We promised them that we'd not get used to it. Breakfast in bed, that is. Although I must say that it's not something I really enjoy. It's too uncomfortable to eat, and just feels too lazy, even for me. But as a thank you for something special it's one of the greatest compliments someone who loves you can pay. It's the thought rather than the action.
We ate in silence, more or less, trying not to spill anything on the duvet — not easy when you're dealing with runny egg yolk. When we'd done I noticed he'd got some on his chin, so I told him.
And a very long tongue extended out from the mouth, downwards and licked it off. I must have looked surprised.
"No wonder you do such a lot for me, with a tongue like that!"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing. It's just long."
"Show's I'm going to be well endowed, I expect, like having big feet."
"I shall look forward to it. But not too big, I hope. I want to be able to lift it with one hand."
"Or a mouth?"
"Especially a mouth," I affirmed, my heart giving a leap at the thought.
Five minutes or so later they started the engine, but we were too busy to notice. Half an hour or so later we were both exhausted again, and rather wet in certain places, even if we'd done our best with each other. He gave a short laugh. "I've never had sweet after breakfast."
"Mmmm. Can we do it more often?"
"I'd like that."
We found ourselves on deck just about in time to avoid getting unpopular despite our having looked after the boat for two days. Knowle's wide locks were looming up, and I knew from experience they're heavy and slow and tiring. There may be only five, but they let you know they're there. Locks with attitude, you might say.
On and on we chugged, taking turns at the helm. We passed Kingswood Junction where we'd turned off to the Stratford Canal, Shrewley tunnel which now seemed so short after Kings Norton that we hardly noticed it.
At the top of Hatton flight we stopped. "Pub," said James gleefully. But we didn't go in, we worked our way back down those locks, snatching bites of sandwich as we went and drinking gallons of tea as we sweated over the first fifteen of the twenty one heavy, wide locks. We did stop after them though, with 'just' another six locks to the end of the flight, and were on our way up to the pub when Dad said "Blast."
Peter looked at him.
"Bloody English licensing laws. They're shut."
We needed that pint, too.
So we struggled down the remaining six locks, under the noisy A46 until we got to the Cape of Good Hope.
"It feels like we've just rounded the Horn, not the Cape," said my father wearily. It can't be long before they're open, surely?"
"No, Dad," I said. "Another half an hour. We could fill up with water here, and get rid of some more rubbish. That'll while away the time for you."
"Thank God," he said. "My son's looking after his poor old father."
We set the water running and then just lolled about the boat, relaxing for one of the first times that hot September day. After a while there were sounds of cars arriving from outside, and Dad looked hopefully at Peter and me. "Pub?" he asked.
I looked out of the window. "Door's open."
"Last one in buys the round."
I scrambled to my feet and automatically looked for James. But he was already on his feet and moving. We jostled at the door of the boat, each trying to get there first. The others were making impatient noises behind us as we jammed in the exit. A hand came down onto the front of my trousers, groped, found its target and squeezed. I gasped and buckled, and he got through first.
I nearly fell in the water jumping off the boat. He just got to the pub door first, then skidded to a halt.
"Hah!" I said. "You can't buy."
"I know, I know. Just get in there will you?"
"What makes you think…oh well."
There were too many parents too close to continue with what I'd been going to say.
Those two pints were a life saver. The fact that the water hose was overflowing and slowly filling up the bilges had escaped us. Fortunately we weren't too long, and found what was happening well before there was any danger. The bilge pump kept going for a long time, though.
We cooked and ate, and returned to the pub again to spend a pleasant evening on the bar billiards table. Bed time for all of us was quite early. Our parents were still tired after their mental exercise in Birmingham and their physical exercise of the day, and James and I were just tired. To be honest, I wasn't too bad, but he said he wanted to go to bed and there was no way he was going without me.
Do I describe again what went on between us? It was more or less the same as the previous night, and repetition is boring.
Unless you're physically there.
