A/N, please read: I meant to write a Christmas one-shot, but this came out instead. It might be a result of going to my high school reunion a few months back, who knows? Anyway, even though this story isn't Christmas-y at all, do consider it my Christmas card to you people out there. I'm not fond of warnings (this is an M-rated story after all, that should be warning enough), but this story contains mild heterosexual sex and mild drug-use. It might also be hiddeously boring, but I suppose you'll have to read it to find out.

So there. Happy Holidays everyone. :)

God bless,

Sirivinda.

I was 18 years old and had just graduated from high school. It was 1999, and it was back in Sweden.

"What are you going to do now?" My mother asked me at the party she was hosting in honour of my graduating with grades that through their mediocrity reflected both my intelligence and my laziness.

"I suppose I'll travel for a bit, or something," I replied, shrugging.

"How are you planning to finance that?" She asked, none too impressed. I think she was hoping that I would continue straight to university.

Another shrug.

"Niklas," she said warningly, "if you think you're using your savings to piss about in Thailand for six months, you need to think again."

"It's my money, though," I argued. The truth was that I had no plans whatsoever, travelling or otherwise. My classmates had all been very busy getting their university applications ready, or coming up with the details of impossibly ambitious travelling plans. Me, well, not so much. I had spent the last term of my high school education mostly idling away. Every now and then, I jumped in to play drums in a friend's band, but that was the full extent of my extra curricular activities. At the time, it seemed enough. Thinking back, all I can say is I was bloody lazy.

"We'll talk about this later, young man," my mother said. "Not now. It's time for you to open your presents."

Both sets of grandparents gave me beer glasses, and both sets of grandparents blushed slightly that they had bought their grandson something alcohol-related. My older sister Camilla and her husband gave me a watch (which I still wear daily). Aunts, uncles and cousins gave me glass bowls, coffee cups and a variety of decorative glass objects of the kind that people tend to buy only for those they don't really know and don't really care about enough to find out what they would really want.

My mother waited until everyone else had congratulated me, then she summoned my father so that they could give their carefully rehearsed speech about my development from "little boy to young man" before presenting me with a laptop computer.

"Shit. Thanks mum," I said, hugging her. "Dad." I shook his hand.

"We wanted to give you something to remember your graduation by, but I'm sure you'll remember it anyway, and I know you wanted one of those." She nodded at the computer, then wiped her eyes with a white tissue.

"I did, yeah." I looked around the people who had gathered in my parents' garden for the do. "So... Uh, should we eat now?"

My mother laughed, giving me a freaky look that I remembered seeing in photographs from my first seven or so birthdays. A kind of indulgent, my-aren't-you-something type of laugh that had nothing to do with being amused and everything to do with feeling awkward and emotional.

"Yes, let's eat," she said. "Before it's time for Niklas to go and join his friends to celebrate his new-won freedom."

It was funny that she would refer to it as freedom, because I don't remember ever thinking about it like that. Before I graduated, that was probably about as free as I had ever been. I didn't need to think about a thing. I didn't have to worry about where to live, how to afford food, what to do with my life - it was all conveniently taken care of for me. On top of having no real worries, I was dubiously blessed with a father who was never really there and a mother who required nothing whatsoever from me. At 18, I had never done laundry in my life. I had a vague idea of the concept, but in practical terms, I was useless. Laundry was something my mother did, end of story. I couldn't cook beyond the mushroom flavoured noodles I sometimes had for lunch when I got back from school and it was still a while until dinner (which, of course, my mother cooked for me). I did clean my room - just about. Even then, it was just a matter of clearing away emptied coffee mugs and dirty underwear so that my mother could reach to vacuum properly. In short, though I would hesitate to say that I was spoilt since I never felt spoilt, I was utterly and completely incapable of looking after myself.

Maybe that's why my mother laughed when I finally announced my post graduation plans to her. Bear with me.

