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The laughter and voices in the cottage faded as the sun set and the night insects began their inevitable hymn. Matthew and John disappeared into the bedroom together to share the small bed, grateful, perhaps, for the forced closeness. Mrs. Wylit curled up on the loveseat, and Lance did his best to make do with one of the armchairs. That left Arthur and James, who decided to drag a couple of rugs and blankets out onto the heath and build a fire. The breeze from the cliffs kept any troublesome gnats away.
In the bright light of the unfiltered moon, they collected stones and arranged them in a ring, and then scoured beneath the trees for kindling. A couple of stove lengths gave them a fire, built more for the bug-battling smoke than to keep them warm. And so Arthur and James sat cross-legged on their bedding and watched the flames as they danced against the deep blue-black of the rugged Scottish sky.
Usually, Arthur waited for James to speak first. And James always spoke first. Arthur often joked that he was deathly allergic to silence. He watched his love, his best friend, open his mouth a few times as if to speak, only to pick up a nearby stick and stir at the fire instead. Sparks crowned their vista, and settled into the firmament as stars. And the silence was loud, roaring above the ocean rattling against the cliffs far below. And so, Arthur began.
“Beautiful.” He nodded toward the starry sky, so bright compared to theirs at home with its brilliance muffled by city lights.
“Yes, it is,” James agreed.
Arthur thought if he could put a crack in the dam, that the words would come out of James in a flooding torrent. They did not. So, Arthur said, “We did it. Found Matthew Barlow, that is.”
James was quiet a minute longer. “I’m... glad. And I’m glad my father was here. It seems like too much of a coincidence not to be a fated reunion. That gives me strength.”
“Why?”
“Because it means,” James stirred the fire again, “that some things really are meant to be.”
Arthur waited for him to go on. Within, his heart swelled and beat against his insides, insistent — now, let him speak now!
But still, there was the creeping silence, the fire-stick, the crash of the waves.
Well, perhaps a joke would help. It’s what Lance would do. Arthur could think of Lance now without pain, because there was only one thing left to put to rest. “Want to tell ghost stories ‘round the fire?”
James tossed the stick in the flames with an air of finality. He turned to Arthur and sat facing him, legs crossed. “I don’t need to hear a frightening tale,” he said, “because I’m living one every day, Arthur.”
“What do you mean?” Arthur turned his body to fully face James' as well. The fire crackled, forgotten, at their side.
“Every day,” James repeated, “every day I wake up terrified that you’re going to leave me. I go to sleep every night thinking you’re going to stop loving me. And I can’t live in a world where I don’t have you.”
Arthur kept his mouth shut, in the hope that James would continue. After rubbing the heel of his hand against his eye, he went on.
“You know what happened between Lance and I, don’t you?” he asked softly.
Arthur nodded.
James sighed, weary and watery. “I thought so. You’ve known since that very night.”
Arthur said, “I wasn’t asleep. I was watching. I thought... something might happen. And it did.”
James erupted in words, but Arthur used his deep voice to overcome them. “Wasn’t hurt by the kiss,” he insisted. “Not that. I understand Lance. This was a new world for him. He wanted some of what we’ve got, isn’t that it?”
“Yes, he did. He does. But he apologized to me. And it sounds like to you as well, though he never told me about it.” James hugged his knees closer to his chest, as if he could curl into a ball and disappear. On one hand, it was such a relief to speak of it, but on the other, he had no idea where this conversation led. There was no map to follow. His eyes burned with the woodsmoke and tears, and his stomach yawned a pit.
“James.” Arthur folded his hands together into almost a prayer, palm-to-palm. “You went all this time and you never said a word. Lance and I settled up before you and I did. D’you see the fault with that?”
Of course he did. “But I was—” he tried. James took a breath, and started over. “I was so afraid of what would happen if I told you. You have to know that I couldn’t face my life without you in it.”
“You think I’d leave you?” Arthur’s voice was so low a popping log in the fire muffled two of his words. “Really? You thought that? After everything? That I’d walk off because of some silly kiss or two?”
James' fear blanched his face. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“Because that says you don’t trust me.” Arthur’s hands went into fists at his sides for a moment before he exhaled and relaxed them. “Or that you don’t really know me. You really think — that I wouldn’t die for you? Haven’t I proven that I would?”
James said nothing, and let the silent tears drip from his nose.
“That’s the thing.” Arthur burst up from his seat to pace, the lines of his muscles straining against his shirt as he stalked a few feet one way, then the other. “That’s the thing. It’s not that it happened. Do you understand? It’s that you wouldn’t tell me. You were afraid of what I’d do, instead of knowing, knowing how much I love you.” He put his hand to his eyes for a moment, and then flung it to the side. “What do you think of me, that I would walk away from you after all we’ve been through?”
“I’m sorry,” James wept into his knees. “I should have told you that morning, the second we woke up. I regret it all — I made a terrible mistake.” He sniffed back a sob. “Whatever you want me to do — I understand. I’ll go away, if that’s what you want, disappear—” What will it be, he thought, the pyre or the nunnery?
Arthur’s shoulders relaxed. “You aren’t listening to me,” he said and knelt down next to James. He reached out with his massive paw and lifted James' tear-streaked face so they could stare eye to eye, green to green. “Or else you are still so daft that you don’t understand what I’m saying? You and I are going to be together forever, no matter what comes. But you have to fully and truly believe that for this kind of magic to work. Understand?”
James threw his arms around Arthur. Arthur stood and picked him up into a mighty embrace and held him there for a long time before putting his feet back on the earth. “No more secrets,” James promised. “Ever.”
“I promise, too.” Arthur used his broad thumb to brush James' tears away, and they both laughed through the pain that must come with such a healing.
“Starting over,” Arthur suggested, as they walked hand in and toward the cliffs to look at the ocean.
“The old order changeth, yielding to new.”
They stood in the moonlight, their feet inches from oblivion, and sealed it with a kiss.