In that case it's as far from boring as you can get. It's calming and exciting. It's restful and exhausting. It's fulfilling and frustrating. It's everything you want but not enough. It's love. What it isn't, is dirty, like adults had always told me sex was. And particularly, it was hinted, it was dirty between two people of the same sex.
Why?
How can anything so wondrous, so fulfilling, so much what each of us wanted, be dirty? If we're talking physical dirt, then sex between married couples must be dirty as well. It's nonsense when you think about it. And therefore I'll say that between us everything was as clean as we wanted. And when finally we had stopped and were lying there in our embrace, and our skin was sticky with the fluids of love and exertion we neither of us wanted to move, no matter how uncomfortable it was becoming. But move we had to, for the male bladder is a slave driver. And just as naturally we went together, unashamed, and relived ourselves and cleaned off the discomfort. Then we returned to our bed and our embrace, and slept until the light of a late morning percolated into our dreams of togetherness and delight.
We were rather quiet that morning. It had hit us all hard that it was the last full day of the holiday and we'd then go our separate ways. Except for Dad and Peter who, it looked increasingly likely, would be involved together in their new venture. How I was going to arrange it that James could come and visit me on a regular basis, I had no idea. Surely the parents would start to ask awkward questions? I knew Peter and Doreen well now, and liked them enough to call them friends. But I knew that if either of them realised that there was something between their son and me that was more than just friendship they would call me a molester or worse, and that would rebound on James. I thought at the time that I couldn't trust even his parents not to treat him the same as Mark's parents had treated him. I assumed still that the 'therapy' Mark had been given was standard treatment.
As the day wore on I grew quieter and quieter, until at last James beckoned me into our cabin with a nod of his head.
"Out with it."
I looked at him.
"What've I done wrong?" he asked.
I shook my head. "Nothing. It's just that…it's the last day. This week has been…" I stopped, and gulped to try and clear the lump that threatened to stop up my throat. "…the best week of my life." I looked down at the floor.
He came to me and put his arms round me.
"Me too," he said.
And there we stopped, until gradually I felt a bit better. I explained to him what was going through my mind.
"Don't worry about me," he said. "If they get to know about me or about us and start me on anything like that, the first thing I'll do is get on a train and come knocking at your door. I'm sure they wouldn't, anyway."
I looked at him, a spark in my eyes at the thought.
"I know we'll have to be careful," he went on, "but we'll find a way. You'll have to find something near you that I'm interested in."
"What?"
"Apart from yourself, that is. You know, trains or something. Or canals. Or naturist camps."
At that I had to laugh. "The idea of me inviting you to a naturist camp is going to please Peter and Doreen? Yeah! And in October, too. If you want to freeze your nuts off, count me out!"
"Ah, but at least it'd be nice to have you get them warm again."
Well, if that wasn't an invitation for me to put my hand down his shorts to cradle the delicate not-so-little things, I don't know what was. Inside his underpants I could feel that his penis was reacting, and pushing anxiously against my arm as it struggled to stand upright. And in my own underwear mine too was straining against the material.
"We daren't," I said, as I kissed him and put my free hand round him.
"Just a bit longer," he whispered, as his hand undid my zip and traced around my excited shaft.
"You're wet," he said after five minutes.
"You too."
And before I could stop him he was on his knees in front of me, had eased my pants down, and had his tongue licking softly, warmly, at the exposed, wet glans. His hand pushed against the base of my erection and squeezed it up toward the tip, bringing out another drop or so of liquid. He lapped it eagerly off the end, then pulled my foreskin back over the head and pulled up my pants, then my zip.
"There," he said quietly. "Better now?"
I nodded, although at that moment I would have wanted nothing better than to strip all his clothes off — and mine too — and have his eager mouth around me still, and in the same way pleasure him for as long as he could accept it before the inevitable glorious conclusion.
