"You're nervous? Why are you nervous?" James cocked his head, looked at me so intensely I felt studied. "I mean, look at you."
"I'm a nerd."
"A nerd?" He made a pfft sound through pursed lips. "If that's what a nerd looks like, I should have taken that computer tech job I was offered back home and stayed there. I would never have wanted for cock. Or arse. I don't mind a bit of arse as well. You don't have a problem with that, do you? No, of course you don't. Anyway." He paused to run a finger round the inside of his collar. "Is it hot in here or is it just me? So, nerd, eh? Huh. How 'bout that?"
"I mean I recently had my hair cut and I've got contacts in, so --- "
"You usually wear glasses? Tell me you wear glasses. No, never mind. Have you ever dressed up in a tank top and --- No, no, forget I ever said that. Anyway. Where were we?"
"I'm with a guy who has a geek fetish."
"Shut up."
"You have a geek fetish. No wonder you went red when I mentioned an X-Men duvet cover. I'm sure there's a punch line in there about playing with your joystick."
"Can we please get off the subject of nerd fetishes and geek porn?"
"And simply get off?"
"That's more like it."
"I won't bother texting you a photo of me in my Superman pajamas then."
"That's just going too far."
"Okay, in a paisley sweater, surrounded by motherboards and drive casings from the computer I'm building at home."
"You --- ?"
"No. No I'm not building a computer and if I owned anything in paisley I'd toss it on the nearest bonfire. Look, how did we get into this anyway?"
"Me, saying I was nervous. You know..." James cleared his throat and looked away for a moment. "Someone new." He pointed to himself, then at me, his jittery actions signing the unspoken "us."
"Yeah." I swallowed back the knot of nerves that had suddenly appeared in the back of my throat. "Know that feeling." Nodding, I let my gaze wander round the room. Awkward. How do we move on from this?
"So, you have...?" Nice one, Lombard. Get down to business.
He frowned, looking confused, then enlightenment spread over his face along with his wide grin. "Oh, you mean a condom? Yeah. Fuck, I've got more than one. I've got condoms coming out of my ears, quite frankly."
"I think they'd do more good on your cock to be honest."
"So, you..." We were both doing a lot of nervous coughing then. "I wondered about that. You know, if you had a problem with it."
"With you fucking me?" I nearly reached for him again, but my hands were shaking and the only way to steady them was to re-establish contact.
Break the ice again. Pretend this nervous episode hadn't happened. "Not a problem."
"Oh. " The monosyllable came out in a rush of breath and he smiled, managing to turn the sound into a burst of laughter. "Oh. Right."
"Hope you've got plenty of lube."
"Gallons of the stuff."
"Thank fuck for that. I'd hate to run out of it and have to dig into your lard supplies. I know you Jocks prefer to keep it for deep-frying your breakfast sausages."
"Shut up, Texas. That's just..." He grimaced. "Are you sure you're not part Scottish?"
"You missed a prime chance to ask if I had any Scots in me, there."
"Give it time."
"You've got less than five minutes." I pushed him towards the bed, bold now. Strange. I switched between nervous and confident so rapidly.
Nervous because he was someone new, confident because he felt the same.
We were in this together. I just wished I could decide on one emotion and settle there.
"Sorry it's not an X-Men duvet cover."
"I'll just have to deal with it."
The back of James's legs hit the side of the bed and we toppled over; I landed on my side, legs tangled round his, and he groaned in pain.
"Back still sore?"
"Just a bit. An ache more than anything. Nothing serious." He wriggled, then kicked off his shoes. "Be gentle with me."
"Shouldn't that be my line? I mean if you're gonna ---" Just say it, Austin. " --- be inside me."
I could have sworn he shuddered when I said that.
With a bit of struggling, I toed my shoes off and they hit the floor with twin thuds. My hands shook when I reached for his belt and I wished I didn't look like such a fucking amateur. I was far from a virgin, had had a few, okay, more than a few, one night stands, and one would have thought the one-off nature of this night would kill off any butterflies. I mean, it wasn't like I was ever going to see him again, right?
I caught James's eye and there was a brief pause, a held breath, while we decided --- laughter or something more serious? A smile, then. An easy compromise. "I'm not normally this shaky."
"Let me just kid myself I'm making the nerd so horny he can't control himself." He kissed me before I could protest and mentally I shrugged.
If he got turned on by geeks, who was I to argue? My cropped hair still had a way of doing as it pleased and most of the time I wore glasses rather than contacts --- not that he'd ever see me out of carefully styled, avec contact lenses mode of course --- so if that image worked for him? Good.
Pulling at each other's clothes wasn't romantic; it didn't flow. Belts refused to behave, buttons just wouldn't come undone and at one point I even managed to fuck up pulling his T-shirt over his head. He got tangled, I got scared to risk pulling at a seam. It was a damn mess. A hilarious mess.
"You don't look too much like a geek with your clothes off," James panted in between kisses.
"You're not even looking at me." But his hands were all over me, though. It was like he was trying to
