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Gheorghe brought with him a trimmer, a small electric thing that he keeps in the mirror cabinet above the basin in the bog. He doesn’t shave, not like Johnny does, but at least once a week he stands leaning over the basin with that small trimmer in his hands. Johnny comes with him, every time. It’s a bit daft.
He didn’t think he would ever have this - he didn’t want it. A warm, soft, and all too forgiving man, standing right there in his home, glancing over at him ever so often. Johnny sits perched on the bog-seat, and has to stop himself from getting up, from leaning his head against the warm expanse of Gheorghe’s jumper-covered back. It’s always difficult to resist.
“The bed will come tomorrow,” Gheorghe says, making a face to smooth out his cheek.
“Right.”
They’ve been squashed together in Johnny’s way too small one for three weeks. He’s never slept so well before in his life.
Gheorghe is looking down at him, making that face he does when he’s about to laugh. Johnny is helpless to that face.
“What?”
Gheorghe shakes his head and chuckles. There’s some stubble on the floor and he knows he’ll have to get the broom later or Nan’ll have a tick.
“You make a face every time you’re not telling me something. Now you made that face.”
He just shrugs. The words scratch in his throat. I like the way ya hold me until I fall asleep. Or maybe, lying next to ya is all I’ll ever want.
But that was the first thing Gheorghe had said, when they got back. ‘We’ll need to get a bigger bed’. And Johnny had complied, because that’s what he does now, that’s who he is.
The tap is running and Gheorghe pushes the last few scatterings of his stubble down the drain. After calmly drying his hands on a towel he hunches down in front of him with his hands on Johnny’s knees.
“You’re not sad?”
The way he strokes his fingers over his cheek has Johnny going mad, has done from the start. Those soft fingers.
“No, m’alright, me,” he says.
“Then what is wrong?” There’s a furrow between Gheorghe’s brows.
Johnny reaches a hand up, still afraid, but filled with a conviction he always lacked before. He presses his thumb softly against that crease, drags it up and down to see if the crease will disappear. The last thing he wants is for Gheorghe to worry. He never wants to see that crease ever again. Gheorghe’s eyes flutter closed and Johnny leans in, presses his lips against the warm forehead in front of him. He’s always so warm.
“Just, I’d gotten used to sleepin’ with ya in me old bed, is all,” he says.
When Gheorghe’s eyes open he has to look away. “Now you’ll probably kip all the way over on the other side, like. I might get cold.”
Gheorghe huffs and smiles. He’s shaking his head again. Johnny loves him. He’s known that, for a long time, in the abstract. But it hasn’t been a fully formed thought. He feels it all the way to his fingertips. Daft.
Gheorghe strokes soft fingers in the nape of his neck, places a kiss on his right temple, his cheek, his stubbly jaw. “I will always sleep close to you.”
“Mm, ya say that now. But think about that wide, new bed of yours.”
“You’re right. Maybe I’ll need it for myself, you can stay on the sofa downstairs so I can enjoy the new bed,” he says, and he’s smiling. Always smiling. Always making Johnny smile right back, because he’s being ridiculous isn’t he?
He nods and kisses him, firmly. “Ya see? Bored with me already.”
“Yes, you are very boring,” Gheorghe says and kisses him again. “So boring.”
“Mhm, boring old me.”
Gheorghe softly kisses his bottom lip and Johnny feels his warm tongue. It still makes him shiver. He parts his lips for him, probably always will, and things turn heated. Johnny never thought in a million years that he would be snogging in the bog at home, but he does not mind one bit. Really, it's more like his new favourite thing.
“Maybe we can go sleep together in your small old bed for the last time, now?” Gheorghe says, a bit out of breath.
Johnny only manages a quick succession of nods. He’s got one hand on Gheorghe’s shoulder, the other has made its way beneath the layers of his clothes, desperate for the strong back underneath.
Gheorghe pulls him up and they come face to face, breathing the same air.
“And it’s not my new bed, you know? It is our new bed,” he says, looking just as sweet as he always does.
Johnny can’t look into those big brown eyes for long without getting dizzy. He nods. “Yeah, alright. Our bed.”