How either of us could go outside the cabin with bulges in the front of our shorts as big as they were, I don't know. I went to the toilet and after a struggle managed to pee. The stream was so hard from the narrowed passage in my penis, and so high from the level of my erection which I was forcing downward to the toilet that it must have been in danger of boring a hole through the china. The idea made me laugh, and my body calmed down a bit, and by the time I'd finished the distortion to my clothing was much less obvious.
James's had apparently gone down quickly, as happens in adolescence. Quickly up, quickly down again. Unless something happens to make it stay up, in which case it can stay hard for ages…I know. From myself, as well as from my experiences with him. Many of them.
We stopped early that night, and together, getting in each other's way, cooked a massive celebratory dinner. Because of the small size of both kitchen and cooker, it was really only possible to cook one or at the most two courses at the same time. So the feast was fragmented, and went on for ages, which was just as well, because the quantity of food we had to get through was rather great.. People kept getting up to check on their bit of it which was nearly ready — or wasn't, depending how successful they'd been — and so we were all even more exhausted by the time we were relaxing. By that time it was almost 10 pm, and we were all feeling very full and a good deal of belt-loosening had gone on. There was a lull in the various bits of conversation.
"Whilst we're all quiet, I'd like to say something," said my father in that quiet-listen-to-me-this-is-important tone of voice that I knew so well. We all pricked up our ears. "I haven't enjoyed a holiday so much for years, and I know from having spoken to Doreen and Pete that they think the same. So far as Mary and I are concerned we're so very lucky to have found another family we can get on with so easily and so well, and the fact that we met in the first place is due entirely to our sons, so they deserve a round of applause. The fact that they get on so well together is remarkable, and I'm glad that they are still such good friends after all these years.
"I know that we're going to be working together closely on a professional level, but that'll involve Pete and me in the main. For Mary, and I'm pretty sure for Martin, we want to get together often, as friends…"
"Yeahhhh!" interrupted a young male voice. Dad grinned at James.
"…and I hope we don't each just leave it and leave it as so often friends do, and so drift apart as so many friends do."
"No chance!" called out the irrepressible one.
"James!" hissed his mother.
"I know that at least one of the Evanses isn't going to let that happen, and I'm glad about that. Although I suspect that he'll be wanting all three of us to visit, or to visit us when all three of us are there. So I imagine that in the meantime there might be a number of visits between the north of England and the Midlands."
"Martin and I have been talking about that," he put in, rather more soberly this time. "He's said I can come down when I want."
"James, that's fine, except that Martin's starting a University course. He'll be busy studying and won't have time to cope with you visiting all the time."
I could see what James was trying to do. "From what I understand there's a lot of socialising goes on at Uni.," I said. "And I could do with someone visiting who isn't going to talk College all the time."
"But you'll have friends of your own, Martin, friends of your own age. I know you two are good friends as well, but with the best will in the world there are bound to be others."
"Maybe there will, Doreen. But one thing I've made up my mind about is that my existing close friends come first, and new friends have to accept them. Otherwise they won't be friends. And as to the age thing, when we're together we seem to equal out at about sixteen and a half. That's fine be me, so long as it is by James.
"Sounds good to me," he said. "I'll be down every weekend. Specially if there's trains and the canal museum there. It'll be good for my education."
"Can we see you sometimes, James? Just now and again?" said his father mock-seriously.
"Oh, I'll be home in the week," he said. "Until I go to University myself, that is."
"James, I wasn't being serious, but it almost sounds as if you were. There's no way you can go there every weekend. Not even Martin's good nature could accept that."
"I wouldn't mind," I said with a half laugh which they could take as being serious or not, as they liked. "He'd have to have a key and look after himself, that's all."
Peter and Doreen looked at each other.
"Well, he can certainly come and see you sometimes," said Doreen.
Safe in our cabin later, once the kitchen and dining areas had been cleared of any resemblance to a battlefield, we stood looking at each other.
"I knew we could do it," he said.
"Do what?"
"Get them to agree to me coming to see you at weekends."
"They didn't agree to every weekend," I told him.
"Don't you want me every weekend?"
"I want you with me every day."