Back then, my best friend was a girl called Hanna. Hanna and I had grown up together, and our friendship was more a habit than a preference. Hanna's family lived only a block away from mine, and our mothers knew each other since their school days. Hanna was what you might call a "bad influence". When we were six or seven, she convinced me to eat ants. A year or so later, she bullied me into showing her my willy. A year or so after that, she made a "soup" from water and spices and force-fed it to me. Generally, many uncomfortable experiences from my childhood originate with Hanna.

People - including my parents and Hanna's - always presumed that we would end up as a couple. Sure enough, when we were kids, I was Hanna's boyfriend for a week or so every now and then. However, Hanna claimed she didn't fancy me, and I sure as hell didn't fancy her. Not that there was anything wrong with her, I mean. As far as girls go, she was attractive. Long, red hair and grassy green eyes. Pale as a ghost with a smattering of birthmarks over her limbs. She was never one of those really popular girls, but she never lacked suitors. Most of those suitors were very unimpressed by her close friendship with me, but Hanna didn't care. Neither did I.

People - including my parents and Hanna's - also presumed that we "did things." That is, they presumed that when Hanna stayed over with me, we were at the very least experimenting. Nothing could have been further from the truth. We talked about sex, sure we did, but with one single exception, we never did anything of an even remotely sexual nature after we reached our teens. It was just once, when we were 16, when her parents were out of town, and we got pissed together. It was just the two of us, and by the time we started undressing each other in her parents' living room sofa, I think we were both too drunk (on wine we had stolen from her parents' modest cellar) to be quite aware of who the other was.

She did me first. I was sitting stiffly in the sofa, stark bollock naked. Even though I was drunk, I remember thinking how uncomfortable the leather sofa was against my skin. She sat next to me, still almost fully dressed. I was blushing fiercely as she moved her pale, delicate hand over my erection. Endlessly embarrassed, but too horny to ask her to stop. It didn't exactly take long before I gasped and came over the glass top of her parents' coffee table.

"Eww, Nicke, fuck's sake," she said, wiping her hand on my belly. She later told me it was the first time she'd ever seen a guy ejaculate, and that she didn't quite understand what the hell had just happened.

"Sorry, sorry..." I panted. "I'll just, uh..." Then I wiped it off with one of my socks.

"Never mind," she said (after I had cleaned it up, of course), "Come here..."

Together, we quickly removed her clothes. I remember that she had Winnie the Pooh on her bra, which struck me as both amusing and a little inappropriate. She clearly didn't trust me to do anything to her on my own, so she put my hand between her legs and her hand over mine, and that's how it happened. It is still the only time I've ever felt a woman's sex and fascinating though it was, I was turned on and put off in equal measures. If I had been undecided before that time with Hanna, after it, I knew for sure that women weren't for me.

Hanna and I didn't go to the same school, and I had no ideas what she planned to do after we were done. I can't remember that we talked about it until we met up two days after graduation. We were taking a walk by the lake, gossiping about what had taken place at our respective graduation parties, when the subject came up.

"I think I'm probably going to apply for business school in, like, Stockholm or somewhere," she said. "Not yet though. I mean, I just want to relax for a year. I've been working my arse off getting good grades, and if I go to business school I'll have to work my arse off again, so I just want to take it easy for a while."

"What, like, staying with your parents?" I asked.

"Oh hell no!" She said emphatically. "I need to get out. That's another thing. Stefan and Mattias are driving me mad. I can't stand it."

Stefan and Mattias were Hanna's younger twin brothers. At the time, they were 10, and I could certainly see how they could be a handful.

"What are you going to do then?" I asked. "Travel?"

"Actually, I was thinking about being an au pair for a year. Go away somewhere, look after someone else's kids, learn English properly... I've found a few agencies, so now I'm just trying to put together an application."

I thought about that for a while, then asked, "How does that actually work? Do they pay you, or what?"

"Yeah, sure. I mean, it's not like, proper wages or anything. You stay with a family, and they'll give you food and whatnot, and you get pocket money."

That made me think. It would solve the seemingly impossible equation of travelling whilst not spending my savings. Not to mention that it would solve the problem of what the hell I was going to do now when I had graduated.

"What qualifications do you need?" I asked Hanna.

"Well, none. Formally. You need to be able to look after kids, I suppose. Why, are you tempted?"

