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“What just happened?” Matty asked again, as he dropped Rob’s hand to shut the outside door.
“I honestly have no idea,” Rob repeated. He took his coat off automatically and hung it on the hooks in the little scullery. “That was an elf, wasn’t it? Or a fairy?”
Matty coughed. “Erm. Yes. Or perhaps we’re both going mad?”
“At the same time? Unlikely.” Rob moved to the range and slid the kettle onto the hot plate. Matty was freezing. He always looked a bit peaky, in Rob’s opinion, but now he looked cramped over on himself, as if he was about to come apart.
“Come here,” he said. He reached out a hand to the other man and leaned back against the rail of the range as Matty took it, drawing Matty toward him. “Come here,” he repeated. Matty stepped close, chest to chest, and Rob wrapped his arms around him. Matty slid his arms round Rob’s waist, hands flat on his back. The range-rail was warm against his lower back and Matty’s hands were cooler on his shoulder blades.
“You’re freezing,” Rob said.
“Yes.” Matty shivered. “I can’t seem to get warm at all, these days.” He laid his head on Rob’s shoulder, hair damp against Rob’s neck, and Rob held him tighter, sliding a hand up to cradle the back of his head.
He’d wanted this for as long as he could remember. He knew himself tolerably well these days and he’d realised a while back—in the middle of a bombardment at Vimy Ridge in the spring of 1915, in fact—that Matty was the one he wanted. He’d been in Rob’s periphery for years, so long that Rob had failed to realise that, actually, he wasn’t at the periphery at all, he was at the centre of everything. He’d decided then and there that if he ever got out of the mud and got home, he’d make sure Matty knew he was at the centre and take what came.
Whatever was going on here, with Arthur dying and lights and elves and Matty looking peaked, Rob was going to sort it out and make sure Matty was all right. And if Matty wanted Rob around after that, then that was grand. If he didn’t...well, Rob would cross that bridge when he came to it.
He wrapped his arms more tightly round Matty, leaned back against the range a little more, and spread his legs to take more of the other man’s weight.
After a little while, Matty stirred against him and said, “Rob,” his voice low and muffled by Rob’s collar. Rob pressed him even closer and Matty burrowed his nose, still not quite as warm as Rob’s skin, in against his neck, right above the top of his collarless shirt. His breath was much hotter than the rest of him, hotter than Rob’s skin.
Rob swallowed. He hadn’t meant this to be more than comfort, hadn’t meant to start anything. And now something was starting, all by itself.
“Matty?” he said, diffident question in his voice. Matty was hard against his hip and Rob was stiffening.
Matty gave a little sigh in response and drew back a bit to meet Rob’s eyes. Rob’s gaze dropped to Matty’s mouth. Matty smiled a small, secret smile. “Now?” he said. “We’re doing this now?”
“Looks like it. If you want?” Rob slid the hand still on the back of Matty’s head down and round to cup his jaw and run a thumb over his lips. They were full and soft, and he’d thought about doing this for years. Matty’s smile grew under his touch. Rob reached behind him with his other hand and dragged the kettle off the stove top.
“All right, then,” Matty said, and leaned forward to press his mouth to Rob’s. Rob’s thumb fell away. Everything fell away.
There was only soft and hot and wet and silky and his tongue slipping into meet Matty’s, not battling exactly, but neither of them giving any ground. It was perfect.
Matty’s arms around him were tight and Matty’s body against the length of his was warm and muscled and everything he’d wanted for the last decade and a half. He cupped Matty’s face with both hands, holding him where he wanted him, and Matty moaned into his mouth, arms tightening.
It was quick after that. Fumbling with each other’s buttons and drawers, getting his hand round Matty’s prick, feeling Matty’s hand on his own in turn, exploring that silken, hot, hard length. Matty drew both their cocks together in one hand and Rob wrapped his own hand over the top. Matty drew back to watch, and they both looked down, foreheads pressed together as they came with gratifying simultaneity.
“God,” Matty exhaled. “That’s made a mess.”