"What about nights?"
"Them specially."
"Then I'll make sure I come down all the time."
"They'll never agree."
"We'll see."
As usual I just stood there looking at him, scanning every inch of him, etching the familiar features even further into my memory. He watched, doing some looking of his own. Gradually I noticed that his trousers were showing a marked bulge, and at the knowledge I felt my own body start to stir impatiently. His face changed, almost imperceptibly. The usual expression of half grin was giving way to that look that I could only describe as his special, Mona Lisa smile as the attractive eyes just looked straight into mine. The mouth opened.
"Strip me," he whispered.
I just wanted to throw my arms round him and hug him to me. Or so I thought. But the undreamed of idea of my being fully clothed whilst taking off everything he was wearing until he was naked and vulnerable and available grabbed out to my imagination and shook it rigid.
I started at the neck of his shirt, gradually undoing the buttons until I could see the little nipples standing away from his developing pectoral muscles. Sliding the cloth away from them I bent my head and touched the left one with my tongue, then the right. He sighed and gave a shiver. I looked up. He was looking down straight at my face. I circled the right nipple with my lips and sucked, using my tongue on the central nub. He wriggled and gasped, and when I repeated the action of the left one he did the same.
More shirt buttons undid, and the garment could be eased off his shoulders. To do this I brought my shirt clad chest up to his bare one, circled him with my arms, and pulled the shirt down at the back, leaving it just hanging from the waistband of his trousers. I stopped myself from kissing him: how, I don't know.
Next the shoes. Unlace one, the leg lifted and I eased it off. The top of the sock could be pulled down and eased over the foot. Same with the other side.
And now…First the belt, then the clasp, then I stopped and looked up again. He still watched me, not like a hawk, but more like a dog watches its beloved master. Yet this was no master-servant feeling, just one of love and excitement and mutuality.
As I reached for the zip my hand trembled. I grasped the metal of the warm tab, warmed by his body, and slowly eased it down over the bulge. There was a small dark patch half way down where the bulge came to a point, and as the zip passed over it the two halves of the fly separated to allow the protrusion room. On his underwear the wet patch was extensive, and somehow I had caused it all.
The zip bottomed and I continued to help the trousers on their way down his slim, hairless thighs and the young, muscular calves which did have just a sprinkling of soft, downy hair, something which I found really appealing about him. At last he lifted each foot in turn, and stood once again just looking at me, clad only in the same pair of underpants that he had bought specially, the scant red Tanga briefs I had exclaimed about when I'd first seen him in them. They had had no wet patch then, though, spreading out from a point in the centre front, a patch that now showed every contour of the secrets below that we both enjoyed so much.
Still he stood there.
I reached down to his knees with each hand, and slowly, softly, ran my hands up each thigh to the junction with the red material. Once again he shuddered, and a droplet appeared where the cloth was at its most distended, only to soak into the remainder of the patch around it. While my hands repeated their caress of his thighs, my face slowly approached that particular area until I was only about an inch away, and I became aware of the scent of his excitement. Tentatively I extended my tongue, and as I was about to contact with his body a further droplet appeared. My tongue coincided with it, and the warm salty flavour thrilled my senses so that I trembled again.
I moved my hands from his thighs to the back of him and ran them over the smooth firmness of his still-clad buttocks. Doing so pressed his hardness to my face, and my mouth encircled the throbbing mound under the constricting clothing. He moaned again, and again my tongue tasted salty fluid. From the back I pulled the waistband of the tiny garment slowly downwards, exposing more and more of his flanks. The mount at the front of him prevented much downward movement there, and I wondered how best to continue. The top was near my mouth. Why not? I gripped it between my teeth and pulled outwards and slowly down. By distorting my eyesight straight down my cheeks I could see the base of the excited organ straining to pull its sensitive tip up and out of the restrictions. Down I pulled, and down……and there was a rush and the thing became free and stiff and jerked upwards to hit my nose and cheek, leaving droplets of fluid on the as it passed to stand up straight at last.