I made some stupid snorting noise, not wanting to admit that I was actually quite interested. The following days, I searched online for au pair agencies. Eventually, I found one in particular that I thought looked serious. I was pretty sure that I would be able to look after children. How difficult could it possibly be, I thought. The light housework that I would apparently be required to perform should have had me thinking twice, but it never even crossed my mind that this might be a problem.

My mother, however, immediately realised the obstacles. Which is why she laughed when I told her about my intentions to apply for a job as an au pair in London.

She said, "Honey, are you going to be looking after children? I can't really imagine that..."

"Don't see why not," I said, a little taken aback at her lack of support. "I've been looking after Markus and that lot well enough."

Markus was my seven-year-old cousin, and 'that lot' referred to my other cousins around the same age, a total of four kids.

"You play with them at family gatherings and whenever they start fussing, you go and tell their parents, Niklas," she told me, serious all of a sudden.

"Well, maybe I'll grow with the task," I said, trying to look like I meant it, when in actual fact, my mother had made me doubt how good this idea was.

"Maybe you will. No, I think it'll do you good. Teach you a bit of responsibility."

"Exactly."

And that was that. I left my mother and went to write my application. I considered lying about my complete inexperience with household chores, but in the end, I decided honesty was the best option. I can't remember the exact words of my application, but I know I wrote something about having limited experience but being very willing to learn. The agency asked for a photo, so I attached one that had been taken in my grandparents' garden and that made me look like a poster boy for Sweden (or the Nazi party, for that matter): tall (I was 1.78 metres), tanned, blue eyes and blonde hair. I figured I looked friendly enough in that photo that it might convince a potential employer of my merits despite my lack of experience with household work.

It didn't take long until I was called to an interview by the agency. A woman in her mid 50's asked me questions about children and housework, what my plans were for the future and how I felt about staying away from my parents for so long. I gave the best answers I could, and she didn't seem too shocked by anything, which I took as a good sign. At the end of the interview, she asked me if I wanted to stay with the family for six or twelve months.

I said twelve. In at the deep end, so to speak. And it's not as if I couldn't get out if it didn't work.

She warned me that most families preferred female au pairs, and said that my best bet was with a family with only boys. I didn't mind looking after boys, but I felt a little discouraged by the thought that people would turn me down because I was male. This particular imbalance was reinforced in the following week, when I learnt that Hanna had already found a family even though she had done her interview a day after me.

Two weeks later, last week of June, I was prepared to give up. I had heard nothing, and was about to start looking for other jobs when the agency finally got back to me.

"They have two boys, a two-year-old and a four-year-old... Let's see... The father is a banker; the mother is the manager of a cosmetics boutique. They've had au pairs since the four-year-old was a baby, and all the previous au pairs have had good things to say about them."

As she was talking, I was getting increasingly nervous. When she told me that if I was still interested, she would pass my phone number on to them and they would contact me, my hands were shaking.

"I'm still interested..." I said, though I can't imagine that I sounded very convincing. "What do they want from an au pair though? I mean, is it just looking after the kids or is it, you know, house work and that...?"

I heard her flick through papers before she answered.

"They have a cleaner who comes in twice a week, so you don't have to do the cleaning. Obviously, picking up after the children, and keeping your own room neat and tidy, that's all your responsibility. Their primary interest is that the boys are looked after, though."

"Oh, ok... I mean, that's good."

"So I'll contact them with your details then, and they'll ring you within the next couple of days?"

"Ok, yeah. Sure."

When we hung up, I was nervous as hell.

They phoned the following day. My mother, bless her, answered the phone. My stomach clenched as I heard her stuttering something in her schoolgirl English that she had learnt 30 years ago and not used since. I walked out to the kitchen, where my mother was clasping the phone to her ear with a look of mild panic on her face.

"Here!" She whispered urgently to me, handing me the cordless phone. I took it and retreated to my room, disinclined to let my mother hear me speaking English.

"Hallo?" I said, once I had closed the door to my room.

"Hallo there," came a pleasant female voice from the other end. "Is this Niklas...? Niklas... I'm sorry; I don't know how you pronounce your last name. Lindstrom, is it?"

