine for half an hour and then it comes back,' she murmured.

'It's always the way.'

We sat in silence for a moment.

'So,' she said, 'our conversation.'

'Yeah.'

'What are we gonna do.'

'What do you mean?'

'I assumed you would be looking for a new place.'

'Is that what you want?'

'What do you want?'

I looked at her, weak and pale and sweating, her lank hair hanging around her face.

I hadn't even thought about getting a new place. I hadn't even thought about what I would do after our fight. I had just dreaded confronting her again.

But none of that seemed to matter now.

'You're my friend,' I said. 'Maybe I can't handle being anything more than that.'

'I wasn't tryna make us anything more than that.'

'I know, but it seems to me like... us doing that, is more than just what... friends do. I can't help it. At the time it seemed like a good idea but afterwards, I couldn't handle it. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not as good at being friends as you are.'

Ciara looked glum.

'Or, maybe I'm the one who's shit at it,' she said. 'I mean, for talkin' you into doin' something you didn't wanna do. Because I was... greedy, or whatever.'

'And what, I'm weak.'

'Or I'm cute and you're a man.'

'Maybe,' I said, spreading my hands and shrugging. 'I don't fucking know, Ciara. Or maybe we're neither as grown-up as we thought.'

'Probly just that,' she said wearily. Then she gave a weak smile.