As my hands eased the briefs down his legs I kissed the softness that surrounds the two precious ovals hanging free and low beneath him, and pushed my tongue gently between them and around them, and pulled them into my mouth one at a time to squeeze with my tongue against the inside of it. From above me came an almost treble sound as the sensations started to overload his mind. Kneeling still in front of him I continued this for minutes until the sounds above me had almost ceased, yet the breathing was still rapid. And then it was time to move onwards. I let my tongue trace from the base of the scrotum, between the testicles, all the way over the root of the smooth skinned organ and up it, up, up, all the way up its not inconsiderable length, until it met with the wet, partly exposed glans. My hand replaced my mouth on the scrotum now, and whilst I caressed and manipulated there, my mouth swirled round the sensitive tip, and over and around the ridge, and almost into the opening, and I kept up a steady pull with my mouth. The only pause in the treatment was when my other hand came round to take a sample of the fluids still being produced from his excited body, then my mouth was once more in action.
My free hand went round the back of him, under his legs, to trace a path from the scrotum, over the plateau, up to the cleft, and for the first time even further: up between the softness of him onto previously forbidden territory, where the lubrication from him came into play.
And he gasped, and the little treble keening sound began again.
At last the hand fondling, manipulating, caressing, the testicles in their protective sac of skin felt a change. They were pulling away from my fingers slightly. Travelling up…Did this mean…? Swiftly that hand went to the base of his glans and exercised the shaft, pulling the foreskin back and forth, and the hand at the back of him found that the bending of the legs outwards made up for the tightening of the muscles at either side of where it was gently ploughing.
A very few more strokes on his penis caused a shout from above me: a real shout, a boy/man shout, treble yet broken. And his back arched, forcing his hard organ into my mouth so far that I was pushed backwards and nearly fell, and the first strong spurt of his seed hit the back of my throat. The second followed, so strongly that it almost drilled through my neck, a third just as strong, and a fourth, and then no fewer than five more of decreasing force until his organ was just giving little jerks as the sensations swept away from him.
My mouth kept its station, and I continued to lick and clean him. Then suddenly he was lower…lower…and I had to move fast to stop him from crashing to the floor as his knees gave way under him. I lowered him to a point where I could gather him into my arms and lift him — slowly, because he wasn't light — onto the bed.
The eyes opened, and focussed on me with difficulty.
"M…M…Martin…" The voice was very unsteady. "I love you so much."
And with that he was asleep. Swiftly I stripped off my own clothes and laid myself out beside him and covered us both up, still with my erection throbbing and my emotions jangling. I expected him to waken any minute and smile at me and start to use his hands on me if only to relieve the demands my body was making on me. But he didn't. I lay there, one arm over him, my body pressed close to his and my jutting self hard against his thigh, but still nothing. I began thinking back over what we had done together, and how much he'd enjoyed it all, and what I hoped he do for me when he awoke…and fell asleep.
It was still dark when he moved my arm off his chest, and I only gradually awoke. The mattress moved, and feet padded softly to the door, paused, then went outside. I could hear that he was in the bathroom and relieving himself, and hoped that he wouldn't feel the need to make himself come as he had that first night. He didn't, and by the time he was tiptoeing back towards the bed I was lying on my back, awake.
"All right?" I whispered.
"I thought you were asleep," he whispered back as he came up to the bed and knelt at my side. "Yes, very all right, thank you. I don't know how you did that, but I've never felt like that before."
"I didn't think so. I certainly hope not."
"Why?"
"Because I'd not want anyone else apart from me to give you so much pleasure."
"Who d'you think I'd go to? No, nobody else is going to get a look in."
"Good," I said as I pulled back the covers for him to get in. "Are you coming back to bed, or kneeling out there all night?"
Before I finished the sentence, almost, he had laid down beside me. Not with our heads together, but with his head near my penis, and with his next to mine. And almost immediately mine was in his mouth, soft though it was. And of course I had to take his swelling one back into mine.
