Boiler Night
Danny knew the boiler had died before he got his key out of the lock, because the hallway of the flat was cold enough that he could see his breath.
“Frank?”
“Kitchen,” came the answer. “Don’t take your coat off.”
He took his coat off anyway, out of eleven years of habit, and hung it on the hook by the door over Frank’s work jacket, and immediately regretted it. The hall ran straight from the front door to the kitchen at the back, with the bathroom and the bedroom off to the left and the living room opening to the right, and all of it was freezing. The radiator under the hall mirror was stone cold when he touched it.
Frank was standing at the stove in his dressing gown over a hoodie over, as far as Danny could tell, at least one more jumper, stirring a pot of something that smelled of onions and paprika. He took up a fair bit of kitchen at the best of times, all chest and belly, and tonight he looked like a bear that had raided a charity shop. His reading glasses were pushed up into his grey hair and there was a smear of tomato on the dressing gown’s lapel.
“Man’s coming Thursday,” Frank said, without turning round. “Thursday, Dan. It’s Monday.”
“Did you tell him it’s December?”
“I told him I’d pay double. He laughed at me.” Frank tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot and finally turned, and his face did the thing it still did, after eleven years, when Danny walked into a room: a softening round the eyes, a pull at one corner of his mouth. “Come here. You look like an icicle.”
Danny went. Frank opened the dressing gown like a tent and folded him inside it, and Danny pressed his cold face into the hoodie over Frank’s chest and just stood there. Frank was warm. Frank was always warm, as if he ran a couple of degrees hotter than other people, and the heat came off his belly and chest right through three layers of cotton and wool.
“Goulash,” Frank said into his hair. “And then I thought we’d go to bed at half seven like pensioners and stay there till Thursday.”
“That’s your whole plan.”
“It’s a good plan.”
Danny slid his hands under the hoodie, under the T-shirt beneath it, and laid his freezing palms flat on Frank’s bare belly. Frank yelped and jerked back against the counter and the spoon clattered into the pot.
“You absolute bastard.”
“You said come here.”
“I said come here, I didn’t say put your dead fish hands on me.” But Frank didn’t pull them out. He stood there with his jaw tight and let Danny’s hands sit on him, on the soft round swell of him, the hair there springy under Danny’s fingers, until they started to warm. Danny felt Frank’s breath go in and out under his palms, and felt it slow down, and then catch a little when Danny’s thumbs drifted lower.
“Dinner,” Frank said, a bit hoarse.
“Dinner,” Danny agreed, and took his hands back, and watched Frank’s face follow them.
Frank ate too fast because he always ate too fast, and because Danny was sitting across the little kitchen table from him in his big green cardigan and the trackpants he’d changed into, with his feet tucked up under him on the chair, and he kept licking paprika off his thumb.
The kitchen was the warmest room with the hob on. They’d shut the door to the hall to keep it in, and the window over the sink had steamed up, and Frank could hear the neighbour upstairs stomping around in what sounded like boots. Probably as cold as they were. He felt a bit sorry for her and then forgot about her, because Danny had put down his spoon and was looking at him.
“What?”
“You’ve got goulash on your beard.”
Frank wiped at it. Danny shook his head. Frank wiped the other side. Danny sighed and stood up, and came round the table, and instead of reaching for the napkin he climbed onto Frank’s lap, one knee either side of his thighs on the kitchen chair, and the chair creaked under both of them in a way that made Frank grab the table edge.
“It’ll break.”
“It won’t break. You bought them. You said they were oak.”
“I say a lot of things.” Frank settled his hands on Danny’s hips. Danny was forty-two and had been going to the gym three times a week since his birthday in March out of what he called spite, and Frank could feel it in the thickness of his thighs, and in the new firm weight of him through the cardigan. Danny leaned in and licked the corner of Frank’s mouth, slow, where the goulash must have been, and then kissed him properly.
He tasted like paprika and red wine. Frank opened his mouth and let Danny in and slid his hands up under the cardigan to Danny’s back, which was still a little chilled, and pulled him closer, so that Danny’s belly pressed against his and he could feel him getting hard through two pairs of trackpants.
“We said bed,” Frank said against his mouth.
“The bedroom’s an ice box.” Danny rocked his hips down, once, and Frank’s breath went. “It’s warm in here.”
“There’s a pot on the stove.”
“Turn it off, then.”
Frank reached back and twisted the knob without looking, and the little blue ring of flame died, and the kitchen immediately felt a degree colder. Danny shivered and pressed in harder against his chest.
