Last Line (9 page)

He let go a shuddering breath. Well, there was more than one way to grind off an edge, and there was nobody around. Tipping back his head, he stroked a hand across his cock, and arched hungrily as it leaped. Shame and bottled-up laughter shook him. He was screwed if the Somerset Anglers’ Club chose this bend of the river for an afternoon jaunt. Not that this would take long. He was hard, throbbing in his own grasp. Driving his heels into the wet sand, he stroked his chest and belly again, opened his eyes wide to the sapphire sky, and began to jerk off.

It was sweeter, more intense than he could have anticipated. He’d always enjoyed his own touch, but it was for lean times, dry spells between boyfriends—purely practical. Water-scented breeze lifted his fringe off his brow. He drew a deep breath. Nothing practical about this, and to all intents and purposes, he wasn’t even alone. His starved imagination had material now, memories… A bare five more strokes did it for him. Hitting the crest, he rolled onto his stomach, words shuddering helplessly out of him. “Mike! God, I love you!”

He lay for a long while in the sun, feeling his shattered breathing steady. Maybe that had been the problem. Michael knew his habits. How was the poor bastard supposed to know he was anything more than the next notch on John’s bedpost? Maybe a quick, hands-off fuck had been all he’d dared risk. Easing his come-soaked hand out from under, John tried to imagine the scene where he put Mike right on that.
I’ve been looking for you all my life. You don’t have to hit-and-run. I love you.

Well, it might not be the end of the world. John sat up, reaching for his shirt. In the distance, he could hear the purr of an engine. A few moments later, a car broached the hill to the north of the farmhouse and swept down the single-track road. Mike’s BMW, as powerful and understated as the man himself. Desire swept through John, marrow-deep, entirely divorced from sex. What had he said to him:
time apart might do us good
? Who the hell was he trying to kid? Three days and he was parched half to death just for the sight of him.
Love
barely covered the feeling. He got up, shaking sand out of his hair.

It had to be worth a try.

* * *

He left the car where it was and followed the track up through the fields. He would go and collect his holdall later. For now all he wanted was to close the gap between himself and the tumbledown farmhouse, and the most direct route was across the meadow, where the grass was knee-high, swaying in the wind like pods of silver-backed dolphins riding the wake of a ship. He strode through it as if spellbound, damp skin drying under his shirt and jeans.

The land crested up a few hundred yards from the house, concealing it briefly, opening up a vista to the west. Warmed through now, breath catching slightly in the heat, John paused at the top of the hill. Nothing in his Mersey-suburb childhood or his years in the capital could have prepared him for the sight of Glastonbury Tor across a sweep of summer countryside. He had crashed to a halt to stare the first time Mike had brought him up here, and it still stole the breath from him now. A sudden leap of land, nothing more than a teardrop-shaped hill but somehow profoundly startling, mysterious trackways—explained as everything from agricultural terraces to ancient ceremonial paths winding up around its flanks—attracted every ufologist, crop-circle maker, and general cuckoo for hundreds of miles around. Michael refused to go anywhere near Glasto town at any of the eight points on the wheel of the ritual year. If his mother had been a crazy Russian refugee, he had pointed out to John, his granddad had been a plain farmer, growing his crops without benefit of fertility rites or alien intervention. John had thought it best not to confide in him that he too had seen weird lights gleaming over the Tor on certain summer nights.

Scrambling over a stile, he let his attention refocus from the enigmatic distance to the small world spread out at his feet. He wasn’t sure why he had spent so many weekends down here over the past couple of years reconstructing a moss-covered ruin, except that it felt good to spend time with Mike away from the job. No harm in picking up a few of his partner’s construction skills, either. If things went tits-up at Last Line, they’d agreed, they could always set up as builders. And the nights had been pleasant too, sprawled on a sofa in the recently finished living room, talking or reading, looking at a wall he’d helped put together with his own hands. He had his own bedroom—like Michael’s, currently a wooden prefab, soon to be properly walled and roofed—and his own set of drawers. He and Michael slept, chaste as priests, each on his own side of the thin partition wall.