All the earlier emotions returned in a rush, and a combination of his hands and mouth all over my thighs, stomach, scrotum and penis made sure I was once again erect in no time at all, and shortly after that I knew it was my turn. The earlier unsatisfied excitement had caused my body to continue manufacturing its semen, and when it happened it was one of the deepest, most satisfying ejaculations I had ever experienced. That his mouth was around it at the time helped me greatly, and he enjoyed it too as I had a lot to give him: as much as or more than he had given me before.
He cleaned me off with his mouth, then turned in the bed, laid next to me and kissed me, tasting strongly of my own seed.
"Now we're even," he said. "Except that when I go back with you tomorrow I'm going to do what you did for me, and see if I can make you collapse like I did."
"When you come back with me…?" I was still half asleep. I hadn't had the exercise of going to the toilet to get my blood moving.
"I'm coming back with you tomorrow," he said as if it was all settled, "and going back home by train on Sunday night."
"Oh…er…are you?"
"Don't you want me to?"
"Yes…yes of course I do. But I think your parents will have something to say about it."
"I'll look after them."
Somehow I knew he would.
We were late up in the morning, something to do with cuddling up close for an hour, squirming two make bodies together and not wanting to stop. We were nearly discovered, too. A knock came at the door, and we separated in a hurry before he squeaked "Come in!"
I turned back to face his back as he rolled over to see who it was. Mum.
"Are you two getting up today?" she asked plaintively. "We're almost packed, and we need to get to the boatyard by ten."
"Wassertime?" I asked without thinking. In front of me James spluttered.
"Nearly nine. And how you can sleep in this atmosphere I don't know. It's a bit thick. Be quick, please?"
"'Kay Mary," he said in his sweetest tone. She smiled and left.
He turned back to me. "How do I get rid of this?" he asked, guiding my hand to the middle of his stomach.
"You don't, this morning," I said, removing it.
"Haven't you got one?" he asked, fumbling his way onto mine and knowing full well that I too was throbbing.
"Yes, but if we don't get up now, Dad'll be in and he'll just throw off the bedclothes."
"Even if we're quick?"
"Yes. We're never that quick."
"Oh." But he brought his head to me and kissed me full on the lips, a lingering kiss that almost made me wonder if he was now putting it on for effect. But I remembered all he had said, all he had done, and knew that, somehow, he found me attractive, that he was in love with me, that a miracle had happened for me.
We found our way back to Napton without incident, and yes, both he and I had got dressed, visited the bathroom, and had no distended fronts to our trousers by the time we made the outside world. No, we didn't make it happen, it just did it on its own. Don't be rude. Once back at the boatyard we vanished inside to pack, or rather I did; he vanished off to his parents' cabin to talk to them. I threw most of his things into his bag, and was entranced by the sudden ability to handle his clothing. Almost to fondle it. Top of the pile of items to pack were the minute Tanga briefs he had bought especially for the holiday. I wondered if Peter and Doreen knew about them. More particularly I wondered if he wanted his parents to see them, especially in the state he had left them.
They were dry, but a white deposit had replaced the spreading wetness of the night before. On an impulse I threw them into my own bag.
He came back, rather quiet. "They say school starts on Wednesday, and that you don't want me there when you're getting ready to start University."
"Does that mean you could stay until Tuesday night?"
He looked at me. The disappointed look on his face changed slowly until the grin was at nearly full stretch. "I'll ask them!" he said.
Two minutes later he was back. So was the grin. "Monday night, if you can put up with me, they said."
"There you go, you see. Ask for the impossible and you shall receive it. Sometimes."
We met up with the boat's owner later, fortunately having finished the very significant cleaning and scrubbing our two mothers insisted on. He was a little straight faced at first, having seen just James and me lolling about by the tiller. In fact we were waiting for the floors to dry, and keeping watch over the luggage. When Dad appeared he introduced himself, and as we merged into the picture, so to speak, he turned out to be very pleasant. When he was allowed to go below — when the floors were dry — he was most complimentary about what we'd done.
