Sorry for the delay I started a new job after 8 months maternity leave so it's been a bit of a strange couple of weeks.

This is basically just fluff – with a bit of smut cause well, it is Stendan after all. It's very cannon and basically an excuse for me to have to watch the Dublin episodes again!

Thanks for all your lovely reviews. They really make my day

This will be the last chapter.

Hugs x

Chapter 7

I wake up with a weight above me and a warm wetness moving up the inside of my thigh. I think I must be dreaming, you know when you're in the stage between being asleep and being awake? But then I feel his mouth close over my dick and honestly this is the best wakeup call ever. I slide my hand under the covers and thread my fingers in his hair as he quickens his pace and rolls his tongue around my head. I cum embarrassingly quickly, it's too early in the morning to summon up any self-control. He crawls up the bed with a smile on his face and gently kisses me saying good morning as he pulls away.

"So what are we gonna do today?" I ask him as he kisses my neck just over my pulse. I don't care what we do, I would be quite happy doing this all day.

"Well, I'm gonna show you the sights, my sights" he says lifting his head to look into my eyes.

My breathe hitches in my throat, his eyes look so blue, he's gorgeous and all I can say is "sounds promising".

He keeps staring at me and says, "doesn't it…..anything you wanna see" and he kisses me, just a little one, "or try" another kiss, a little bit longer this time, "I'm your man, whatever the pleasure" he then leans back down and kisses me again, a proper full on kiss. He starts to deepen it and I can tell where this is heading but I pull away from him and say "Guinness" he looks at me like I'm winding him up and repeats "Guinness?" I nod then lean up to restart the kiss.

Needless to say it takes a while before we are ready to leave the hotel.

He takes me to a pub called Grogan's and I get us a table outside while he goes in to get us drinks. I know I'm sitting here with a stupid grin on my face. It's like everything that happened yesterday just doesn't matter. He came after me. I really wanted to tell him that I loved him last night, well this morning too, but I just can't seem to get the words out, I just feel like I don't want to jeopardise what we have and if I say that before he's ready I'll scare him off. If yesterday taught me anything it's that I can't loose him.

He walks over to the table and sits a pint in front of me. I look at it as if it's got teeth and is going to bite me, I know this was my idea but now it's in front of me I'm not so sure. I pick it up and take two sips as Brendan says, "So what now, kidnap some leprechauns, buy ourselves a shamrock hat, what?" I swallow the Guinness and screw my face up a bit at the taste saying, "alright, I'm a tourist, its rank that" nodding towards the glass. He laughs a bit and tells me it's an acquired taste. We then start to talk about when he lived here and I can help but ask loads of questions, well I've always been a bit gobby. He lifts my glass and pours the rest of my drink into a plant pot and gets up to walk away. I ask what he's doing and I follow him and he tells me he's going to show me where he grew up. I'm beginning to realise I'd follow him anywhere.

We walk around the city centre and then down to the water. We sit on the edge and stare out to sea. It's peaceful here.

"Who was it?" I ask.

He looks at me like he has no idea what I'm talking about, so I continue.

"You said in the hotel that you were made to feel weak, who made you feel like that?" I have to ask cause I know Cheryl, and for all she's a bit full on sometimes, she's really open minded.

He stares out at sea and looks like he's fighting some sort of battle in his head. The he turns to look at me and mutters, "My da".

He stands up and reaches out to pull me up with him, then we walk back towards town. He doesn't talk the whole way.

We'd walked for ages and I could feel how distant Brendan was. I really should learn to keep my mouth closed, I mean, up until I asked him that question we'd been having a great day and me and my big mouth had to go and ruin it. He suddenly stops walking and I was so lost in thought that I almost walked into the back of him. He looks at me and says, "Last stop Steven…..my da's pub, come on" and he crosses the road.

I look up and we are walking towards an old building that looks abandoned. I follow Brendan through the doors and down a set of stairs.

The whole place is covered in cobwebs and I get a horrible feeling, like chills running down my spine. He stands staring at the bar. I feel really uncomfortable here and I ask if we can go yet.

That's when he starts talking. And part of me really wishes he hadn't. It makes me feel sick.

He tells me how his dad used to hit him, but when he'd given him a job here he thought he'd finally been accepted by him. One day he stole a whiskey but his dad caught him and made fun of him to his mates. His dad then made him drink loads of shots to prove he was a man. Brendan had to run to the bathroom to be sick. His dad had called him Brenda and kept repeating it over and over again like a mantra.

I don't know how to break him out of this trance that he seems to be in. So I tell him it doesn't matter anymore, that it's the past and it's just dust now. He looks at me like he wants to believe it but I can tell he isn't quite there yet. So I pick up an empty bottle that was lying on one of the tables and throw it against the wall. Brendan smiles at me, like a real smile. Like what I just did made complete sense to him. He picks up a bar stool, looks at me and nods. He hits it off of a table then throws it against the wall. We both start picking up whatever is closest to us and just throwing it. Like by trashing the pub we are exorcizing all his demons. He turns at watches as I smash yet another bottle against the wall and I can't help but laugh. Then he grabs me and kisses me like his life depends on it. It rough and passionate and I guess the raw emotion of what we've just done is running through us both as we start tearing each other's clothes off.