“See,” Frank said. “Now you’ve done it.”
“Then warm me up,” Danny said.
It was Danny’s idea to take the duvet into the living room, and Frank’s idea to drag the mattress off the spare bed, which was a terrible idea that took twenty minutes and one stubbed toe and a lot of swearing in the hallway. But when it was done they had a nest on the living room floor in front of the little electric fire they’d found in the back of the hall cupboard, its two bars glowing orange, and the telly off, and the curtains shut against the street.
Danny knelt on the mattress and watched Frank strip.
He’d watched Frank undress more times than he could count, and he still liked it. Frank did it without any fuss at all, like a man getting ready for a bath. He let the dressing gown drop on the sofa and hauled the hoodie off by the back of the neck, and the jumper came with it, and then he peeled off the old Motörhead T-shirt Danny kept trying to throw out and tossed it after them. The fire lit him orange down one side and caught the hair across his chest, mostly silver now, where it thickened into a line and ran down over the big soft curve of his belly. Danny wanted to put his face in it.
So he did. He shuffled forward on his knees and wrapped his arms round Frank’s thick waist and pressed his cheek against Frank’s stomach, just above the waistband of his trackpants, and breathed him in. He smelled of the soap he always bought and faintly of onions from the kitchen.
“You all right down there?” Frank’s hand came down on his head.
“I’m warming up.”
“Is that what we’re calling it.” Frank’s fingers moved in his hair. Danny turned his head and kissed the soft skin below Frank’s navel, and then lower, and hooked his fingers in the waistband and pulled it down slowly, and Frank’s cock came free against his cheek, half hard and heavy.
Danny looked up at him. Frank looked down, glasses still pushed up in his hair, face flushed from the fire.
“Go on, love,” Frank said, rough. “Take it.”
Danny took him in his mouth and felt him get hard there, fattening up on his tongue, which was his favourite thing in the world and he’d never told anyone that, not even Frank. He sucked slowly, wet, one hand wrapped round the base and the other flat on Frank’s belly, feeling it tense and soften every time Frank breathed. Above him Frank started talking, the way he did, low and dirty and a little bit amazed.
“Oh, that’s it. Look at you. Fuck, Dan, your mouth. Eleven years and you still suck me like you’re starving. That’s it, take it deeper, there you go, nice and slow.”
Danny took him all the way down, grey hair tickling his nose, throat squeezing round the head, and held there as long as he could, and pulled off gasping with spit on his chin.
“Christ,” Frank said. “Come up here.”
Frank got him onto his back on the mattress, which was not that easy with a man who’d been doing spite squats since March, and dragged the green cardigan and the T-shirt under it off over Danny’s head, and pulled Danny’s trackpants off, and threw the lot at the sofa. Then he knelt between Danny’s knees and looked.
Danny lay flushed all the way down his chest, fists in the duvet, lips parted, watching him. The fire turned one side of him gold and picked out the dark hair scattered over his pecs and trailing down his stomach to where his cock lay hard and curved against his belly, the tip wet.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m allowed to stare. I live here.”
Frank reached back for the bottle of lube, which Danny had fetched from the bedroom drawer during the mattress operation and left on the arm of the sofa like a promise, and warmed some between his fingers before he touched him. Eleven years of cold hands had taught him that. He stroked Danny’s cock slowly with one slick hand and pressed a finger of the other against his hole, and circled, and Danny’s breath went ragged.
“Frank.”
“I know.”
“Frank, come on.”
“Patience.” He pushed one finger in, slow, and Danny’s back arched off the mattress. Frank watched his face while he worked it in and out and then added another, twisting, feeling for it, and when he found it Danny shouted and grabbed Frank’s wrist.
“There. Oh fuck, there, there. Keep doing that.”
“I’m not stopping.” Frank crooked his fingers again and watched Danny’s whole body jolt. “Look at you. Look at you on my fingers. You want my cock, don’t you?”
“Yes. Please. I want it. Frank, I want your cock, please.”
Frank slicked himself and knelt up and pushed Danny’s knees back, and Danny hooked his hands behind them to hold himself open, and Frank lined up and pressed in. Slow. He always went slow at first, because he was thick and he knew it, and he watched Danny’s face as he sank in, watched his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth fall open and his chest heave.
“Okay?”
“Too big,” Danny breathed. “Oh my God, Frank, you’re too fucking big, I can’t take it all. No, don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop. Give it all to me.”