"Better than we manage to leave her, sometimes," he said. Mum and Doreen just looked cocky.
At last everything was off her, and we stood self-consciously on the concrete, swaying slightly every now and again after a week of getting used to the almost unfelt motion of the boat. James was fidgeting, anxious to leap into my car and get going on his voyage of exploration. The parents just chatted, as if they'd not had a chance to do so all week. Finally they all agreed to phone soon, and to visit soon, and to have another joint holiday soon too. Kisses were exchanged.
"Are you sure you want James to stay with you?" asked Peter. "You can still say no, you know."
"Yes. It's fine. Any time he wants to. I'll give him a key, as I said."
"Any time except now, you mean?"
"No, now as well if he wants to. It'll help me wind down a bit."
"He usually winds us up."
"Oh Dad!"
"All right. Off you go. But make sure you catch a train on Tuesday morning, and tell us before you leave when you'll get to the station our end."
"Yes, Dad."
"And behave yourself."
"Yes, Mum."
"See you on Tuesday."
"'Kay. Bye."
"Have fun."
"Yeahh."
He was quite quiet in the car, and I wondered why. Once we were outside the town and away from both sets of parents he let out a deep sigh. I glanced over to him.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. It's just…"
He trailed off. I looked over at him again. "Go on."
"I've just…I mean…"
Silence again. I let it hang. A long silence. I looked again. He was serious of face, but happy looking. Was he having second thoughts?
"I've just taken the biggest step of my life."
It was my turn to be silent for a long time.
"How do you mean?" I asked at last, although I was almost certain I knew.
He was still hesitant. "When we've been together before, it's been because we were both there. Now I'm travelling for one reason." A pause. A gulp.
"Sex."
I pulled over to the side of the road, put the brake on and switched the engine off. My hand went on to his and he looked me in the eye. The expression was almost scared, I thought. Certainly more than just concerned.
"You're wrong, James. You're not travelling for sex. At least, I hope not. You're travelling for love, and that means friendship and respect. If you decide it should also mean sex, and I do too, then that's completely different. But if you really think you're travelling just for physical sex and are having second thoughts about it, then I can take you back or to a station if you'd rather."
But at that he looked hurt. "I thought you wanted me with you."
"I do, more than anything else I ever have wanted. But I want you to want to be with me, too."
He worked this out. "I didn't say that because I didn't want sex, or to be with you. I do. It's just a big step."
I squeezed the hand. It turned and held mine. "If I told you that that's what I thought you meant, would you believe me? That coming with me as a friend, as someone who loves you is all right, but coming just to have physical sex probably isn't: does that help?"
He nodded and smiled faintly. "Do you mind?"
"Mind? I'd hate it if it was just sex, no matter how good looking you were. But love, and knowing that's how you think of me, that's really special."
This time he settled back in the seat, and a real smile settled on his face. "Let's go!" he said.
Some time later he looked up at the three-storey block of flats, wide eyed.
"It looks very grown-up."
I grinned. "Wait 'til you see inside."
We climbed the stairs to the top, I opened the door, and the first thing he saw was the picture of one of my favourite steam engines. At that he exclaimed, and hardly wanted to look any further. But I dragged him away and showed him round. The lounge was unremarkable, except for another railway picture; the kitchen was — well, a kitchen. Then I showed him a closed door and stood back. He looked enquiringly at me. I motioned him to open the door.
All through my childhood and youth I'd been into railways, which meant that the walls of my room were always covered with pictures of engines and trains, posters and any mementoes I'd managed to pick up. When I moved out, they all came with me, and my new bedroom was similarly decorated. I certainly saw no reason to have the girlie pictures up that most of my contemporaries seemed to have. In fact the only concession to increasing age was the double bed. To have him stop two feet into the room and just look around with his mouth resting somewhere by his feet was heart warming.
