I slept with my partner last night.  My very male partner.  Although as I recall we got very little sleep.  I always wondered about that phrase ‘slept with’.  As a euphemism for sex it’s not very accurate now is it?  Believe me, if you’re sleeping through it, something is going very wrong indeed.  Didn’t sleep through it last night.

I’m avoiding the subject, I know.  The subject in question being the sudden change in my sex life.  I had sex with Chris.  And enjoyed it.  I’m not sure which one of those facts I’m having the most trouble with.

It’s not even like we got drunk.  I knew what I was doing.  I had it all worked out in my head.  I should have got my mind around the concept by now.  After all I’ve had three weeks to think about it, three weeks to plan it and come to terms with what it would mean.  Only I’m beginning to realise that thinking it out logically has nothing to do with experiencing it.

It’s been three weeks since Chris admitted he loves me, and I must admit that took me by surprise.  Surprise – what an understatement.  As far as I knew, Chris was straight.  As straight as me.  Only that’s not really an accurate statement, is it?  Or maybe it’s all too accurate. 

It’s too damn early for this.

Chris is asleep.  He looks peaceful for once.  He’s curled up on his side, facing the window, facing me, and he’s stolen the covers, which is one of the reasons that I’m up this damn early.  The cold woke me up and I wasn’t in the mood to wrestle the covers back.  Mental note to self – your new lover hogs the covers.

Oh shit.  My new lover.  This is it – this is probably permanent.  After a lifetime of avoiding commitment, Curtis, you manage to commit yourself to your male partner, or as good as.  I can still remember the catch in his voice when he asked if last night was a one night stand.  I mean, logically I’d figured out that he wouldn’t be happy with just one night, but to hear it out loud is something else.  However, if a one night stand was all I was prepared to offer him it would have been kinder not to have got into this.  I would never ever deliberately hurt Chris.  Ever.  And I’d probably shoot anyone who did.  I have this protective streak towards my partner, and it’s that that probably got me into this mess.  No one night stands.

I’m one of life’s planners.  I work out odds, calculate chances, develop strategies for survival.  It’s probably what makes me such a good operative, and I am a good operative, one of the best.  There’s no use for false modesty in CI5.  I’m good, I know it and what being good translates into is being given more dangerous assignments.  Know your strengths and know your weaknesses, and I have a few of those, one of which is currently fast asleep in the motel bed opposite.

Chris isn’t a planner.  That doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable of strategy – he is, his navy training serving him well.  But he’s a doer.  He leaps in impulsively and I hang back.  We make a good team.  I temper his impatience and he pushes me into action.  We’re a hell of a team, it has to be said.  The impulsive Yank and the cool Brit.  According to Backup we’re a legend among the new recruits.  I’m not sure I like that idea – makes me feel old, and I’m only just thirty.

It’s too good a partnership to screw up, for whatever reason, and especially if that reason is sex.

I had it all worked out.  At first I thought we could just forget about it, pretend that kiss never happened, go on as normal.  Well that idea lasted less than a day.  So when I realised that the issue wasn’t going away, I tried to figure out the best way to deal with it.  Changing partners was out of the question.  I wasn’t joking when I said we worked well together – we have one of the highest success rates in the whole organisation.  I’m not being altruistic either.  In our business success is often determined by whether you’re alive and upright at the end of the day.  If our partnership breaks up, our life expectancy goes down – for both of us, and I won’t do that to either of us.  We rely on each other.  We’re a team, and I like it that way.  Besides, he’s my friend.  What would I tell Malone?  ‘Well, see, Chris made a pass at me…’  Forget it.

So, no pretending it didn’t happen, and no splitting up of our partnership.  Once I’d eliminated those options, what was left?  We could talk about it, try to move past it and hope to hell that Chris moves on, finds someone else, someone a hell of a lot better for him than me, and finds some happiness.  Also unacceptable.  Say, sorry, don’t care pal, would you still mind stopping people from shooting me?  Would I accept that if I were Chris?  No way in hell.  I’d request another partner, so back where we were at the beginning.  And even if he didn’t request reassignment, how could I possibly expect him to concentrate on the job in hand when he has to see what he can’t have every single day.  He’d get himself killed.  Or me.

It was when I realised that getting himself killed worried me a hell of a lot more than getting me killed that I also realised there was only one possible option.  Give him what he wants.  Maybe he’ll decide he doesn’t want it anymore.  It’s the only way I can save our partnership, at least for the time being.  I’ll worry about tomorrow when we get there.  We may not – it’s dangerous, what we do.

I have been occasionally accused of being ruthless.  In fact, I’ve even been called ‘cold-blooded’ to my face.  And it would be easy to say that my sleeping with Chris was cold-blooded, dictated by logic and nothing else.  But I’ll tell you what all the agonising over the decision I’ve done boiled down to.  He’s unhappy, and I can’t stand to see him unhappy, not when it’s something I can do something about.  I don’t know why the hell it had to be me he wants or thinks he needs.  I’m moody, ruthless, flippant when I should be serious and I have a problem with faithfulness.  But wants and needs me he does.

I see them sometimes – the ghosts that lurk in his eyes.  I have no idea where they came from, any more than I know what his nightmares are about, but I can’t sit by and do nothing when I could do something.  Like I said, he’s one of my weaknesses.  And is it really so much?  I’ve slept with women I haven’t cared much about; in fact I didn’t even like some of them very much the morning after.  And I wasn’t lying when I told him that I cared more about him than anyone else.  I do, including me as it turns out.  So what kind of friend am I to turn my back on him when he needs me?  So he’s a guy.  We’re about to enter the twenty-first century, and those old taboos are out of date.  And so I’ve never thought of him sexually, or any man, come to think of it.  Well, I like to consider myself as reasonably adventurous, sexually speaking, so is it that big a deal?  Doesn’t make me gay, does it?  Besides, since I can sleep with strangers, I figured I could sure as hell get it up for my best friend, even if I had to lie back and think of Michelle Pfeiffer as I did so.

Only I didn’t have to think of anyone but Chris.  How does that terrible song go?  You fill up my senses.  He did.  I didn’t need any fantasies to get into the whole experience.  Maybe it’s because I was excited by the whole taboo element, but I don’t think so.  I think it’s because it was Chris.  Looked like Chris, felt like Chris, smelt like Chris.  Familiar enough not to be intimidating, but new enough to be intriguing and exhilarating.  And yes, arousing.  I certainly came hard enough, and so did he.  And for the first time in my sexual life, I didn’t feel the need to collect my clothes, make excuses and get the hell out of there.  Which is a novelty, I’ll admit.  So, to sum up, great sex followed by no panic impulse.  I could get used to this.

I’m sitting on the windowsill and waiting for the sun to come up.  I like to watch it if I’m awake.  An odd streak of romanticism in a cynic like me.  A new day, a new opportunity to get yourself killed.  But even now, as I watch him in the dim pre-dawn light streaming in from the window, I think about what he smells like – uniquely Chris.  I wonder if I could get him to make that sound again, the one he made when I nibbled my way up the inside of his thigh last night.  I wonder what it would be like to taste myself on his lips if I came in his mouth.  I wonder what he would taste like if he came in mine, and I feel the first stirrings of desire.

So it’s not love, at least not romantic love.  But I do love him as a friend.  He’s my best friend, and last night I made him happy.  For a short time at least he forgot his demons.  I can live with that.  Long may it last.