Trowchester Blues 01 - Trowchester Blues (25 page)

“Well, that’s
your
problem isn’t it?” Finn said without thinking. It came out, as so many wild and fanciful things came out, partly as a big
fuck you
to the world, partly because the truth was so terrifying. When you told the truth, people knew how you really felt, and then they used that information to hurt you. Their jabs were always so much less accurate if they didn’t know what they were aiming for.

“Yeah.” Michael’s voice hardened. His body tensed all around Finn, making him uncomfortable to sprawl on, and his arms loosened. He hadn’t moved, but he was suddenly very far away. “That’s my problem. So what’s it going to be? Am I important enough to you to tell me what’s really going on? I’m going to find out anyway, because I’m going to look into it now, but you can choose to trust me or not. If you don’t, this is over too.”

He tried to shove Finn off his lap, already leaving. Finn clutched at his hair, torn between two different instincts. He couldn’t tell Michael about the psalter. He couldn’t, because then Michael would leave. But if he told him a lie, he would also leave.

“Don’t!”

Michael resisted for a moment, effortlessly stronger in that way that made Finn a little fuzzy inside. Finn twisted to gaze up into his face and found him looking down, his hazel eyes both fond and frightened. It occurred to Finn reluctantly that the guy was not in the best mental shape at the moment, that this conversation must be as hard for him as it was for Finn. Could he trust him? Did he dare?

Well, it seemed he had nothing extra to lose by trying it. If Michael was going anyway, no matter what he did, he could at least try to be kind to the poor dumb sod in the end.

“Don’t go. I’ll talk.” The phrase put him in mind of film noir, let him smile involuntarily and say, “Your interrogation technique is unusual. I’m not sure if I’d appreciate it from anyone else.”

“Huh.” Michael shook him again, in what he thought was a combination of amusement and annoyance. “Yeah, let’s not get distracted. What’s going on, Finn?”

“The evening after you came in the shop the first time,” Finn started, quickly so as to get it all out before his soul revolted from the bare nonfiction of it, “I had a visit from an old associate I thought I’d left behind in London.”

Very well, there was the hook. Now some backstory. “You have to understand that the trial—you know about the trial, five years ago?”

“Mm-hmm.” Michael rested his forehead on Finn’s shoulder, as though his thoughts were too heavy to hold up.

“It scared me to death. And it prevented me from being there when Tom died. I couldn’t hold him, couldn’t tell him how much I loved him at the end. I was fucking devastated, Michael; you’ve no idea. I was unmade. Everything, everything was unmade without him in it . . .”

His throat closed. The sobs piled up in his lungs and made his breastbone ache. Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes, and he closed the door on those memories and put his back to it to keep it shut.

“It was the end for me. The end of everything. I was finished, changed. I wanted to be someone else. So I decided to leave town, turn over a new leaf, and go straight.” He scoffed. “At least in that respect.”

He turned his head so he could rest his cheek against Michael’s black curls and closed his eyes. Michael smelled of safety and warmth and some horrible orange-and-ginger shampoo that Finn was going to wean him off if he ever got the chance.

“And though I say it myself”—he recovered a lighthearted tone—“I did very well. I doubt if I’ll ever be rich, but the bookshop is supporting me and keeping young Kevin out of the kind of trouble his family would otherwise get him into.” Strange, but still true: “I’m a pillar of the gay community in Trowchester. And happy.”

When he thought back to the time before Michael, to dinners shared with ghosts and vagrants, to the empty upstairs and the empty bed, talking to himself or switching the radio on so his silences could be filled with a friendly voice,
happy
seemed an exaggeration.

“Or
content
, at least. Then Briggs showed up, and he had a book to sell me. A priceless thing. Do you know the Lindisfarne Gospels?”

Michael looked up, startled and interested. Of course he knew them, Finn rebuked himself. A man who knew how to treat an ancient manuscript couldn’t help but know of them.

“Yeah.”

“This was like that. Similar antiquity and beauty. Briggs said he would burn it if I didn’t buy it, and I couldn’t risk that. So I told myself ‘one last time.’ I bought it from him, and I sold it on to a collector I know of who treats her books impeccably. I told myself I was rescuing it, and I was, I think. At least it will be safe where it is.”

“So you fell off the wagon.” Michael’s voice was dark, disappointed, but he didn’t repeat the attempt to leave.

Finn breathed out slowly. Well, this was good. No immediate abandonment, and the rest of the story was an improvement.

“What about the fire?”

“Briggs obviously went away and told everyone else where I was and that I was back in business.” Finn’s turn to tense up, let anger and annoyance pierce the atmosphere of warm shared confidences that had spread like the mingled heat of their bodies from everywhere they touched.

In response, Michael raised a hand to comb his fingers gently through Finn’s hair in a soft, petting stroke that made him want to purr like a cat. He stretched lazily, relishing the rub of his back against Michael’s chest, and settled again, hackles lowered.

“A couple of lowlifes called Benny and Lisa turned up with a vase they’d liberated from somewhere, and tried to sell it to me. I had already realised the lapse was a mistake I didn’t intend to repeat, so I turned them away. They didn’t take kindly to that. Hence broken Pegasus followed by burnt bookshop. And that, children, is the end of our tale. Now who can tell us the moral of the story?”

The end of our tale. As they did so often, his words came back to mock him, flippant, light little words circling above a pit of dread. This time when Michael slid Finn forwards, moved to sit up, Finn didn’t stop him. They detangled themselves, ended sitting side by side, while Michael planted his elbows on his knees and lowered his face into his hands.

“There’s no need for you to be so sad,” Finn told him, leaning forwards to put a palm gently down between Michael’s shoulder blades, because he’d somehow got to the stage where he needed to be touching Michael in order to feel fully himself. “I’m miserable enough for us both. I thought we had a good thing here. But if you can’t live with it, I’m not going to try to force you.”

