Author’s note – Thanks for all the feedback, guys and thanks to Blue as usual. I’m glad an inexperienced Dee is making an interesting read – it’s certainly proving interesting to write!

N.B. Small parts of this chapter have been edited to meet this site’s requirements. For the uncut versions, go to aff or mediaminer. Much love - Swordy

Young Dogs

Chapter 4 – To the Great Unknown

It took a full week before Dee worked up the courage to arrange to see Maigret again. James sounded relieved when he took the call. With the lapse in communication, particularly as the ball had been left firmly in Dee’s court, James had assumed that the teenager had decided to end the friendship that had been forged under false pretences.

“I’ll tell Maigret that you’ll be over tomorrow,” he’d said after expressing his gratitude towards Dee for being so forgiving. “I’m sure he’ll be glad of the company as I have to go away on business this evening.”

“Oh.” This was good, but bad. The pit of Dee’s stomach told him the inevitable would happen if he and Maigret were alone. He suddenly realised that ‘oh’ was not an adequate response and added: “Well okay. I’ll come over around eight.”

Penguin didn’t give him the opportunity to regret making the call the following day. From the moment his eyes opened, he was kept busy with a seemingly endless list of tasks, leading him to wonder if he was being punished for a misdemeanour that had slipped his mind. He hadn’t of course, and his suspicions were laid to rest when Penguin pushed a ten dollar bill into his hand and insisted that it stayed there. He was almost out of the door when she called after him.

“Did you ever solve the problem you were telling me about?” she asked, smoothing the front of her habit.

The timing of her question caused the answer to choke in his throat. He thought of Maigret, his cocky self-assured smile and the pleasures of the flesh that he would undoubtedly offer and his face flushed suddenly. He hid his embarrassment behind his shaggy black hair, despite knowing only too well that Penguin didn’t need to see him to realise that he’d rather not give an answer. A brief glance in her direction caught the wise old woman’s smile.

“I’ll take it that’s a yes,” she said. “Now get out of here and have some fun.”

Fun. He tried to keep that word in his head as he walked through the darkening streets towards his destination, but he knew his heart was pounding more than it should. He lit a cigarette in the hope that the nicotine would calm his jangled nerves. He knew he could turn around and go home, but his feet took him on, leading him to the conclusion that he would regret going back more than he would going forward.

He hesitated again briefly when he reached the front door, but Maigret had already seen his approach and was crossing the hallway to let him in.

“Dee.”

Even the way his name was spoken seemed to hold some hidden agenda. Deep brown eyes carried the hint of a smirk and for a moment Dee felt the urge to smack that handsome face. His own eyes were drawn to the lithe body encased in a thin t-shirt that stopped several inches shy of the waistband of his faded jeans. The hint of flesh was achingly tempting and Dee found himself stepping across the threshold, his gaze fixed on the hips as he followed Maigret through into the living room.

“I’m glad you came.”

Dee nodded dumbly. He suddenly felt self-conscious and overwhelmed by an awkwardness that was unfamiliar to him. He liked to think he knew where he stood in the tangled dance of courtship. He felt confident around the fairer sex - he knew what buttons to push. But this was new territory – Maigret’s territory – and he was fearful that once he’d stepped into it, he’d never get away.

He gladly accepted the beer that Maigret offered him and for a while they sat in front of the television as they had done many times before, conversation limited by the language barrier and divided attention. Dee however had no interest in what was on the screen. His thoughts were firmly on the body next to him on the couch, long legs draped casually over the arm. His senses felt overwhelmed every time he stole a glance at his companion: his breathing seemed more audible, details more noticeable. He observed how Maigret would purse his lips and frown ever so slightly when he didn’t understand something of the onscreen dialogue; how he would periodically flick the hair away from his eyes each time he raised the beer bottle to his mouth. He eventually caught Dee looking.

“Is something wrong, Dee?”

He was glad of the dimmed lighting that hid the worst of his blush. “No,” he snapped back, suddenly pretending to be really interested in the movie. So he’d caught him looking once? That hardly meant anything.

“You have been watching me all night, no?”

Damn. The last grain of confidence slipped away and he felt his determination to play it cool unravelling before him. “You kissed me,” he blurted out without warning. “Why?”

Maigret looked surprised and then amused. “You are still worried about that?”

He gripped his beer bottle tighter. On the screen, Robert DeNiro was practising his you talkin’ to me speech in the mirror. “You didn’t answer my question. Why?”

Maigret shrugged. “You are handsome, no?”

It wasn’t getting to the nitty gritty of what he really wanted to know. “So you go around kissing any handsome guy you see?”

“No…”

“So what made you think I’d want you to kiss me?”