"Lindström, yeah," I said, wondering why I was even bothering to correct what was essentially a pretty perfect pronunciation. I closed my eyes in annoyance with myself. "Yeah, this is he."

"Hallo Niklas. This is Jennifer Barton; I got your number from the au pair agency."

"Right, yes, of course," I blabbered. "I mean. Yeah."

"You're interested in working for us? If you were, we would love to arrange something pretty quickly. You see, we've had a girl working for us for the past year, but she's returning to Denmark next week, and ideally, we'd like for you to take over straight away. We understand that it might be a little soon to come next week, but could we say two weeks, do you think?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. I mean, I'm not really doing anything at the moment, so whenever is best for you, really."

We chatted for what felt like forever about my experience with kids and housework. She seemed surprisingly unbothered by the fact that I admitted that my experience in both fields was limited. I was wondering why, when she gave me a clue. We were talking about what I liked to do in my spare time, when she mentioned their previous au pair.

"She was a lovely girl in many ways, and we do encourage our au pairs to socialise with other people than us, please don't think anything else. But this girl started-- Well, I'll be frank with you, Niklas. In the end, she was bringing boys around the house. It's not a good influence on the boys. So we decided that it would be better with a male au pair. Though obviously we don't want you to bring girls back all the time." She gave a little laugh, but there was no mistaking that she was serious.

"Oh, I wouldn't," I told her. "I'm--religious."

I cringed. Both because I couldn't believe that I had been so close to tell her that I was gay when I was still firmly in the closet, and because I had told her that I was religious when I wasn't.

"I mean," I added, trying to nip my lie in the bud, "I don't date much. You don't have to worry about that."

"Oh, good," she said.

I hadn't been with the Barton's for more than two weeks when it transpired that Jennifer's real reason for wanting a male au pair had less to do with bringing dates back to her house than it did with her jealousy. Their previous au pair had, Jennifer decided, taken too obvious an interest in Mr. Barton. It would have been funny, if it wasn't so tragic.

.

My mother managed not to cry as we parted at the airport in early July 1999. My father, as per usual, managed not to show any emotions whatsoever. As for me... I would be lying if I didn't say that I was feeling a little touched by it all. For the first time in my life, I was going to be staying away from my parents for longer than a week. It wasn't quite like moving away from home, I suppose, since the unspoken agreement was that I would return after a year and live with them yet again.

I was a little torn between feeling a dizzying sense of freedom and a sickening sense of nervousness. After all, I hadn't met the Barton's, and there was always a possibility that I wouldn't get on with them. I had spoken to Jennifer Barton on the phone a couple of times, but the other Barton's were still a mystery.

I knew that Jennifer would be picking me up at Heathrow, and I was very curious to see what she looked like. As I walked out to the crowd of waiting people, I scanned the signs for one with my name on it. It didn't take me long to find it, and when I laid eyes on Jennifer, I remember thinking that her looks somehow corresponded to her voice. She had long, dark brown hair and dark, alert eyes. She was by all standards very attractive. In a flowery summer dress, she looked like the perfect English rose. I took a deep breath and walked up to her.

"Oh, Niklas?" She said before I had the time to say anything.

"Mrs. Barton?" I extended my hand to her, and she shook it firmly.

I felt a little ridiculous calling her "Mrs. Barton," since you're always on a first name basis with people in Sweden, but the agency had warned me about it. Jennifer didn't correct me, so I presumed this was the way it was done in England.

"Nice to finally meet you," she said. "How was your flight?"

She led the way to the car park as I told her about my journey. She asked about my family, what my mother had said when I decided to go away for a year, what they did, if I had any siblings. She drove out on the motorway, keeping her eyes firmly on the road, her hands firmly on the wheel and the conversation firmly going.

"You look older than 18, you know," she said after a while. "Daniel has a cousin who's your age, and he looks like he could be your son." She giggled. "Well, not quite. But he does look quite a lot younger than you."

