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“How could you fail Geography? We have maps plastered all over the house.” George is beyond baffled. There is a reason he spent all that money on making sure his only son is well travelled. Miami to Hawaii in July, Japan to Africa in December, and his son let himself fail Geography? If they are not in the middle of a crowd of children loving family, George will maul this kid.
“Must be the Brit in him.” Max slings his arm around Kimi’s shoulder and gives his temple a peck. The boy squirms around delightfully and hugs the newly appeared man, the earlier dejection wiped off his face completely.
Max is still so beautiful after all those years, just as alluring as the first time George saw him. Beside the urge to strangle him on sight, there is another voice in George’s head telling him to impregnate the man a second time.
With his golden locks turning darker with every meeting, and the recently blooming gray hair on the side of his scalp, age seems to be agreeable with Max. Youth might look languishing on him, but he wears wisdom and experience like a jewel exclusively designed for him and him only.
He also has collected some muffin tops that spill out his dress pants, adding to his lightly distributed curves previously. George had to recite the commandments backwards just to fight the urge to grab them.
He clicks his tongue.
“Max,” he hopes the desperation he feels is not showing in his voice. He has to keep his dialogue short, afraid he will let known things he isn’t prepared to publicize.
“George.” Max nods.
“Brits are not so bad at Geography. I would say we are actually quite good at it.” George scoffs, the suit he’s adorning getting tighter at the collar. He tries not to stare at Max and his form fitting racing jersey.
“So many people around the world would disagree. The Brits appear to have some difficulties at respecting boundaries, no?” Max brings his bottle to his lip, his throat wobbles up and down as he gulps the clearly refreshing mineral water. By the look of his glance, he knows just how much George would like to replace the plastic at the moment, taste the plump, glossy cushion of Max’s mouth, reminding him who they belong to.
“As if the Dutch weren't plagued by the same problem.”
“Come on, dads. It’s my graduation.” Kimi stomps his foot. Max shuts his further complaints with a kiss to the cheek, that seems to always work with son and the father alike.
“Go on then. I’ll cheer for you. Do you know where I can get those little glasses of wine I see so many people have?” Max gestures to a group of women with alcoholic beverages adorned in their fingers as they stroll across the field. It has been half an hour since he first saw someone carrying one but he is yet to find where he can acquire one himself.
“Really, broad daylight drinking? You haven’t changed at all.” George snickers, his eyes wandering around the field, judging the imbibing public.
“Same with you still thinking grey looks good on you.” Max scans him up and down with those cat-like eyes of his, before feigning indifference and continuing his attempt at foraging the wines. “For someone so absolute, you sure don’t know to stick on black or white.”
George bites back a barb, “and you still only know to stick with the winners. Can’t wait to see you wearing a McLaren this year.”
Max looks down at his shirt, “RedBull still has a fighting chance, but I don’t see the point in staying loyal to losers.”
“I quite like sticking to the underdog. You could say I am loyal,” George’s eyes betray him, trailing down to where Max’s hip is propped out when he crosses his hand under his chest. “To a fault.”
“Dad, I really have to go. You know where to sit, right?” Kimi wiggles out from Max’s side and returns his affection before bolting off to his waiting friends, his robe swaying with every hurried step.
“You scared the kid,” George bites, slowly closing their distance.
“There is a virtue in that.” Max bites his bottom lip, looking up at Charles between batted eyelashes. Knowing fully well what it does to the taller man. “Perhaps we both did.”
“I sure did not.” George wants to believe his voice does not crack, but they both hear it.
“Whatever you say, slenderman.” Max runs his hand up and down George’s arm, then proceeds to fix his tie. “Must look your sharpest in the photos.”
“That’s why your choice of guise is questionable,” George raises an eyebrow.
Max chuckles, “it fits me quite nicely, no? I only have white shirts, they don’t do well hiding what I want to stay hidden.”
He pulls his collar loose, and George’s breath stops at the little tease of black lace cupping his breasts.
“You!”
“I’ve been… entangling myself in some interesting new hobbies lately. They pay well, too.”
George steps closer, completely annihilating any leftover distance between them, his whisper turns raucous. “Who paid well?”
Max titters, his dainty fingers, still as clean as ever, lingers gently on George’s chest. “The internet people.”
“Max.”
The man bursts into a fit of laughter, bending down to hug his belly as he makes his amusement known. “Relax. I’m joking.”