Maigret frowned, the rapidly spoken question spilling out so quickly that he wasn’t sure he had understood it. He couldn’t answer quickly enough for Dee, whose mouth had gone into a sprint before his brain had even had a chance to put on its sneakers.

“You think I’m gay don’t you? Is it the way I act? Something I’ve said? What made you think I’m gay?” He’d all but shouted the last part as he squeezed his beer bottle so tightly it was a miracle it didn’t break.

Unable to answer, given that he hadn’t fully understood the reason for this unprovoked anger, Maigret stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry?” he said eventually, feeling that he had to at least say something.

“Oh jeez,” Dee muttered, his head dropping into his hands. “My head’s completely fucked up and you’re sorry.”

There was a prolonged moment of silence between them. Eventually Dee broke it.

“Since that night, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s here” – he gestured to his head – “playing over and over. I hated you because I realised that I didn’t hate what happened like I thought I would.”

He studied his companion’s face and realised that the language barrier was hindering his confession. He stopped, sighed, and started again.

“Kissing you wasn’t bad. In fact… I think I liked it.”

This Maigret seemed to understand. “You want to do it again?”

Dee hesitated, then nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yeah. I wanna know if it was just a fluke or something.” He studied Maigret’s return to confusion. “Never mind.”

Sensing implicit permission, Maigret placed his beer bottle on the floor and shuffled along the couch to close the gap between them. With his heart drumming a sharp staccato, Dee closed his eyes and waited, knowing the meeting of lips was just seconds away.

The first touch was so gentle he wasn’t sure whether their lips were actually touching or whether he was just feeling Maigret’s breath as he drew closer. Soon, as the kiss grew more insistent, he became a more active participant, realising that it was no different than kissing a girl. Almost instantaneously he could feel a stirring down below, just like the time he’d observed the two men kissing in the movie he’d watched with his friends. Maigret’s arms looped around his neck when he realised that Dee did not want him to stop, pulling their bodies closer until they were sharing the same heat. He groaned deeply at the pressure on his straining erection, the sound muffled by tongues at work. When air was required, they pulled apart, but Dee acknowledged his reluctance.

Maigret offered him a lopsided smile. “Good?”

His embarrassment played second fiddle to his hunger for more. He nodded.

“You want more?”

“Like what?” Dee asked, feeling both awkward and curious at the same time.

Maigret, either too impatient or lacking the vocabulary to explain, reached for the bulge straining furiously in the other youth’s jeans and began to stroke it firmly. Dee groaned and despite not knowing exactly what he was giving Maigret permission to do, hurriedly unbuttoned his fly.

For several long moments after Maigret had finished he kept his eyes tightly closed. He couldn’t confirm that a man had just done that to him. Better to tell himself that a woman was responsible.

“Are you okay, Dee?”

The voice was annoyingly masculine. Pretence and self-denial was not an option.

“Uh, yeah,” he replied, feeling awkward. “I uh, gotta go.”

His embarrassment was plain and Maigret wasn’t about to draw Dee’s discomfort out for his own amusement. He sat back as Dee stood and hurriedly re-dressed but before he could leave, Maigret grabbed his hand.

“If you enjoyed this…” he paused, considering his words, “I can teach you.”

Like the act that had just taken place, Dee found the offer both appalling and electric. He studied Maigret in all his beauty and knew he would not pass up the chance to kiss that face again.

“I’ll see you,” he muttered, neither acquiescing to nor rejecting Maigret’s offer. He let himself out and hurried away, wondering if he’d ever leave this house feeling like the confident, self-assured Dee of old.

He lay awake a long while after he returned to the orphanage and crawled into bed. Memories of the evening darted before his eyes, sometimes welcome but mostly not. He had slipped in through a back door and hurried up to his room, resolute that he did not want to risk running into Penguin, whom he was certain never slept. The old woman could see straight into his soul and he knew that if she so much as clapped eyes on him now, she would know that something had happened that had shaken him completely. She would know that everything he thought he was had been smashed into pieces and was being put back together in some new haphazard pattern. How could he face her when couldn’t even look at himself in the mirror?

But despite his recriminations, the truth was inescapable. He had consented to intimacy and, yes, he had enjoyed it. He didn’t need Penguin to remind him ‘what’s done is done’ – of greater concern to him now was that he wanted to do it again.

He now realised that it had been naïve of him to think that this would be a one-shot deal. He’d placed all his chips on the fact that once his curiosity had been satisfied it would be back to business as usual, but now he couldn’t honestly say that would be the case. Maigret had made it clear that he would like them to continue on this new course and he found his own refusal to discount this as very telling. No strings sex, allowing him to explore his new-found desires. Sounded simple, because after all, it was just sex. It wasn’t like he was ever going to fall in love with a man, was it?

TBC…