XXX

Oliver

I held Enrique tightly, not tired in the sense that I was falling asleep and yet exhausted from the act we had performed. It had been so much better than our first time, not that it had been bad… but it had been bad. It was awkward and uncomfortable in more ways than one on top of the fact that I had been terrified of him realizing I didn't know what I was doing.

"Are you awake?" I asked quietly.

"Yeah," He pulled me into him, attempting to kiss my lips before I pulled back. "What's the matter?" He asked.

"Other than the fact that I know where your mouth has been?"

"You didn't mind half an hour ago."

"No shit," I laughed, pulling myself upright and leaning into my knees. "You know…" I began admitting, "You were actually the first person to ever do that to me. Last time, I mean."

He turned onto his stomach, propping himself up and onto his elbows and lifting a brow at me.

"Seriously?"

"Is that bad?"

"No, just surprising. I thought you said you had experience."

I shrugged, pulling the duvet over my shoulders and looking away from him while twirling a loose piece of hair around my finger. I had known going in that I would eventually need to admit to lying, no longer understanding why I had done so in the first place. I mean, I knew why I had, but I didn't know why I'd thought I had to.

"I was mad at you," I explained, "I wanted to put you in your place."

"So you pretended to be a slut?"

I smirked slightly, shrugging my shoulders.

"I guess."

"Did I do a good job?"

"Could you not tell?"

"You came in my mouth."

"I was there, Enrique… I know what happened."

"So what else did you lie to me about?"

He emphasized the word with a cheeky laugh, sitting up all the way and wrapping his arms around me, the act causing a tingling sensation to fill my chest. I really wanted to figure out what this was. Was I infatuated with him, or was I in love with him?

Had I really never been in love before?

The sensation brought me back to being a teenager, pushing it down as deep as I could. I'd hidden it from everyone that was around me; worse yet, I'd hidden it from myself. I pretended the dreams I was having weren't about him, that I didn't stare at him from across the room at every chance I got by the time I was fourteen. I had only just begun accepting the idea that I was gay, unable to deny any longer that the conversations boys my age had about the girls in our class might as well have been in a foreign language. Excluding the six I was fluent in.

"I'm used to being good at things, you know? Sex was the one thing where you had significantly more experience than me; it was intimidating. I didn't want you to make fun of me."

"There are plenty of things that I'll make fun of you for." He smiled, "Being short, being French, being a nerd…" He made a dramatic point to count on his fingers while he spoke. "I'm not going to laugh at you for not being a slut, though."

"That's a rather rude word, don't you think?"

"I'm allowed to say it, I am one. Am I allowed to say fag now, by the way?"

"No."

"That's fair."

He wrapped his arms around me, blowing a raspberry into my neck and pushing me back down onto the bed. In all honesty, I had never really taken the time to question how he always managed to reel girls in when we were young. Enrique was conventionally attractive, particularly when he cleaned himself up. He was toned, broad shouldered, tanned while maintaining the perfect amount of freckles, and had a remarkable smile, but there was more to it than that. He was incredibly charming.

It brought me back to what my mother had said to me… Was I really easily influenced?

"I'm sorry for the way I reacted in the car," I sighed, "When you asked me about my ex, I mean. It's really not the age difference that bothers me, it's how quickly everything happened."

"What do you mean?"

"You remember my friend Celeste, right? She's in the orchestra with me."

"Sort of. I'm gonna be honest, that night wasn't exactly my best moment."

"She's always had a strong opinion that I was being taken advantage of, that the five year gap on top of the fact that I was still a teenager gave him too much superiority over me. I'd promised her that I would move slowly and she was disappointed after learning we'd slept together."

"I mean, we didn't exactly take our time before having sex, either," He smirked, running his fingers through my hair. "When I kissed you that night I thought you were going to slap me, not put your hand down my pants."

"Then I guess we've both seen one another in our not so finest moment." I sighed. "Romance sometimes feels like the one aspect of my life I lack control or understanding of. I never experimented, never figured out what I want in a romantic partner… Honestly, I'm not sure I could even see myself being in a consistent long term relationship. I like being in charge of my own life, it isn't something I want to have to negotiate on."

"If that's the case, then why not leave me in the dust? It's not like I don't deserve it."

I got up and out of the bed, grabbing a change of clothes from the dresser drawers, something comfortable that didn't require me to enter the walk in closet mid conversation. Did I smell of sex? Should I take a shower quickly?

"None of the men I've turned down within the past few years ever meant anything to me. I hardly knew them, there was nothing to grow attached to. You, though? You were the one I'd had a crush on by the time I was fourteen."