Daniel, I knew, was Mr. Barton. The fact that I had no idea what the man looked like nor even what he sounded like, had me feeling quite nervous. I felt reasonably sure that I would be able to handle the boys, but the man of the family was a source of steadily growing nervousness for me. Paradoxically, in his absence he had turned into a looming, dominating presence. As Jennifer manoeuvred the car between other cars on what seemed like the wrong side of the road to me, I was trying to figure out what kind of man would suit her. For some reason, I imagined that he would be much older than her (despite the fact that I knew that he was 31, and she was a year younger), and that he would be a corpulent fellow. I stopped it when I realised that the image I had was of my own father when he was that age: potbelly, moustache and aviators, looking a decade older than he was.

When Jennifer finally parked her car next to another one on the driveway outside a nice Georgian house in a north London borough, I had decided not only how Daniel Barton had to look, but how the kids and the house had to look as well. Of course, I was completely wrong.

The house looked somewhat imposing and impersonal from the outside, but as soon as Jennifer opened the door, I was struck by how dark it was. The hallway had dark wooden panels, the same dark wood as the floor and the stairs. As Jennifer led me through the hallway, she pointed quickly towards the kitchen, which looked surprisingly modern.

"Daniel?" Jennifer called. "Daniel? Where are you?"

"Sitting room," came the short reply from somewhere in the depths of the house.

"Ah," Jennifer said, and motioned for me to follow her.

We walked through a dark corridor and ended up in a spacious, light sitting room. The first thing that struck me was the tasteful but unadventurous decoration of the place. It reminded me of the set of whichever British drama you like from the birth of television until the present day.

Then I noticed the man sitting in one of the heavy leather armchairs. As he spotted us, he stood up. He was tall, taller than both Jennifer and I, and lean. Elegant, somehow. Effortlessly so. A perfect example of those classic, slightly bored-looking English features. The straight nose, thin lips, floppy hair. The kind of body and attitude that can only come from rowing for Oxbridge and doing it well, sort of thing. It took me about a moment to fall in love and a moment longer than that to realise that I had to stop staring, or they'd likely send me back to Sweden straight away.

"Uh, hi," I said, offering my hand. "Niklas Lindström."

"Uh, hi," he echoed, the oh so bloody subtle sarcasm cutting through the air like a knife. "Daniel Barton." A faint smile. "Welcome."

"Thanks."

"Sit down." He nodded at a chair next to the one he'd been sitting in when we arrived. "Jen, why don't you make us some tea?"

Jennifer left the room without saying anything. I felt like I'd been left to the wolves. Attraction and fear making me want to either run away or jump him or both. Daniel crossed his long legs, sparing me a moment's glance.

"How was the flight?"

"Alright, thanks."

"You know, you're our seventh au pair, but the first male one. What made you want to do this sort of work?"

Suddenly I found myself at the job interview from hell. I was glad I had spoken to Jennifer first, because if my stay here had depended on surviving an interview with Daniel, I think I would still be in Sweden. Six feet under.

"I suppose I wanted something to do between high school and university. And I like kids, so, I suppose..."

"What university are you going to?"

"I don't know yet. Probably, uh, I don't know, maybe Uppsala or somewhere?"

I had no plans whatsoever to go to Uppsala, it just felt like what he wanted to hear, somehow.

"I went to Uppsala," he said unexpectedly. "As an exchange student. Just a year, but I enjoyed it. Back in 1988. Feels like... Actually, it feels like a lifetime ago. I learnt a bit of Swedish, but I forget most of it. And the stuff I do remember, well, I wouldn't want to scare you back to Sweden, so I won't repeat it."

I blushed, wondering whether the Swedish he knew was rude or sexual. Maybe it was the kind of stuff his mates had taught him when they were getting pissed, or maybe it was the kind of stuff his girlfriends had taught him when they were-- I stopped myself, because the mental image of Daniel having sex was the last thing I needed right then.

"Maybe later?" I said, grinning stupidly. "Actually, I don't really know where to go or what do yet. I'll have to think about it. I suppose that's partly why I wanted to do something completely different for a year. To figure that out."

At that point, Jennifer thankfully returned with the tea.

.

