The room is electric, the energy and light swirling and circling like magic, painting the air around and between us.
He's gasping for his life, still. I watch, in awe and wonder. I knew his first orgasm after a year without would be a record-buster, I just somehow didn't expect it to look like this ... nor, of course, to be here when it happened.
I move to pull him to the bed but he stumbles a moment, feet caught up in his trousers. He steps out of them, stumbles a bit more, and falls backward onto the blanket.
Those giant blue eyes bulge outward. Other than the gulping down of big chunks of air, he's quiet.
God. I can't get my head around it. Any of it. How can you feel it so intensely, it hurts ? Love, of the type, it's clear to me now, I've never previously known ... not even close. There is something about having brought him across this sexual threshold that has magnified everything I've felt to date, so that I'm almost sick with my feelings for him; desperate for his happiness and well being, while at the same time, experiencing the fiercest sense of possessiveness/protectiveness ...
Again, it was reasonable to expect that such a long awaited climax would be a life-changing event for him ... but for me ?
How to process it ? Tell me which is more incredible: That he's come at all, let alone like an absolute madman; that I played a central role, or ... that we've each admitted we're in love ?
He speaks finally, slowly, with some effort, voice breathy and rough.
"I just ... I just ... never fucking knew."
God. Nothing else need be said, really. All along, I've secretly wanted this, for his 'first time' to genuinely feel like a first time. In other words, I didn't want it to result in the dam bursting on all of his buried sexual memories, even if it meant an intensifying, in the moment, of his pleasure.
Because. I've been afraid if that happened, it would prove the final invitation for the return of the old Tony, and, right or wrong ... I didn't want that. I wanted the boy I've fallen in love with, all to myself, even if he didn't love me back. As it stands, however ...
I smile, euphoric, and roll to my side to face him. His breath is calming. His body, still flushed and damp, finally stilling.
He turns his head.
"I just had no idea."
I beam, flooded with love and warmth.
"So ... it didn't, like, make you remember, then ... before, I mean ?"
"Before ?" He says, squinting softly and, god ... wow ... reaching for my hand ... only to flatten me with this:
"There's no before, Max. Everything starts here."
Such romantic bollocks the old Tony would never have tolerated, I'm sure, had it crept into his brain at all. For me, gag-inducing as even I, the New Tony might normally find such pronouncements, at the moment, feeling as impossibly and disgustingly happy and alive and free as I do ... they prove impossible not to say, for instance:
"Let's get married."
He busts out laughing, at this, his face like a million watt bulb. God, I swear I've never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
"It was that good ?" he teases.
Okay, I was kidding, ... but not by much. The newly awakened synapses in my brain are firing off at a breakneck pace, bouncing into one another and flooding me with several very intense emotions and revelations at once, so that I'm all but mesmerized by, for example, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his eye sockets, the straw-yellow in his hair, the shape and form of his shoulders ... all as I'm hit with a sense of panic at how short life is and that, maybe to an outsider, it might appear, ironically, that I'd lost a year ... when in reality, like the orgasm I just experienced, what I've gained is so fucking good, it's immeasurable.
For too long, those giant blue eyes blink dumbly in response ... exactly as they did in the early days after he awoke from the coma, and I sit up on my elbow in a semi-panic.
"Tone, what is it ? Are you okay ?"
In response, his eyes twinkle and his face spreads slowly into a huge, broad, exceptionally handsome grin.
Jesus christ if my heart doesn't skip several beats ...
"Ya ... very okay." He laughs shyly. "Speechless."
Phew.
"Okay, well shit. Don't scare me like that. Between the rides today and then ... all this ... I mean, I'm honestly a bit worried over your brain."
He turns on his side to face me, and interlaces his fingers with mine. God, what an incredibly lovely thing !
"You don't need to worry, Max. Never felt better in my life."
And so here we lay, gazing at each other, basking in the love-glow, the energy between us so intense it's like a sustained lightning bolt. It's all I can do to not melt into a pile of goo, or grab his face and french him to within an inch of his life. Or both.
"Well," I grin, and whisper. "If coming like that didn't cure the brain bleed, I guess nothing will."
In response to which, without warning, he blurts:
"I love you."
God, it just ... slipped out. Couldn't not be said.
Scary, this New Tony business.
But what can I do ? In a little under thirty minutes, my entire world has undergone a seismic shift, to a degree which dwarfs even the truly life-altering entirety of the last year. And I guess after all the stress of spilling my guts in the first place, I don't fucking want him doubting it, chalking it up to the bloody brain issues or horniness-fueled desperation. In other words, all the things for all those months I kept trying to blame it on, myself.
Also, saying it out loud gives me a genuine bloody rush.
My heart catapults inside my chest.
God. It's so obvious, isn't it ? That he actually means it.