"I see," He smirked, "I'm just the one who got away."

"You left, remember?"

"I'm just saying that it's nice to know Mr. Too Good For Everyone has been head over heels for me for nearly ten years."

"I'm still not sure this is what I want, Enrique…" I sighed, causing the smile to leave his face. "I mean, can you really see us as something permanent? Do you see yourself living with me someday?"

"I guess I don't think that far ahead. Can't we just cross that bridge when we come to it?"

"Relationships have milestones."

"Oliver, we've only been in a relationship for a few days."

The truth was, the relationship itself didn't scare me. I had enough confidence in myself to know if something was becoming too much. My true fear was the attachment I felt toward him. In my previous relationship I had quickly hit the point of wanting to go back home after spending the night together. I had needed that space from him.

Why didn't I want Enrique to leave, too?

"I'm still new at this," I reminded him. "My last relationship was short lived; maybe part of that is because we never discussed those milestones."

"How long even was it?"

"Three months."

Once again, I appeared to catch him by surprise.

"That's it? I once had a girlfriend who never even hit the point of being ready to sleep together by then."

"I'm honestly surprised you lasted that long without breaking things off." I smiled, keeping my gaze down shyly.

"Hey, I'm not that big of a jerk."

"Hang on…" I raised an eyebrow, giving him a suspicious stare. "Was she of of the girls you cheated on?"

He blushed, running his fingers through his nest of untamed curls. He really needed to break the habit of playing with his hair, I couldn't imagine how fast it got greasy.

"I never claimed not to be a jerk at all."

"I know you did it more than once, though. Cheated, I mean."

There had been a point where he began struggling a lot in school, mind too occupied with anxiety after sleeping with one of his friends girlfriends while also not being single himself. If I recalled correctly, they'd plotted together, sending the entire school a picture of him, possibly a video, in a rather compromising position. I never asked him the details, he'd already been publicly humiliated on top of being exiled from his friends and as the person he was leaning on during the aftermath, I felt it better that I just not know. He'd called me almost every night for awhile, though, and I'd given him the answers to his algebra homework.

I remember thinking at the time how stupid he had been to even send someone anything like that, being too much of a late bloomer to fully understand the hormonal response of doing something stupid in the heat of the moment. Given, I had absolutely never sent a nude photograph. I couldn't imagine how strange it would feel to even take one, but I had gotten a virus bad enough to crash my computer entirely when I was a preteen trying to use the internet to learn how sex worked.

"I guess I don't fully know how to explain it," He said. "Maybe I just let popularity go to my head."

It wasn't a lie, I knew he was extremely popular when we were still in school, though we obviously didn't go to the same one. Even after losing most of his friends, it didn't stop his other classmates from wanting their places. Enrique was the person who got invited to parties with hard liquor and girls who put out. I myself hadn't succeeded as much in regards to being in that particular spotlight. My teachers loved me, girls wanted to be friends with me, but boys had been a different story. It was one of those things they don't warn you about when you begin at a prestige private academy. All of a sudden you aren't the only one with money and you realize how many of your old friends cared about that aspect of you more than who you were as a person. I wasn't unpopular, nor was I picked on outside of the occasional locker graffiti calling me a poof, but I wasn't who I'd hoped to be. I mean, I wasn't even out yet…

It made me feel even more like an outcast, the realization that I didn't fit in with societies social norms suddenly hitting me. After awhile I concluded that Enrique, Johnny and Robert were the only ones I had who I completely trusted. Our families all knew one another in some way or the other, such as Enrique's mother being my aunts roommate back in boarding school. If I remember correctly I believe Robert and Enrique were technically very distant cousins through marriage and I couldn't remember how any of us met Johnny. I had thought he was one of the servants kids when we were young.

There was no true explanation in regards to how it felt to have that trust broken in such a harsh way. I wasn't sure Robert or Johnny even fully understood how I was feeling, both confused that I hadn't been informed he had left; even more confused that I couldn't seem to get a hold of him. None of them knew I'd locked myself in my room that night and cried for the first time since I was twelve.

"Did your attraction to other men have anything to do with your promiscuity?" I asked.

"I don't know… I guess I never really thought about it. I mean, I liked being seen as someone who got around. Girls were interested in me; guys wanted to be me. I made a personality out of being a ladies man and I let it go too far but can you blame me? I was only a kid."

"How many were there?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't ask for an explanation. He knew what I meant.

I wanted to know his body count.

"Seventeen. Fourteen if you only count going all the way. Eighteen if you count yourself."

"How many men? Counting me."

