From this Day On
Ivo had returned to England after the incident in Alaska.
Alaska. One mistake after another. He had left Tim alone for 10 days. Such immaturity knows no patience. Tim had cheated – again – and Ivo had lost control of himself - again. Something about the isolation, the savage beauty around them, the distance from their familiar, comfortable university world had crystallized their causes and effects, turned them deadly.
It had certainly felt to Tim that Ivo was in control, as usual. And as usual Tim just had to provoke him. Damnable boy! Tim had refused any intimacy with Ivo after they boarded the ship. I took what was mine to take, that's all. As far as Tim was concerned, Ivo had raped him. Tim had withheld affection, tried to hurt Ivo the only way in his power, and he had been hurt in return.
That was the day before Tim left him for dead on a barren rock in the Gulf of Alaska.
But Ivo hadn't died. In fact, he had only been inconvenienced thanks to the frequency of tourist expeditions to the island. But guilt-ridden Tim the murderer didn't know that. Ivo had raged at himself, raged at his own sister's betrayal, but somehow not at Tim. All's fair in love. He would not make it war. Ivo reentered his life at the university in England, but never contacted Tim. He was still obsessed with the youth, discreetly stalking him, leaving the occasional trace of himself to unnerve the frightened young man who had fled from the accusing world to hide in a tiny English beach town.
Ivo goes to the front door of Tim's family home. Tim now lives there alone, sober, rattling around in the big house with his indolence and his guilt, drinking endless cups of tea, chain smoking. He hasn't worked on his novel in months.
Just like that most memorable New Year's Eve, Tim sulkily answers the door. He sees a ghost made flesh - the person he most wants, but is afraid to want.
Ivo is alive?
Ivo has never been a talker. He enters without waiting for an invitation. He approaches Tim, predatory as always, yet there is something held in reserve, a caution that is new.
Incredulous, confusion incapacitates Tim, though through body language alone, he intuits Ivo means him no physical harm. Ivo's presence is a tense blade that starts at his throat, dragging its threat across his chest to his groin. Absent is the old pull, the lust that magnetized them, the inexorable control Ivo held over him. Tim is grateful for that as he peers through wary eyes from behind his heart's walls.
But this is Ivo. My lover. Does that status change when you try to kill your lover? But he hadn't tried to kill Ivo, it was an accident. Tim pushed. Ivo fell. Tim ran. And left him - at the ends of the earth, no less.
Tim might as well be speaking aloud, for the expressions on his face are a clear narrative to the older man, a betrayal of every confusion and condemnation. Ivo's expressions answer each of Tim's eloquently, but most strangely, compassionately. Tim can see Ivo still wants him, after all that has happened, but will deny himself, too proud to claim the boy that is his and always will be. Tim closes his eyes, not the coquettish flutter of manipulation, but the shameful retreat of the self-despised.
He is close. Tim breathes in Ivo's tobacco-laced breath. He swallows in response to the warm current that glides across his Adam's apple. Oh Dear God! He feels lips at his throat. The lips he has missed, the ones he killed, the ones he doesn't deserve.
Ivo is alive.
Tim opens his eyes to aching sadness in the other's. And it is in that sadness, that Tim breaks. He shudders as the sobs come in waves. The surf outside callously echoes the rush of forces ebbing in and out of him now. The tide is rising, and Tim knows he will drown.
Ivo holds him, tightly, so tightly. Painful, but not as painful as the sorrow.
When Tim can finally breathe, the mouth, the taste, the warmth he doesn't deserve is Ivo's lips and tongue on his. It is not the possessive hunger he used to crave. It is caring, knowledge, real intimacy - maybe for the first time in Tim's life. Tim has always scorned love; he has never experienced it. Or is this just the first time he can recognize it?
Ivo's familiar strength gently supports him as they go upstairs.
….
Tim awakens alone. Afternoon light. Sound of water in the bathroom. He sits up, pulls the covers onto his chest. He lights a cigarette, runs his hand along his prominent ribs. He's lost too much weight in the past months. He leans his head back against the headboard, orienting himself. He opens his eyes to Ivo's clothes folded on the foot of the bed.
Ivo enters, towel around his waist, a humid sheen on him like the slickness of sex. He stands beside the bed.
Tim playfully reaches for the towel, but Ivo moves his hip just enough so Tim misses. Tim puts on the calculated pout Ivo remembers so well.
"Take it off." Tim's exhalation of smoke reaches out to connect him with the object of desire.
Ivo makes eye contact. It is Tim who cannot maintain it. That look on Ivo's face – loathing? He moves to pick up his slacks and underwear, not releasing Tim from his gaze.
Tim softly moans, petulant, his demand denied.
Ivo turns his back, dropping the towel to put on his pants. Tim considers the taut, bare backside before it disappears into the fabric, squinting with one eye as the smoke from the shortened cigarette stings him.
"Are you really able to forgive me?"
Pause.
"Yes."
Tim grimaces at the last drag on his tarry fag, then puts it out in the ashtray.
"I forgive you too then."
"Really," Ivo says dryly.
"You don't hate me?"
Ivo glances at the boy, revealing tears unshed.
"No," he whispers.
Ivo picks up a brown pullover, puts it on perfunctorily. Tim is enjoying the reverse strip, though Ivo clearly isn't in the mood for teasing.
"Do you love me, then?" Saucily.
Ivo turns. His expression hard, the wet ice of his eyes gone a shade colder. Tim blushes.
"I'm sorry," Tim whispers diffidently. Of all the things he should say, why did he choose that?
"Are you?" murmurs Ivo, barely audible - the imagined echo of a deafening thought.
There is a shimmering thread of menace connecting them like the most delicate spider's strand.
"I've been bloody tortured by guilt, you know. I saw you everywhere, in everyone."
Ivo's eyes remain hard. He has always hated Tim's flippancy, his crutch of shallowness.
"Do you want me put in jail?"
Ivo's expression relents just a little. "No."
"What DO you want, then?"
"I want you to let go of the guilt."
Tim's brow furrows. "I have."
"You most definitely have not."
Ivo, now fully dressed except for his belt and shoes, reaches for the edge of the blanket Tim clasps to his chest. He pulls; Tim pulls back. Stalemate.
"I see. I'm to be your sex slave." Tim smirks, attempting sultry. "Is this my punishment?"
Ivo firmly pulls the blanket off the boy, tossing it to the floor. "Turn over."
"Turn me over yourself. You don't need my permission. You've proved that, haven't you?" Bile stings, but this bitterness finally feels honest.
Ivo takes Tim's bicep roughly in his hand, but does not force him further.
Tim does not see desire in Ivo's face. He sees pity, determination, and Ivo's own guilt.
"Why don't you just beat me up? Will that make you feel better?" Tim takes no satisfaction in the taunting. The fear that was temporarily suppressed bubbles into his chest.
Ivo closes his eyes, perhaps considering how very good it would feel for fist to meet flesh right now.
"Turn."
Surprisingly, Tim complies, looking over his shoulder, down the length of his own body and up at Ivo's impassive face.
Ivo picks up his belt from the bed, fingers it.
"Is that what you need?" Tim says resentfully.
"It's what you need." Ivo's voice caresses him.
Tim's mouth opens to protest, but his voice fails. The sinews in his back ripple with the warring undercurrents of emotions as he finally he reaches up to wrap his fingers around the bars of the headboard, and lowers his head silently.
Ivo's hands are shaking as he holds the leather. Adrenaline, no. Grief, yes. He loves this boy. This infuriating, irresistible, lethal boy.
He is a man used to accomplishing difficult things, who doesn't back down, who finishes what he starts, who gets what he wants.