He walked all round the walls, looking at the pictures, exclaiming, asking questions, and drinking it all in, and then turned to look at me properly for the first time for ages. The grin unzipped properly.
"I like this room."
"Good. Half of it's yours."
I don't know what made me say that. But his attitude once in the flat was suddenly so much younger than it had been during the holiday. I was suddenly aware that the was in reality only fourteen.
At what I said he looked at me, a sparkle in his eye. "I wish it was. I could live here."
"I hope you will, when you can."
He was silent at that, but subtly something changed, and he came to me and hugged me, and was once again the same age as me, and my James again.
Later we had settled down again in each other's company, and (possibly partly due to a few cans of beer) we had relaxed, and it was as if we were still on the boat. Chat bounced to and fro between bouts of TV, and at last I found him yawning.
"Are you tired as well?" I asked.
He nodded.
"Bed?"
"Mmmm."
"Where do you want to sleep?"
"What?" he said, suddenly waking up.
"Where do you want to sleep? Here, on the floor? Standing up in the toilet? Where."
He was grinning at the last bit, anyway.
"I know, I'll have my half of the bedroom."
"Good," I said. "That's what I hoped you'd say."
I got up; so, reluctantly, did he. He followed me to the door, then hesitated.
"I need a pee."
"Go on, then. I'm going to get ready for bed, I'm really tired."
"'Kay."
I hadn't even unpacked. I upended my bag on the floor, but then thought better of it. It could get done in the morning. Half way through undressing I heard his footsteps outside the door. They paused. There was a knock. What the hell was he playing at? I decided to play along.
"Come in."
He did. Looked at me, with no shirt, and with my trousers undone, and smiled timidly.
"Well?"
"Well what?" he asked.
"What was the knock for?"
He paused. "I…I don't…I always knock before coming into someone else's bedroom."
I looked at him, aghast. Had he really any doubts left?
"But it's not someone else's bedroom. It's yours. Yours and mine. Just like on the canals."
"It just seems wrong."
"James…Oh god…" I was really upset. I thought I was going to lose him. I felt really panicky as I looked at him standing in front of me like a naughty schoolboy. What had gone wrong?
"I thought you felt the same about me as I do about you," I croaked.
"I do…I do…" That at least was music. "But it just seems…odd…being in your flat, and coming into your bedroom to sleep in your bed. It's just different from the canals."
Was that really all? In that case…
"James. Come here. Please?"
He came up to me, the face still uncertain, with that sort of pleading look on it.
"You won't hurt me, will you?"
My mouth dropped open. I looked at this unexpectedly, suddenly uncertain young boy in front of me, and tears filled my eyes at the fact that, after all this time, he thought I would do anything to harm him. All I could do was hug him to me, and slowly he returned the hug. When talking was safe again I separated us and looked down into his eyes, which now showed a bit less of the anxious puppy look.
"My…friend; My…more than friend," I started. "I'm still the same person as I was at Amberdale. I'm still the same person I was for all this week. Did I hurt you then? Did I do anything that you weren't happy with?"
He shook his head.
"Then I'm not going to start now. Is it just that this is my place, and not somewhere where your parents are going to come back to?" I too had been younger, and knew as a young child that feeling that you were in someone else's house and in their power. Stupid it was, I knew. Now. But I suppose the idea of coming to the house of someone else for the first time, knowing you were going to bed with them and were likely to use the genital parts of your body there, must be new, disturbing, foreign.
"Please, James," I said in my smallest voice. "Trust me? Like I trust you?"
He came into my arms then, of his own volition, and buried his head in my bare shoulder. When he drew back he looked happier. I continued undressing, and, to my relief, he started.
"I think I've been silly," he said as he took off his trousers.
"Why?" I thought the worst again.
"Oh, about this. It's no different from being on the canals."
Thank goodness. "Right." I said. "And do you know something else?"
"What?" he said as he pulled his underpants down his legs.
"I still love you. Really."
He smiled that Mona Lisa smile and cuddled up to me.