Afterwards we are lying amongst the debris on the floor. My head is tucked under his chin as he draws circles on my back with his fingers. I look up at him and he leans down to kiss me. We both go to speak at the same time but I stop myself and let him continue.

He smiles at me and says, "thank you Steven". I smile back at him and lean up to give him a chaste kiss and tell him he has nothing to thank me for. I cuddle back into him cause I'm really not ready to move yet and I don't think my legs would work even if I tried to.

After a few seconds he remembers that I had been going to say something. He tries to get me to tell him but I keep refusing because the moment has past now and I'm back to thinking about the silence that would follow if I told him I love him. He reluctantly lets it go as I force myself to stand up and get dressed. My stomach rumbles and I realise that we haven't eaten all day.

We end up in a little bistro type café, nothing too pretentious though and it's back to being easy again. The conversation just flows and the dark mood that he was in earlier has disappeared. We finish off with dessert, I have chocolate mousse and he has crème brulee because he says anything that is made with a blow torch is awesome. And of course he has a whiskey.

After dinner we walk back to the hotel. It feels really romantic. This is how I dreamt our trip to Ireland would be, not me punching his ex and storming off or him be weighed down by his dick of a dad. I'm so lost in thought that it takes me a few seconds to realise that he's not walking beside me anymore. I turn to find him and I notice that we are standing on the bridge that he found me on last night. It's only now that I realise that the bridge is covered in padlocks, which is pretty weird, I mean I've walked over loads of bridges and none have had that. I move over to the railing and hold one of the padlocks in my hand. It's got names written on it.

"They're called love locks" he says, "if you love somebody you write both your names on a padlock and throw the key into the river".

I feel a pang of jealousy rise up in my stomach as I ask if he's ever done one before. My mind floats back to Macca, God I hate him.

Brendan gives me a shy smile and says, "No, Eileen wanted one but I kept putting her off, I mean, I may have been firmly in my closet but I knew it wasn't proper love". He walks towards me, so close that his chest brushes against mine and he gently rubs his thumb over my cheek.

"You wanna do one?"

For a moment I don't know which one of us said that, I mean, I've been wanting to tell him that I love him for weeks but it wasn't me who spoke. He starts to fidget and I realise I've kinda left him hanging.

"Is that your round about way of telling me that you love me?" I ask because I can't believe this is happening.

He pulls me towards him and circles his arms round my waist and says "that depends on whether you want one or not?"

I can't help the smile that practically takes over my face and I pull his face towards me and into a brutal kiss. It's usually him who kisses the air from my lungs but it's totally me that's in control of this one. I pull away from him just far enough so that I can talk and I tell him that I love him too. We kiss again and he pulls his arms tighter around me so there is no space between us. I subconsciously roll my hips forward so our groins rub together; my body is just desperate for some friction because I am achingly hard. He pulls away from me with a smile and says, "Come on" and we practically run back to the hotel.

We are barely through the door when I pounce on him. He supports my weight with ease as I wrap my legs around his waist and continue to kiss him. He spins us and throws me onto the bed then climbs up the bed till he's straddling me. He pulls his black jumper over his head as I struggle out of my t-shirt. God this has only just started and I'm already shaky and uncoordinated. He leans down and licks a stripe up from my belly button to my left nipple. He licks and sucks at it then kisses just where my heart is. I hear him tell me that he loves me and it's the first time he's actually said those words to me and my breathe hitches in my throat. He continues to kiss upwards till he's lightly sucking my neck and behind my ear. He tells me he loves me again and I can't help the giggle that escapes my mouth, I don't think I'll ever tire of hear him say that. He tilts his head to the side and says "problem Steven?" I just smile at him and pull him down for another kiss mumbling that he's obviously gone soft on me. He barks out a laugh and tells me he'll prove he's not soft, as he rolls his hips forward rubbing his very prominent erection against my own. My head rolls backwards and a sigh falls from my mouth and as he works his way back down my body I tell him that I love him too.

What follows is not our usual sex. Don't get me wrong, sex is never predictable with us but this is just different. It's slower and like we are really just taking our time with each other. The soppy romantic part of me thinks this is what making love is like.

I wake up in the morning with Brendan's whole body practically wrapped around me. I kiss along his arms cause it's the only bit of him my mouth can reach. He stretches out as he wakes up the rolls back over and gives me a kiss then says "good morning Steven".

The phone begins to ring and Brendan stretches over to answer it and I am mesmerised by the way his muscles work as he moves. He gets off the phone and says that it was Cheryl just checking if we were up and ready.

He looks at me and says "hey, time to go home". I nod and he takes my hand to pull me out the bed and we get ready to go back to Hollyoaks.

Please, please, please review.

Thank you so much to all the lovely people who have followed and favorited this story and especially to everyone who reviews, your thoughts really do inspire me.