“I wish I can be half as carefree as you sometimes.”
“Good men aren’t supposed to be carefree.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Max’s eyes travel across George’s face and settle on his lip. George wishes he can apprehend Max’s fingers as they pet his chin, and prays he has the strength to refuse such vulnerability. “I wouldn’t be attracted to carefree men.”
Max ambles away, and George, for all the abuse he had endured for the past five minutes, thinks the sway of his hip as he goes is a little treat he deserves.
George wouldn’t put it past Max to make money off his body. After all, he is built like someone’s personal vendetta against the lust God. Ever since they first met, Max already had an endless line of men and women falling at his feet, catering to his every wants and whims. It would not be weird to capitalize such traits in this day and age.
Max has this strange affinity in believing that his body isn’t his own. He always let his afflictions spill after sex, in George’s embrace, on a warm bed. That way, even if he admits he doesn’t belong in his body, he will still wake up in it, still ensconced in a physical existence where he can move his limbs however he wants.
That’s why he changes sex partners the same way one would change clothes back in college. Always making sure he’s asleep in someone’s arm, so his body won’t just up and leave his wandering soul on the bed to fade into nothingness.
Until George met him.
Sparks don't fly when their eyes meet for the first time. George didn’t feel like the world stopped on its axis. The sun didn’t shine brighter nor was the moon prettier.
However, like the danger of moths drawn to flame, George’s craving to have Max near multiplies almost each second he’s not within grasp.
Distant, individual nights turned into daily occurrences where they spent entangled in each other’s extremities, too scared to let go, but knew they weren’t meant to last in each warmth they shared. Max’s soul is too free, too incendiary for George’s otherwise stringent, bidirectional lineage.
George had duty to a long posterity of business dictators, Max had the wind to follow.
Bright, bright Max, who plays guess the flags for fun, who can recite histories of empires by heart. George should know how trapping him in one place, begging him to play a good housewife will only welcome entropies into an already fragile relationship.
But Kimi came, and Max loved him so much that he gave up latitude to carry him for nine months, stayed in the apartment George had bought him for years to take care of their little offspring. He was such a good mom.
It was foolish of George to think it will stay that way forever.
“How is your mom?” Max appears with the wine glass in his hand, taking the empty seat beside George.
“The same as always.” George shifts closer, almost on instinct. Max likes it when there is someone close, he needs physical contact like he requires air. This was proven troublesome some times before, and George was with him to fend problems away.
His mom said Max is a parasyte, latching off George like a paddy field leech on farmers, sucking blood out of the hands that feed them.
Perhaps she’s true, and painfully honest. But, anyone can be honest when their vision is biased, and their information is lacking.
What she doesn’t know won’t kill her. Max was George’s emissary of God. In the haze of adulthood where the meaning of life starts getting blurry for George, Max anchored him, making him believe the astounding pressure put on his shoulder by his family is worth kneeling for. Ignorant as she may be, the facts won’t change.
Is Max really a parasyte if the simple fact that he exists has kept her son alive for years?
“Still cranky when I’m mentioned?”
George nods, “she knew you hooked up with that F1 racer.”
“Which one?”
“Does it matter?”
“I have to know what day her little spy is off. My bet is on Monday.”
George has to keep his eyes on the stage to not apologise, Max has made it clear he’s not accepting apologies if it does not come from his mother directly.
Ever since their separation, she had made it her life mission to keep Max away from George, even going as far to pay for his every travel ticket to keep him out of London for the longest time possible. But of course, Kimi had been the one link where she loosened up her guard. Even she isn’t evil enough to keep a child from its mother.
“He turns eighteen next week, can you believe it?” George says.
“Of course. Then you can stop paying child support as well.” The grin in Max’s voice is clear but George doesn’t dare turn around.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“He’s going to a university in Italy.”
“I heard.”
“He’s such a bright kid.”
“Courtesy to you.”
Max lays a hand on George’s thigh, gives it a light squeeze. Don’t do this to me , it says. Don’t let it end.
George takes the hand into his.
“You will take dad to dinner, right?” Kimi insists. He has brought the proposal up three times after dropping a last minute plan to ditch their family dinner to hang out with his high school cliques just one final time. And every time, the two can only give a vague answer.