Ever practical.
“Hang on, I’ve got a hanky.” Rob delved deep into a pocket. “Here.” They cleaned themselves up as best they could, unspeaking, and then Rob drew Matty back into his arms. “Come here,” he said. Matty took up the same position as before, but he was warm now, and relaxed.
“God. I needed that,” he said. “I’ve needed that for years.”
“Yes,” Rob said. “Me too. Stupid to have waited.” He turned his head and met Matty’s mouth again. They kissed some more, long, languorous, luxurious kisses without the urgency of before. Although Rob could feel himself hardening again, it was without the frantic need to take his arousal any further.
Finally, Matty drew back and took his hand. “Come on,” he said. “The fire’ll still be on in the other room. Let’s sit.”
Rob followed him into the sitting room, and they settled themselves on the overstuffed sofa. There were piles of papers all around and Rob was jolted out of the haze of tenderness and underlying arousal and reminded of what had happened earlier.
“A gate?” he asked, looking at Matty.
“Yes. That’s what it says. Look, here,” he said and pulled a medium-sized, leather-bound green book toward them from the low table in front of the sofa. It was the one that Rob had seen before, with all the different handwriting and languages. “He wrote in the margins... Some of it seems to be translation, but some of it is commentary.” He pointed to a particularly illegible and cramped section of marginalia. “Difficult to open, but almost impossible to shut,” he read out. “Creature, carnas? Same?” He turned the page. “This is what’s scaring me, though. It fits with what Lin said. I think it’s a translation. Open the gate at your peril, once they know you can do it, they will drain you.”
He lifted his brown eyes to meet Rob’s. “Arthur was raving about being drained and shutting the gate. Cutting a line. If we’re not going mad and this evening happened, then that seems to back up what Lin said. Something from through the gate had got its claws into him and was making him sick.” He paused. “And I think it’s got its claws into me, Rob. I’ve felt awful the last few weeks since he died. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m exhausted. And cold all the time.”
He stopped talking. Rob stared at him. He couldn’t find any words and his mouth was dry. Eventually he said, “But that Lin...he said it was gone.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe I’ll start to feel better now. Whatever that was...that we saw in the light...it looked like a monster. Surely we’d have noticed if there was one here?”
“Maybe not,” Rob held out a hand and when Matty put his own in it, drew him closer, tucking him against his side. “I’m not saying I believe in magic, mind. But that, this evening? It wasn’t anything I’ve seen before. And all these books. Your brother was up to something, man. If we’re not going mad together, then this evening happened and maybe Arthur wasn’t raving after all.” He paused and then decided to say it. “And, Matty, I could feel what was going on. When he made the light and suchlike. It pulled at me. I could feel it. Like...like the percussion wave when a shell goes off? But backward. It felt like it was pulling me.”
Matty drew away a little from his sheltering arm and looked at him. “Pulled at you?” He made a face and leaned toward the book on the table again, leafing through it. “Pulled. Look. Here.” He pointed to a page and shoved it toward Rob. “It talks about pulling.”
Rob leaned forward next to him, thigh to thigh, and read where he pointed. It was in English, written with a dip-pen by the look of it, in careful, flowing script that was reasonably easy to read once you’d made out the quirks of the handwriting. He’d left school at thirteen like his peers, but he liked to read and the lending library intown was well funded. He thought of himself as a self-educated man. He traced the first line with his forefinger. “Gather the kias from your surroundings. From your partner or partners. Draw it toward you. Pull it in. And then use it to link to the border and pull from that. You will start to see the light gather at the point on which you focus.”
He looked at Matty. “That sounds like what happened.” He paused. “Matty. What’s going on?”
Matty bit his lip in thought as he stared back. “I don’t know. But that’s what I’ve been trying to find out since I got back and Arthur was so sick. I don’t want to go the same way. We need...” He paused. “...I need to find out what’s going on and stop it. And maybe this Lin of the Frem can help me.”
Rob put a hand on his knee. “We, Matty. Not just you. We.”