The house had three floors. The top one hosted all the bedrooms save mine. I had a small, reasonably private room at the end of a corridor on the second floor. The other rooms on the floor were a couple of guest rooms, a library and an office. All the public spaces were on the ground floor: kitchen, sitting room, dining room. It was a strange thing to get used to. In my parents' small villa, there were no areas where I wasn't allowed. There were no areas where guests weren't allowed. Whenever my parents had people over, they could easily bring their guests to the master bedroom to show them the new wallpaper or whatever.

The Barton's home wasn't like that. Overnight guests stayed in the bedrooms on the second floor, but I don't think any of them ever ventured up to the top floor. I never did, unless I was putting the boys to bed or getting them up. I had never set foot in Daniel and Jennifer's bedroom though. During my first month or so, I tried to explain this in cultural terms. I had heard of the English reserve and figured that maybe this was a part of that. However, after a while it just felt so natural that I stopped thinking about it. And there were plenty of other things to think about.

The boys of the family took an immediate shine to me. Four-year-old Charles and two-year-old Hugo were ecstatic to have a male au pair to look after them. Charles told me that he didn't like girls, and much preferred me. As Jennifer had told me that the boys could sometimes be a little mischievous, it felt good to have at least something working to my advantage. We soon developed habits, me and the boys. I'd wake them up by nine, get them ready, make them breakfast, then take them to a near-by park where they could meet other children and I could meet other au pairs. After a day in the park, the boys were tired enough (but not too tired) when we got home that it was no problems to get them fed, bathed and dressed in their little pyjamas and robes so that Jennifer could put them to bed when she got back from work. Most of the time, Daniel didn't get back until the boys had already been asleep for a couple of hours.

It didn't take me long to figure out that something was little bit amiss with Daniel and Jennifer's marriage. At first, it just showed as a strange coldness between them. I put it down to that English reserve I had been pondering over and didn't question it. But a month or so into my stay, I accidentally overheard an argument between them.

It was a Saturday, and as Daniel and Jennifer were having guests in the evening, I was assigned to put the boys to bed even though they were both at home. I did my usual thing, getting Charles and Hugo bathed and dressed in their bathroom (the boys had their own bathroom, which struck me as incredibly posh at first), then brought them to their bedroom. I sat with them until they fell asleep, pretending to sing them Swedish lullabies when in fact, I was singing Swedish pop songs. Once they were happily sleeping and dreaming, I turned the baby monitor on, then snuck out. As quiet as I could, so as not to wake them. I pushed their door shut and started towards the stairs. That's when I heard Daniel's voice, rash and annoyed. This was unusual, because he never really talked much at all and certainly never with any emotion in his voice. Everything about Daniel was dry wit. I like to think that this is the reason I stopped and listened.

"You're so tiresome, Jennifer, do you know that?" Daniel said. The voices came from their bedroom.

"Is that all you have to say? I'm not an idiot, you know. Don't think I don't know what you do when you 'work late', as you call it," Jennifer said, sounding as frustrated as Daniel had.

"Can we just not have this conversation right now? Victor and Sophie will be here in half an hour. Now is not the time."

Jennifer's voice was disdainful when she replied, "It's never the time with you, is it?"

Though I realise that it's impossible that I heard Daniel's sigh through a door that was not only almost closed but also quite a distance away from the top of the stairs were I was standing, it was as if though I could. I think I immediately pictured him sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose, before focusing his always just a tad condescending gaze on her.

"Look, I work late because I have to. Do you think I enjoy leaving the house before the boys wake up and getting back when they're already asleep? I don't. So if you don't have enough trust in me to believe me when I say that I'm not cheating on you, then at least believe me when I say that I'd like to be there more for the boys."

Jennifer made a snorting type of noise, and I decided that it was time to stop spying on them. I didn't want to be intrusive and I certainly didn't want to get caught.

The doorbell rang half an hour later, and when Daniel and Jennifer came downstairs, they were both looking completely at ease. During the evening, Daniel kept referring to Jennifer as "darling" and Jennifer kept smiling lovingly at him at every opportunity. I had a notion they'd kissed and made up during the half hour between the argument and the arrival of the guests, and I will admit that there was a part of me that was a little pissed off that I'd not stayed on the top floor to listen in on what had taken place.