“We don’t think—”
“With you not there—”
Kimi huffs, his eyebrow creases. “Come on, you guys already made reservations. Don’t cancel for me. It will make me feel bad. I already promise we can have one before I leave.”
“Kimi—”
“I’ll take him.” George looks at Max. It is, after all, easier to follow Kimi’s whim than letting it fester longer. Kimi always has this benediction to make his fathers get along, a punishment of some sort for the two.
Max gives up all opposition, kisses his son goodbye before watching him board his friend’s convertible. The teenagers yell thank you to them as the car cranks into life.
“Shall we?”
“They changed the painting.” Max gasps as they step into the restaurant.
“Oh, that’s new.”
It’s the quaint little bar George took Max on their first date after the pregnancy. It’s the only place in London that serves non alcoholic drinks while preserving the cozy and jazzy style a normal pub would have. It is the perfect place to bring the still underage Kimi.
They frequented the place at least a couple times a year. Once on Kimi’s birthday, once on Max’s. This is the first time the painting of the queen on the statement wall has ever been changed.
“Like a Monet’s.” Max’s breath caught in his throat.
It’s an arrangement of vibrant undulating colors that forms a blurry vision of an idyllic pride of lions, basking under Savanna sun. At the left edge of the painting, a giant tree whose branches spread horizontally wide, shields a lone cub from the heat, away from the rest of its family.
The colors are not merging to blend with each other, almost as if the paint refuses to mess up their first strokes each time, so the picture manages to capture such a hazy depiction.
“The owner’s daughter painted that,” Penelope, an old friend, the receptionist, says as the two stand awed at the painting.
“It’s beautiful.”
Max always has this infatuation. He looks at art like they talk to him. For a long time to George, something as abstract as art only has meaning if Max gives it one.
The lion is just a lion. Under Max’s eyes, the paint roars to life.
It scares George, that perhaps Max sees him as an art to inspect. That he will be read vein to vein, unraveled to a single speck of DNA under Max’s investigating fingers. Laying down in bed after sex with Max and lying on a metal block as a carcass to be dissected often feels the same.
As altruistic as Max comes, he always has a way with words that makes George feel honored to be critiqued. Epigrams come out his mouth as effortlessly as silk flying over gales. When George doesn’t want to admit the truth, it feels like a revelation to hear it from someone else’s mouth.
Max isn’t at all scared to be judged in return. That’s what makes him fearsome. He takes people’s words about him, mold it under heat and pressure until it’s ripe for the taking. He surfaces in a better shape, so adaptable, flexible to what the world demands of him.
When Max complains, there is a special stream of nerves running across the whole of George telling him to obey. That his words are gospel, there is a gun cocked to his head demanding submission.
The musician plays a familiar tune, and both of them settle on a comfortable silence over smoked salmon and creamy lobster. Max talks about everything, but under the yellow light of the diner, his greying hair glimmers, pulling George further into a spiral of delirium.
When they pull into the driveway of the quaint two storey terrace at ten to midnight, Max walks up to his door with an exaggerated sway of his hip and leaves the main entrance wide open.
Kissing Max still feels like a religious experience. He has a way with his tongue that makes it cultish, a guilt inducing haze of an experience. He has a habit of grabbing whatever length of hair sticking out the bottom of his partner’s nape. George remembers keeping it long in his campus days. Tonight, Max has to settle for the harsh bristles of freshly shaven low fade.
They are always so painfully aggressive—a clash of teeth and a fray of poorly cooperating tongues. In the end, it always leaves George breathless, lungs screaming for air but brain shutting off every time Max pulls away.
It is not hard to navigate through Max’s house in the dark. He barely has any furniture, the hallway is always empty, the walls are bare and even when Kimi’s photos litter George’s apartment and office, Max remains unmitigated on not sharing the same sentiment.
There is always a cage Max needs to escape. He’s always ready to leave every room he’s in, always sits closest to the exit and pretends like he’s not. Just like how the bedroom is on the ground floor, near the back door.
When George enters it, Max practically clinging on his shoulders, he almost trips on an opened luggage, its content spilling out. Max mutters a quiet sorry before dragging him straight to the bed.
“I lied,” Max says between kisses, fingers expertly peeling George naked. “You look so good in grey.”
“I know.” George replies, taking a second to take a deep breath. “Trust me I know.”