Setting aside speculation as to where he might sleep tonight, John slithered down the last steep bank and vaulted the fence into the lane. A wave of honeysuckle assailed him, sparking one city-boy sneeze before his lungs adjusted. The gate was open into the wide sweep of turf they’d optimistically started calling a garden. The back door too. Michael, in the city cautious as a cat, left security concerns behind him there, something John was not sure he approved. “Mike?” he called, padding over the daisy-starred lawn. No response came, and John paused to glance in admiration at the courses of unmortared drystone that had risen on the back barn’s foundations. His strange, half-Russian sheep farmer must have been working his arse off all week. “Hoi! It’s just me. Got any beer cooling?”

He wandered through the open door into the kitchen. At the moment, this consisted of some battered stone flags and a loose collection of dark oak cabinets and worktops. Standing in its cool shadows, John found himself hoping it would never change too much. He and Mike had spent a day in the Shepton Mallet kitchen showrooms—feeling and, John suspected, looking queer as fuck—but hadn’t found any modern units that seemed right for the rough-plastered old walls, for the building’s solemn but somehow benign atmosphere. Mike, who loved to cook, had invested in a good gas oven—the tank was discreetly buried under the turf outside—but that was all.

No, wait. The shadows had acquired a new, unobtrusive hum. Turning round, John saw gleaming in the corner a charcoal-metal fridge as tall as he was. He grinned. Last time down he’d had to tell Mike that
good enough for my grandfather
didn’t really cut it when it came to chilling beer and keeping gorgonzola fresh, great though the stone pantry was. He hadn’t thought Mike had taken any notice. The door opened with a rich, sticky resistance, and there on the top shelf, quite respectfully laid out, were half a dozen bottles of the locally brewed Ringwood John liked.

Footsteps scraped on the path. Michael appeared in the doorway, looking fresh as new butter in a light cotton-knit jersey. “Ah,” he said, eyes kindling with laughter. “I see you found it.”

“You bought a new fridge without me?”

“I didn’t think you’d disapprove.”

“Not a bit of it.” John snagged a beer from the shelf and waved it at his partner, who nodded, then got another for himself. He watched Michael dump a shopping bag onto the worktop and begin to unload it: a cylinder of asparagus spears neatly tied in twine, lemons, eggs, a beautiful fat half salmon. “That looks a lot like my ideal dinner.”

“Mm,” Michael agreed. He took the beer John had uncapped and offered him, tipped the bottle in casual salute. “Might be.”

“You gonna make the hollandaise yourself?”

“Naturally.”

“I’ll stay, then.” John reviewed the array of good things on the counter. He said, puzzled, “Nice timing, by the way. I tried to call you to tell you I was on my way, but—”

“The signal’s as bad as ever.” Gently edging him out of the way, Michael brought the salmon over to the fridge and tucked it in. Then he gave his partner what John could only think of as an exotic Russian look and added pensively, “I just had a feeling you were coming.”

“Really?”

“No, you moron. I saw your car parked by the river, and I doubled back to Linda’s farm shop. Why didn’t you drive up?”

“Bastard,” John remarked without anger. This was a different man from the tense, hollow-eyed one he’d left behind in London. Relaxed enough to tease him. Maybe everything would be fine. “It was too hot. I stopped off for a swim, and I couldn’t bear to get back into the car after that, so I walked up through the fields.”

“The sheep fields? In your bare feet?”

There had been a few sheep scattered about, now John came to think of it. His shoes, which he’d absently carried up with him then left outside the door, were a bit of a giveaway, he supposed. “Yeah, I…” A cold chill went through him. “Oh.”

Michael sighed. “All right, go sit down. Let’s have a look.”

John obeyed him, repressing shudders. He’d done quite well as a holiday landsman here on the farm with Mike, digging manure and planting veg as if it came naturally, but he still occasionally betrayed himself for the townie he was. A dreamy barefoot stroll through long grass in this season meant not so much freedom and sensual pleasure as sheep ticks. He half fell into the kitchen chair Mike had pulled out for him. “Ugh, I hate the little fuckers.”

Michael crouched in front of him. He pushed John’s clumsy hands aside and neatly pushed up the hems of his jeans for himself. “Well, you might’ve been lucky… Nope. You’ve got a passenger or two.”

“Oh
shit
.” Peering at his ankles, John saw the three or four little black dots that would, unattended, swell up to blood-gorged balloons. He twitched irrepressibly. “Jesus. Get ’em off me, Mike.”

