Small fiction short. A gentleman struggles with anxiety at a party.
Just a little piece! 800w, M/M, rated T, an anxious gentleman soothed by his valet.
George’s skin is prickling under the thick material of his suit, makes him feel like he’s going to ripple right out of his clothes and his own flesh both. Aneurin’s expression is as calm and cool as the surface of the lake outside as he adjusts the collar of George’s shirt, the lapels of his coat. George only wishes he could take some of his valet’s calm for his own.
“You can’t make up some excuse for me?” he asks as Aneurin buttons up his waistcoat, strokes his fingers over its twin panels to ensure the fabric rests smoothly against his belly. “Say I’ve the flu,” George begs, “or a cold, or a sudden headache — ”
“If we use too many excuses, sir, your social circle will either come to the conclusion that you’re lying, or dying.”
“I might as we well be.”
“Two hours,” Aneurin tells him softly, and his eyes are so warm and so tender as his palm comes up, delicately cupping the underside of his jaw. His thumb slides delicately against George’s skin, tapping against a bit of rough skin where George’s hand was shaking so much earlier, shaving himself, that he nicked it — Aneurin had taken over the shave from there.
Aneurin’s lips brush against his, and George closes his eyes, tipping into the other man’s body.
“George,” the valet murmurs in his ears, and George fists his hands — gently — in the back of Aneurin’s jacket, his face dropping to the other man’s shoulder. His nose buried in Aneurin’s neck, he inhales, taking in the scent of him, of the product in his hair, his delicate aftershave, the starch in his collar. “Two hours,” he says quietly. “The music won’t be too loud, and people will only make small talk.”
George withdraws, and he smooths down where he’d been gripping Aneurin’s jacket. “Aneurin.”
“George.”
“I wish I didn’t have to. I don’t know any of these people, my father’s people, I don’t understand them, and they all despise me.”
“So what if they do?” Aneurin asks as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, and squeezes the side of his neck. “Once your sentence is served, your duty to society concluded for the evening, you need not see any of them again for some time.”
“Until the next awful party.”
Aneurin’s smile is an anodyne thing, surprisingly soothing. “Precisely.”
* * *
George, drink in hand, resists the urge to stir it consistently. Any sort of fiddling or repetitive movement has to be resisted for all the way it might soothe his rattled nerves — people see that sort of thing as an icebreaker, a prompt for conversation.
He hates ice breakers. Ice is there for a reason.
For a few minutes, no one speaks to him, and he keeps his eye subtly on Aneurin as he speaks quietly with the footmen, helps serve finger food, pours drinks. He realises with a sinking feeling that his sister is approaching, and he forces a smile onto his face as she takes him by the arm, leading him to some friends of hers.
He does his best to be polite, to ask the right sort of questions, to seem interested — she comments that he looks pale and drawn, and even comments on the whiteness of his knuckles. For Christ’s sake, even the way he holds a glass must be commented on and brought up to the light of public conversation!
By the time she releases him and he excuses himself to select a sandwich from a platter he is far too nauseous to actually eat, there is sweat soaking under his jacket, and his stomach is roiling.
The wife of a man his father works with, a self-confessed painter — and he believes it, because he feels an astonishing moment of relief seeing that she’s got pigment staining her wrists and the heels of her palms, seeing that at least one other person is here is less than picture-perfect — engages him in conversation about the weather.
He really does try his best.
He’s physically exhausted by the time he can escape. His every muscle aches from tension, and he had had to rely several times on the subtle breathing exercises Aneurin had taught him to keep from panicking when people unexpectedly clap him on the back — he does them again as he rises up the stairs.
Aneurin has a bath waiting for him, but George collapses into his arms before he approaches the tub.
“Bathe with me,” he says.
“We oughtn’t.”
“Please,” George whispers, and Aneurin strokes through his sweat damp hair, his expression twisted in sympathy.
“You did well,” he says. “But your heart is pounding.”
“Let it rest against yours. You’ll set me right.”
Aneurin sighs, and softly laughs, shaking his head. “When you say things like that, I’m powerless to resist you.”
“As I intended,” says George, and hugs him tighter.
FIN.
Want some similar valets and gentlemen?
Try:
https://johannestevans.medium.com/wants-and-cravings-ed6d93d51a15
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