Michael lowered one hand and turned his face so he could look at Finn from the corner of one of his beautiful dark-lashed eyes. “Did you turn them down for me?”

Finn gave a hollow laugh to cover his confusion about where this remark was coming from. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I mean it.” Michael sat up fully, took both of Finn’s hands in his and pressed them with fierce strength, moving some of the ache that had been in Finn’s heart away to his fingers. He wasn’t sure what Michael was self-destructing about this time, but it didn’t seem to be the rejection Finn had expected. “Did they burn your shop because of me?”

“Oh, bless your guilty conscience.” Finn had to laugh. “No. I turned them down because I don’t want to be sucked back into that life. I’m an honest man now, and I’ll be buggered if I let those weaselly little bastards bully me out of my new life. I did it for me, Michael. I would have done it even if you hadn’t been here.”

Michael hung his head, his eyes screwed closed and a crease between his brows so deep it might have been put there by an axe. Finn freed his hands and bracketed Michael’s face with them, hurting for him—this sad Rottweiler of a man. “So don’t fret now, darling. If you have to go, go with my blessings. You don’t owe me anything.”

See how fast he slipped back into lying. What he wanted to say was
Don’t go! Fuck you if you go. I want you to stay!
He wanted to find some words that would put the desperation and the need in his own heart out there to change the world and make Michael stay.

But he hadn’t even finished the thought in the privacy of his own mind when Michael made a strangled noise halfway between sob and laugh and lunged forwards to wind both arms around Finn. He pulled Finn in so close he had to scramble into Michael’s lap and lock his legs around Michael’s waist to keep from being bent like a bow. Crushed against the wall of muscle that was Michael May, he was not going to complain.

This close, he could feel Michael’s semihysterical laughter in his own bones. He let his head fall into the hollow of Michael’s shoulder and rubbed silent circles on the man’s back.

Gradually, Michael’s ragged breathing smoothed out into peace. They softened into relaxation against one another again, as Finn’s desolation rose like a fog and wisped away. His body hummed with satisfaction, telling him that this was where he wanted to be. More than anything, this was where he wanted to be for the rest of his life.

“We’ll tell the police.” Michael was saying some things that might have disturbed him more if he hadn’t just found his Valhalla. “They’ll deal with Benny and Lisa for you. Tell them who you sold the book to; they can restore it to its owner, and then it’s all over. It’s all over and you’re in the clear forevermore.”

“Until the next ‘old friend’ turns up on the doorstep.” Finn got a hand under Michael’s T-shirt, pushed the material up, exposing the soft skin over the hard muscle of Michael’s belly, flanks, and pecs. Sitting in this position, prick to prick with the other man, he was rapidly losing the will for further debate.

“And I’ll be here to punch them in the teeth for you.” Michael gave Finn’s old, well-washed, semitransparent pyjama top a critical examination, and flashed a grin Finn had never seen before but wanted very much to see again. He took hold of Finn’s collar and ripped through the buttonholes in one long, tearing yank.

Finn’s breath stopped. He looked up in astonishment as all rational thought fled in the face of a wave of pure
yes.
“Oh God!” There were things he had to say about Michael’s plan—caveats, fears—but Michael had already taken him by the hair and bent his head back and was biting him. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough so the sharp pain and the slow sucking ache that followed convinced him he had far more important things to be concentrating on right now.

Yes, yes, oh God. It could all wait.

“Bed?” he managed, as Michael snapped the waistband of his trousers and shoved his hands inside to cup Finn’s arse and pull him even closer.

Michael pressed him back against the sofa cushions. “I was thinking ‘couch.’”

Finn woke slowly, warm and more relaxed than he could remember being for years. His body glowed with satisfaction, and the hinterland of slumber was like lying on clouds saturated in sunshine. He was tucked up against Michael’s back, with an arm under the man’s neck and the other around his waist, hand resting on his belly, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing. He opened his eyes to a shock of dark curly hair and the nape of Michael’s neck, which he kissed.

“Are you awake?”

“Hmm.” Michael stretched, turned over. “I am now.”

He had quite a range of smiles that Finn had never seen before. Last night’s had been roguish, sexy. This was sweet and perhaps a little shy.
You should smile more
, Finn thought.
It suits you. I’ll get working on that.

“Good morning. What time is it?”

Finn extricated an arm from the refuge of the bedclothes and picked up the alarm clock to peer at it. Dim light behind the curtains at this time of year said it was later in the morning than it should have been. “Oh fuck,” he said. “I forgot to set it last night. It’s half eight already and the shop has to be open at nine.”

Michael pulled him in close to land a gentle kiss on the most tender of his love bites. Although sore, he found himself amenable to the thought of fitting a quickie into the half hour he had to make himself presentable and fed, but Michael rolled away even as he was reaching for him. “You shower, I’ll make breakfast. No problem.”

It was probably for the best, given that sitting on the edge of the bed was uncomfortable. “Can you cook?” he asked, not bothering to restrain a fierce smile at the memories of being well used. “You don’t seem the sort.”

“What does that even mean?” Michael climbed back into yesterday’s clothes. “Is this some kind of gender stereotyping bullshit you’re pulling on me? I make a mean plate of bacon and eggs.”

Finn located his dressing gown on the sitting room floor, hung it on the back of the bedroom door, and walked to the shower nude. There was no point now in being coy. “Maybe I’ll keep you after all.”

With November, the golden days of autumn had finally given way to heavy overcast skies and lightless days that dragged through as if underwater, but today the electric light in the bathroom seemed enough to dispel the gloom. He turned the radio on and sang along to Studio Killers with great self-satisfaction as the burst of water against his back flushed his skin pink.