However, I soon learnt that the only time Daniel called Jennifer "darling" was when he felt angry and distanced from her. Jennifer's counter move was to flash him that loving smile. When the guests had left, and I had cleared away the dishes (this was not expected of me, but I felt a lot easier doing that than doing nothing), I could hear the argument continue on the top floor.

I was confused at first. I remembered my parents' house, and how every little disagreement would be dealt with straight away. Whenever we argued (not that it happened all that often), my mother would insist we work it out at the very least before bedtime, saying, "Never go to sleep angry, Niklas, it's not good for your heart". Daniel and Jennifer's singsong niceties put me a little off balance. I simply wasn't used to emotions being swept under the carpet like that. But I soon learnt to appreciate it. Everything seemed to become so much easier if you could just pretend it wasn't there. So they kept pretending like "darling" could be taken at face value, and I kept pretending that I hadn't the faintest clue that they weren't the perfect couple.

And I soon discovered that though I couldn't read Daniel with the same tools that I would use to decipher my mother or father, it didn't mean that it was impossible to decrypt his behaviour. For example, I learnt that he would only ever correct my English if he were in a good mood. If he was angry or if his mind was on other things, he wouldn't bother. The first couple of weeks, I had thought it was the other way around. I would say something like, "It doesn't supposed to do that," and Daniel would say, "It isn't supposed to do that," in a voice that made me think that he had had it with me and just wanted to send me back home.

Jennifer didn't interact when she was angry or frustrated. Instead, she would do a lot of aggressive-looking gardening. Needless to say, the garden was perfect.

My crush on Daniel didn't exactly wane, as I had hoped it would. It was a good thing he spent so little time at home, or I think I would have given my game away much sooner. I tried my best not to let anyone notice, and I succeeded decently until the evening in November when Daniel and I played tennis.

Every Thursday evening, Daniel would play tennis with one of his old friends from university. That evening (a couple of weeks after my 19th birthday), however, the friend was in bed with flu or something but didn't phone until Daniel was ready to leave. I was walking down the stairs when I saw Daniel with his jacket on, tennis racket sticking out from his holdall, talking on the phone in a short, irritated voice. Before I had managed to get down all the steps, Daniel hung up and fixed me with a look that had me worrying that something really serious was up.

"Do you play tennis?" He asked.

"Uh, well, I played sometimes in school, but I don't know... I mean, I'm not completely sure about the rules and I'm not really all that good, and--"

"Christ, Niklas. Just answer the damn question. None of your stupid Swedish humbleness, please."

"Uh, okay, I guess I do, then."

"Alistair is ill, so I'm out of a tennis partner. Do you fancy a game?"

"Sure! I mean. Yeah, sure." I gave him a nervous smile, which he returned with an impatient stare.

"Go get some gym stuff and I'll fetch my spare racket."

I literally ran back up the stairs to my room, where I dug out a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. I stuffed them into a backpack, then got my towel from the bathroom and put that in as well. All in all, it probably took me a minute. Even so, Daniel was already waiting for me when I came back down.

All he said was, "Good," and then we were on our way.

During our game, I managed to score a grand total of 15 points against Daniel, but I like to think that I offered at least a little resistance. It was hardly surprising that he would beat me, given that he played every week and I hadn't played in the last six months. When the game was over, we were both completely and utterly exhausted. My navy t-shirt was almost black under my arms, on my chest and at the small of my back. Daniel was wearing a white tennis shirt so his sweat didn't show as much, but I noticed he was at least as sweaty as I was. I also noticed Daniel seemed to be in a much better mood.

"Good game, Niklas," he said, shaking my hand. "Never mind the score, you played really well."

I just smiled, because my mouth was so dry I wasn't sure I'd be able to talk. Daniel seemed to recognise the reason behind my silence and offered me a water bottle. I took a couple of deep gulps before handing it back.

"Did you bring a towel?" Daniel asked.

"Yeah."