"Five."

"Are you going to cheat on me someday?"

"Oliver…"

"It's a completely relevant question."

"I'm not sixteen anymore, I left that person behind a long time ago."

I wasn't sure how many girls he'd been with while we were teenagers, but based on his words and stories, he hadn't done anything with men until leaving, meaning that in the five years he was gone, he'd slept with at least four people. That wasn't too bad in itself, but there was no way it had only been men. If I were to double that number to make an average, it would put his body count while gone at a total of eight, which I think was closer to the amount of times that I'd had sex in total. On top of that, it left about nine girls he'd likely had relations with while still underage, some of which I knew the facts of, some of which would have been flings. He had even more experience than I'd originally believed, the kind I could never possibly compare to. I didn't even know how to perform oral sex on a man, let alone embarrass myself by having him be the first I attempted it with. Jean Pierre had pushed my head down there once without asking, causing me to tear myself away and start yelling at him. I'd felt incredibly disrespected and the whole incident had warded me off the thought of even trying. I'd been so angry at him.

"It's easy to forget how much has changed sometimes," I sighed. "There's still so much we don't know about each other."

"I won't hide my past from you. It's alright if you want to ask me any questions."

"I feel like I should be asking if you've ever been tested."

He laughed, finally getting out of my bed and grabbing his clothes from the floor. I didn't avert my eyes the way I normally would, taking the opportunity to look over his unclothed body while wondering if he knew how sexy he looked naked.

"Many times," He said with a shrug, stepping into his underwear and quickly dressing himself. "I'm clean."

"I suppose this is a silly conversation to be having after we've already slept together."

"I'm not the one who gave me an antique condom."

I sprayed cologne on myself before running a brush through my hair, which had become extremely tangled after being on my back the way I was. It was annoying having fine hair, one of the things that had affected my decision to cut it passed my shoulders for the first time in years.

The intercom in my room went off just as I finished sprucing up, startling Enrique enough to make me start laughing.

"Oliver, come down for dinner, mon cher."

Admittedly, my mothers voice did catch me a tad off guard, seeing as one of the chefs would normally inform us when a meal was ready. They might not have realized I was home yet.

"Come on," I smiled, putting my hand out for Enrique to take.

"I don't think I'm invited."

"I promise, no one has poisoned any of the food."

"There is no way you can promise that."

I stopped waiting for him, simply grabbing a hold of his hand and pulling him alongside me. Realistically, he should know by now that I didn't take no for an answer, at least not easily. With a turn of the key, I unlocked the elevator and pressed the button to get us downstairs, pulling him in with me while trying not to think about how much I had embarrassed myself in the one at the hotel. I actually felt a bit more confident now that we'd had sex as an official couple, like I'd at least made an attempt at waiting before letting him have me.

"You know that my mother means well," I said. "It wasn't easy for my parents to have children and they're protective of us. Your mother is the same way."

"There's no way you can make that comparison, you were a designer baby and I'm 80% sure I was an accident."

"The fact that I was an IVF baby does not automatically mean I was designer, this isn't Gattaca."

"True, they would have given you back."

"Hey!"

He switched his voice to an accent I should have, quite frankly, been offended by.

"Excuse moi, doc-teer, we were pro-mised perfeect baby, zis one is homosexual, itz defective."

We both began to giggle childishly, sounding the way we had as school children by the time the door opened up to the ground floor. My mother stopped what she was doing to watch us, keeping her eyes focused primarily on him. It would take time for her to develop that trust once again, similar to when Enrique first came back into my life. He was going to need to prove himself.

"Would it be okay if Enrique eats with us?" I asked, attempting to up the charm a little bit with a tilt of the head.

She looked at me over the rims of her glasses, causing a sudden nervousness to fill my insides. My mother only ever gave me that look when I was in trouble, but I hadn't done anything as of lately. She had said herself that if he made me happy then she would be there for me.

"Oliver Phillippe," She scolded quietly, becoming slightly flushed in the face. "Go put a scarf on, please."

Enrique looked my direction, suddenly covering his face as best he could and turning a deep shade of red, causing me even more confusion.

"I'm sorry, what?"

He elbowed me gently, using his eyes to point me the direction of the decorative mirror that hung on the wall near me. Just above my collar bone was a large hickey, not dark enough in color to be noticeable at first glance, but definitely containing the defined features of several of Enrique's teeth as he was clamping down on my neck while doing absolutely vile things to me.

Quickly, I covered it with my hand, pardoning myself before rushing back upstairs and leaving Enrique alone, if only momentarily.

He would be fine.