“I miss you so much.” He goes down George’s torso while unbuttoning his shirt. His kisses are a numbing sensation on each of George’s crevices. The valleys of George’s abdomen flexes and clenches under Max’s attention.
He unbuckles Max’s belt in one quick motion, the skinny jean still an arduous piece of cloth to remove. But it was worth it, because, while George had forgotten about the little bralette Max had teased the existence of, he hadn’t expected a matching panties underneath.
Crawling between Max’s legs, George lets his ankle rest on his shoulders, the perfect position to admire the pearly expanse of Max’s thighs.
“You are crazy.” George whispers, his hands cannot stop running up and down Max’s freezing shins, articulating whether or not to pull the panties off, while Max pulls his shirt over his shoulder.
“You always say things you don’t mean.” The silk bralette is more alluring face to face with George. Blood rushes both south and north, George’s old mind struggles to handle the sudden ebb of adrenaline.
Max’s knowing gaze exacerbates George’s desire to ruin him.
“You and I both know that isn’t true.”
Under Max’s eyes, George is unraveled skin to bone to ashes.
Max takes and takes, while George gives and gives. The only thing that ameliorates this dynamic is the unspoken agreement that Max has so much space in his heart to home all the things spilling out of George’s. Like air, all of George diffuses into Max, threading stories like a woven penumbra under Max’s skin, just like every other thing Max has spared his love for.
It’s hard not to admire your impact on someone’s body. Humans are a complex combination of so many organisms living under the same roof, whose actions are dictated by the brain. With the brain, the hands move; With the same brain, the leg walks.
The same hand that strikes can also caress. The same mouth that bites can also kiss.
When George first sees the mark he had left on Max’s skin, it’s hard to stop.
Max wears every color like an honor. Purple on him is like a field of lavender wide and unbounded. Red splatters on his skin like sunset by the beach. You can’t help but stare. Sex is sacred to him, as if every time he’s being made love to, Max has to make sure that his partner leaves as many marks as possible.
His body is not really his own after all.
Like clockwork, George feels obligated to please him. Littering colors on Max almost feels like he’s mapping a brand new vessel. There are always other marks on him left by other people, George has ceased to be hung up on him long ago.
He’s just one of many. Who’s to say there aren’t other Kimis on the other side of the world? Max always talks about Spain for its culture and landscape. What if there’s a boy Kimi’s age failing Geography there too?
It’s always dangerous teetering when thinking about Max. It’s easier to just stick to the objective, things that are real and undeniable.
“You are as beautiful as the day I met you.”
Max whines at the first penetration, like it’s his first time all over again, George wonders how long his brain can maintain that as the truth.
First thrust, and his legs will tremble. Second thrust, harder, and Max takes George’s shoulder into his arms, still seeking the phantom, hair strands. Third thrust, deep and pulsating, and Max will call out his name.
“George!”
“I’m here. I’m here.”
He’s still as tight as George last remembers. Always a pagan of decadence. His cries excites anyone near, his languishing eyes put men on their knees. When he snaps his finger, his every desire will be presented to him on a silver platter.
A few more thrusts, and Max turns to scratching, branding his own vestiges on his partners’ skin. However it never appears like a mark of possession. For Max, there is nothing more he hates than to have an attachment to material subjugation. He keeps them to a minimum, keeps his nails blunt, and kisses a lingering feather that George feels on chill nights alone in his bed.
Max will kiss George, then his warmth will resurrect him. Just at the back of his mind, George knows Max will leave before the crack of dawn and the warmth that revived him will be nothing more than the quiet hum of the heater.
But as Max writhes and moans under him, George lets himself hopes a mindless dream.
Max comes in thin white ropes. Suddenly George is reminded of their age.
Alone with Max, he always finds himself wishing they had stayed twenty three, and if Max leaves tomorrow morning, it’s for classes and he will return in the afternoon.
George survives a few more thrusts, catches himself before falling straight on top of Max, then pulls him into his limbs. Together, their extremities bend and blend endlessly.
“Age catching up to you?” Max laughs. In the dark, his voice sounds insubstantial. Ubiquitous. Bouncing off walls and ceiling. Vibrating in the grottoes of George’s bloodstreams.
George pulls him closer, weighing Max down into the mattress.
“You will stay for breakfast, right?”
If Max replies, George doesn’t hear it.
The next morning, despite the best of his prayers, George wakes up in a freezing bed. The luggage on the floor is no longer there.