"Good. Time for a shower, then."

"Yeah."

The changing room had that peculiar ingrained smell of sweat that ought to be unpleasant but isn't. The place consisted of two spaces: one square room with wooden benches, one shower room with white tiles. The two rooms were about the same size, and had a completely open plan. Even in the shower, there was nothing to separate one shower from the next. It suddenly struck me that I would be showering, naked, with Daniel. Though we had changed together before the game, it had been quick and showing very little skin. Showering together was a completely different kettle of fish. I was getting nervous.

Daniel, of course, didn't even seem to be aware that I was in the room. He peeled off his sweaty shirt, before sitting down to get rid off shoes and socks. I closed my eyes for a moment, and then walked over to my own stuff, which was next to Daniel's but still with a fair bit of space between. I focused on sweaty gym wear, on towels and bottles of shower gel, and before I knew it, Daniel had left for the showers. I heard him turn on one of them, the water splashing against the tiles. I took a deep breath, and then walked in after him.

There were twelve showerheads in total, spread out along the walls. I panicked a little bit, wondering what would seem like the least conspicuous shower to use when there were only the two of us in there, then took one opposite Daniel. So far, I had managed without registering more of his naked body than the general presence of it. I felt proud of myself. Closing my eyes against the spray of water, I rubbed shower gel over tired muscles.

Through the sound of water in my ears, I heard Daniel say something. I got my head away from the spray, wiped my eyes and looked over at him.

I tried to maintain eye contact with him, and said, "Sorry?"

"I only said that you're probably going to be quite sore tomorrow. I've some liniment at home that you can use if you want. Remind me of it later."

When he turned back to face the wall, shampooing his hair, I couldn't help but to look at him. His skin was as pale as I had imagined, and just as perfectly smooth. As his hands worked through his thick hair, the muscles in his back moved underneath wet skin. I was hypnotized. Guiltily, I let my gaze travel down his spine, to the narrow waist and the perfect, perfect, bum. Small and tight, but well-rounded and firm. To my absolute horror, I felt myself growing hard at the sight.

With all the determination I had, I turned away from the sight. If I had hoped that looking at a white tile wall would help, I had been overly optimistic. Denied of the real thing, my mind decided to complete the view itself. I had seen Daniel's taut stomach and chest in the changing room earlier, I had seen his legs on the court when he was playing in his shorts. The only thing I hadn't seen of him was what was between his strong thighs, which of course led to my pretty much obsessive focus on it. My own cock was desperately pointing upward, that treacherous limb.

I heard Daniel turn off his shower, then saw movement in the corner of my eye as he went over to get his towel from the hooks by the door. I wondered how suspicious it looked that I turned away from him as he walked past on what should've been my right-hand side.

He said, "Don't be too long. Jennifer will have dinner ready in 20 minutes or so."

"Ok," I said, turning my head so that I saw him leave for the changing room.

With a quiet groan, I put my forehead against the wall, trying to think of anything at all to make me lose my erection. I turned the water temperature to freezing, and it helped - just about. Still somewhat tumescent, at least I wasn't pointing at the ceiling anymore. Not wanting to drag out my shower enough to make Daniel suspicious, I got my towel and walked out to the changing room.

Daniel was drying himself off, and I didn't even have enough energy left in my tired body and mind to realise what a mistake I had made walking out of the solitude of the shower room. I stood like a daft statue, towel in hand, cock rapidly rising, staring at my employer's firm, naked body. He finished drying off, putting away his towel before grabbing his underwear. He was just about to put them on when he noticed that I was still staring at him. He spared my erection a moment's attention, and then looked me in the eyes. Had he been anyone else, I would have said that he was looking bored, but because I had deciphered him (so I liked to think), I knew that he was amused.

"Tennis does it for you then, does it?" He asked, lifting an eyebrow.

When I replayed that scene in my head later that night, he added, "Or is it me?" before creeping into bed with me to make sweet, sweet love. In reality, I stuttered something about how exercise sometimes did that to me. Daniel made a sound that could've been a chuckle, then got dressed in no time and waited for me in the car.

We didn't mention it again.