Fuck, how could it be ? Is this really Tony ? Telling me to my face that he loves me ? These things don't happen in real life, do they ? Dreams ? Or rather, I correct myself, not even dreams, things that were so never going to happen in your lifetime, not ever, that you didn't bother even to fantasize ... and now here they are staring you in the face, holding tight to your hand, looking so beautiful you can't fucking breathe.
I'm so emotional, so dumbfounded by it all, it's my turn to be speechless.
He leans forward a brief second, with mock concern, eyebrow cocked.
"Max ? Y'okay ? Brain bleed ?"
He laughs out loud, finally.
"No ... with all that's happened today, I mean ... I guess I'm in shock."
I nod.
"Me, too. Feels good, though."
Really good. Emotionally, I'm over the moon – absolutely beyond the pale. Physically ... my body aches so badly, already, for what it's had, it's unbearable. Like I've been marked, branded, by orgasm.
I reach for him, beyond any ability to stop myself.
God. Fuck. He sinks a hand deep into my hair. We kiss, full bodied, and it's rough and messy. Without hesitation, he rolls on top, straddling my hips and then just ... looks down at me, the helpless urgency, the need, so evident in his eyes.
I pull his face to mine and take his cock, already firm and weighty, in hand. Immediately, he's thrusting himself into it ... possessed, transfixed ... like he must get this out ... and then, before long, as I watch, his face, just inches from mine, sparks ... eyes burst open and roll straight back into his skull ... and he calls out, whole being trembling as the powerful quakes rock his body.
He falls, gasping, to my neck.
I slide both arms round and cradle his head.
For a minute, it's so comfortable, and I'm so physically and like, metaphysically spent, absolutely on some otherworldly plane, that I fall asleep, somehow managing not to crush him.
"Sorry," I roll off, embarrassed, very aware as I do that ... wow ... inside these khakis he's still wearing ... is something quite hard.
"Don't you dare apologize," he says, giddy, babbling away, stretching for tissues from the box by the bed, and turning to wipe the splatter from his chest, and mine. "That was absolutely incredible. You have no idea. God, if you could've seen your face."
I lay on my side, through the foggy haze of just after, processing maybe every other word, waiting, watching him fuss, watching his lips move, wondering how long he's planning to go before answering his own needs, before even thinking of them ... and it's strikes me that it's just so perfectly Maxxie.
The old Tony was a selfish bastard, undoubtedly in the sack, as well as otherwise.
Bottom line, I don't intend to follow in his footsteps.
He stops fussing finally, and rolls onto his side to face me.
"Y'okay ?" he asks.
He doesn't answer. Next I know, he's pressing me gently back, leaning on one elbow and running a soft hand down my chest, whispering"You're absolutely fucking amazing, you know that ?" ... and silently seeking permission to go further.
Fuck. Shit. I'm panicked, my brain bombarded with images of him grimacing and grabbing his gut as I go on and on about cock, cringing over all those times when, as a running joke, I repeatedly paused the worst, nastiest scenes from my porn collection, and then called him into the room. "Cock", he would tell me afterwards, "absolutely disgusting, vile, putrid."
I speak. My voice jittery.
"It's okay, Tone. Really. I'm fine. You don't need to, I swear."
He ignores me, and fingers my belt buckle.
God. Fuck. What do to ? Make him stop ? Otherwise, won't the mere sight of it ruin everything ? Instantly flush any gay tendencies from his brain ? Perhaps prove the final reminder that he really is straight ?
"Tone-"
I'm fully prepared for it, if need be; I am: a lifetime of no-recipro sex. Honest. Blowing and wanking Tony to my heart's content, and then sneaking off for a private solo masturbatory session, afterwards, in the loo ? Yes. I can't think of a single gay boy I know who would turn down such an arrangement.
He's ignoring me, though, belt completely unbuckled, now. Wait ! Stop !
"Tony !"
"-Shut the fuck UP, arsehole."
Okay, it's a bit unnerving, I admit, or actually ... sorta terrifying. Of course it is, popping open the buttons to your friend's trousers, as he watches, neither of you really knowing what your reaction's going to be ... and Maxxie's clearly freaked, which isn't helping matters.
Is it ego, or love, or maybe a bit of both, that I don't want his chief memory of this historic day to be that at the scariest moment of all, Tony, despite going so far as to profess his love, and to allow himself to be lovingly wanked and blown, ultimately chose to reject you and run for the bloody hills.
Yes, okay, in truth, a part of me wishes I had an out, because, I mean, this really is scary.
But.
If there's anything I'm determined to take along with me into the New Tony, it's the Old Bastard's fearlessness, or as Maxxie sometimes put it, his legendary balls.
Besides. I am exceedingly curious.
However, as it turns out ... it isn't so much me reaching in, as it reaching out, springing up high from behind the material with a big, friendly hello.
NOTE: The author sincerely requests your feedback and/or a review, else she may die of a broken heart.
PS: chapter 14 is in the works ...