Frank gave it all to him. He sank in until his belly met the backs of Danny’s thighs and he could feel Danny’s balls against him, and Danny let out a long shaking moan that Frank felt right through his own chest. He leaned forward over him, bracing his fists on the mattress on either side of Danny’s head, so that his chest and belly settled down onto Danny’s, hot skin on hot skin, hair on hair.
“There you are,” he said. “There you are. Warm now?”
Danny laughed breathlessly and grabbed the back of Frank’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss, and Frank started to move.
He fucked him slow and deep on the spare mattress in front of the electric fire, rolling his hips, every stroke pushing his belly down into Danny’s, and Danny’s cock trapped between them getting slicked with sweat and precum. Danny’s heels dug into the backs of his thighs. Danny’s nails were in his shoulders. Danny kept up a stream of noise, “oh fuck, oh fuck, yes, Frank, give it me, give it me properly,” and Frank did, snapping his hips forward until the mattress started shifting across the rug an inch at a time.
“That’s it,” he grunted. “Take it. Take my cock. You’re so fucking tight, love, you feel so good.”
“Oh God, yes. Just like that. You’re right on it.”
The fire ticked. Upstairs the neighbour stomped across the floor and neither of them noticed. Frank got a hand under Danny’s head and held it and fucked him harder, sweat running down his back, and Danny was shouting now, properly shouting, “Fuck me, fuck me, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come on your belly,” and Frank said, “Go on then, do it, come for me,” and pressed down so that Danny’s cock was crushed between their stomachs, and ground against it with every stroke.
Danny came with a cry that cracked in the middle. Frank felt it, hot and wet between their bellies, felt Danny clench round him in waves, and that was it for him. He buried himself deep, groaned Danny’s name into his neck, and came so hard his vision greyed at the edges, pulsing into him again and again while Danny held on to him and made little shocked noises in his ear.
They lay there. Frank’s full weight was on him and he knew he should move, and Danny’s arms tightened round his back every time he tried.
“You’re squashing me,” Danny said eventually.
“Do you want me to get off?”
“No.”
Frank laughed into his shoulder and stayed exactly where he was.
Danny was the one who noticed that the mess between their bellies was going cold, and that the electric fire, which was older than both of them, had started to smell faintly of burning dust.
“Shower,” he said. “Before we set the flat on fire.”
“The water’ll be cold. Boiler.”
“The shower’s electric, genius. It’s on its own heater.”
Frank lifted his head and blinked at him. “Is it?”
“Eleven years, Frank.”
They went down the hall naked, which was a mistake, and ran the last few steps into the bathroom yelping like idiots. The bathroom was small and tiled white and had a window that never quite shut, and it was the coldest room in the flat. Danny hit the switch on the shower and it roared into life, and after an agonising half minute of standing there with his arms wrapped round himself and Frank pressed up against his back for warmth, the water ran hot.
They got in together. There wasn’t room, there was never room, Frank took up most of the tray on his own, but Danny got in front of him under the water and Frank’s belly settled against the small of his back and his arms came round him and they just stood there while the steam built up and the tiles fogged over.
“Hi,” Frank said into his wet hair.
“Hi.”
Frank soaped his hands and washed Danny’s chest, slow, and his stomach, where the mess had dried. His hands were big and careful. Danny closed his eyes and let his head fall back against Frank’s shoulder.
“I didn’t mind the boiler,” Danny said. “Tonight. I thought I’d mind.”
“Me neither.” Frank kissed his temple. “Thursday, though. You’ll mind by Thursday.”
“I’ll mind by Wednesday,” Danny said, and turned round in his arms, and put his hands flat on Frank’s belly under the running water, and this time they were warm.
They put the mattress back on the spare bed in the morning, or rather Frank did, grumbling, while Danny made tea. The goulash was still on the stove, gone solid. The electric fire went back in the hall cupboard behind the hoover.
But the bedroom was still freezing, so that night they dragged the mattress out again and dug the electric fire back out from behind the hoover, and the night after that, and on Thursday when the boiler man came and banged on the pipes for an hour and the radiators finally coughed and clanked and started ticking warm again, the spare mattress was still lying on the living room floor in front of the dead fire, rumpled, with the duvet half off it and two mugs next to it on the rug.
The boiler man looked at it. He looked at Frank, standing in the living room doorway in his dressing gown. He looked at Danny, in the hallway behind him in the green cardigan.
“Cosy,” he said.
“You have no idea,” Frank said, and paid him double anyway.