“Hold still.” Michael got up and went to lift a well-stocked first-aid kit out from under the sink. He stopped at the dresser too, and John heard a clink of glass and a brief splash. Returning, he held out a tumbler to John with an inch of tawny liquid inside it. “Here you go.”

“What’s this? Antiseptic?”

“No. A shot of brandy for you, you absolute pussy. You’ve gone green.”

John closed his eyes in embarrassment. That felt good, he decided, and he kept them closed, downing the brandy by feel, while Michael went to work. He kept a special little tool for the purpose, John remembered, and he didn’t want to watch his parasites being grabbed round the neck and twisted deftly out of his flesh. He gagged faintly, almost losing the brandy, and opened his eyes in time to see Mike glancing up at him in alarm. “God. Sorry.”

“All done.” Michael uncapped a bottle of TCP, soaked a wad of cotton wool, and began to apply it to the bites. “Sheesh, John. You really are a big girl’s blouse.”

“I know. Ta. What was God thinking when he made those?”

“He was probably thinking you’d have the sense to wear socks, like I keep telling you. It’s okay, Lazarus. You may rise now and walk.”

But neither of them moved. Michael stayed on his knees, and John, once his stomach had stopped lurching, leaned an elbow on the table and gazed down at him. A silence fell in the cool, sunlit room, broken only by the chitter of house martins feeding their chicks in the eaves of the old barn. “How are you, Mikey?” John asked at length. “I love that jersey. But those are long sleeves for this weather.”

“Don’t.” Michael looked down at the stone flags. “I’m fine. Just didn’t want to scare the village shopkeepers.”

“What about your fire crew? Didn’t you have to get changed?”

“Oh, I skipped a shift for once.”

“Still pretty bad, then.” It wasn’t a question. John reached out a hand, and after a long moment’s hesitation, Michael surrendered one of his. John rolled back the fine, close-fitting sleeve far enough. “Jesus, sunbeam. We can’t ever fall down that rabbit hole again.”

“I know.”

“You had to do that to yourself because I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Yes. No. I…” Michael pulled down his sleeve to cover the damage. He didn’t withdraw his hand, though, and his voice was soft as he went on. “To tell you the truth, I can hardly remember. Th-the first bit with you, yes.”

“The first bit with me was fine. A bit startling, I’ll grant you, but…”

“But we can’t do it again if I’m gonna freak out and turn into some kind of bondage sub.”

“Well… I told you I’m not about to carve you up, but that’s not a problem either, if we go about it right.”

“It is a problem.” Michael lifted his head and looked at him square-on. His eyes were very black, but lit once more with the strange fires that had scared John and aroused him in equal measure three nights before. “It’s a huge fucking problem for me, because that’s not who I am. I don’t know where all that crap came from, and I don’t feel like I can risk it again, and that’s…” He trailed off, voice scraping a little. “That’s a tragedy in a way, because…”

John swallowed. His ticks and his apprehensions were forgotten. His good intentions too. When Michael looked at him like that, he felt the pit of his gut turn to liquid gold, his bones to meltwater. “Why?” he whispered, locking a grip to the edge of his chair.

“Because you look so good. And you smell of the river and brandy, and…” He sat up a little, inhaling. A small, wicked smile, surmise and astonishment combined, began to tuck itself into the corner of his mouth. “And something else. My God! What did you get up to on the way here?”

“Oh—
Christ
,” John burst out, blushing painfully hard. “You can
smell
that? I-I did it for you, Mike. I didn’t want to come blazing in here with my cock pushing the bloody doors open, so after my swim, I stopped on the riverbank for five minutes and…” He shut up. He eyed Michael narrowly. He had seen him make suspects babble and incriminate themselves like this. “And it’s none of your business,” he finished calmly, returning him sardonic smile for sardonic smile.

“Oh, don’t stop,” Michael said innocently. “I was getting such a nice picture in my head.”

“Screw you,” John returned—or tried. Somehow Michael was kneeling between his thighs. Somehow, without an instant’s warning, they were in each other’s arms. Which was fine—beautiful—but instantly they were locked into a kiss just as merciless and bruising as the one that had opened their scene at Michael’s flat. Not something Mike was doing to him. It was mutual, John’s fingers driving into the short silky hair at Mike’s nape, imprisoning, just as fierce as Mike’s grip on his shoulders. Why the fuck couldn’t they be gentle with one another?