by Harper Fox
“Oh God. Was he dead?”
“That was the trouble. He wasn’t responding, so we didn’t know. And Art—Art could never give up on anyone. He kept trying and trying to find a way down, but the place was dangerous, about to fall apart with floods and landslides, and we got a police order to call off the search. So we went back up, but I turned round while we were packing up the truck and he was gone.”
“He went back in?”
“Yeah. By himself. I wasn’t best pleased. Meant I had to creep past the coppers and my teammates and go in after him. And got my arse kicked for doing it—he told me he had a right to throw away his own life, but he didn’t want mine on his conscience. On his soul. Hang on just a second while I stir the soup.”
He got up, and I watched him in silence while he padded barefoot round the kitchen. Stirring his soup, picking spice jars from a rack and adding delicate quantities, silver spoon held gently in his big calloused hands. “A little paprika all right with you?”
“What? Er… Yes. Yes, thanks.” I remembered—I hadn’t been too alert at the time, but I remembered Art falling the last few feet into the Hallow Hill cave. Had that been due to a snapped carabiner? “What happened?”
Lance kept his back to me. “I reminded him we shared a soul. And a conscience, for that matter. He’d brought a heat-detector down with him, the thing we use to trace people by body warmth if there’s been a rockfall. And we sat beside this machine, and we… Well. We watched the kid go cold. Art hasn’t worked since, not until tonight.”
“Why… Why tonight?” My mouth was dry. I wasn’t sure I’d got the words out aloud.
“Oh, you know. Christmas shifts, people on holiday. There wasn’t anybody else.” Lance turned and leaned on the counter, wiping his hands on a teatowel. “It’s a year to the day, actually. I thought I’d have to keep him on some kind of suicide watch. But when we got the call he just packed up his gear as if nothing had happened and came out with me. So—you’re not bad news to me, Gavin. Not at all.”
“All I did was fall down a hole.”
“In time for him to bring you out of it. You know, for a rescue worker, the faith that you can do that—get people back alive—it’s the holy grail. When Art lost his, it was the end for him. He’s had a hell of a year. He’s barely left the house.”
“But it wasn’t… What happened to the kid, that wasn’t his fault.”
“God, no. We’d had cutback after cutback, and nobody lobbied local government harder for more funds. Our equipment was wearing out. But Art’s not someone who can shift the blame. It happened on his watch, at the end of his rope. I lost him that night, in a way.” Lance set the teatowel aside and looked at me directly. His smile would have shone a light down into hell. “Little bastard gave me a hell of a year as well. He’s been a stranger. Withdrawn, depressed, cold. And tonight when I found him—when I dug him out of Hallow Hill—I saw as soon as I clapped eyes on him that he was back. He told you we call them newborns, didn’t he—the people we rescue?” I nodded mutely. “He’s the bloody newborn tonight. He’s the man I know again.”
You don’t know him. You don’t know me. I wanted to dive under the table and hide, or better still run for it, out of this lovely house where this kind man was offering me his hospitality, his food, his intimate story. I could hardly bear the heat of his gaze. “Lance…”
“Oh, and here he is.”
Art was in the doorway. Yes, he looked reborn. Stripped of the skins and shells of his equipment, he was the second most beautiful man I’d ever seen, though so different to Lance that after a moment comparisons failed. His damp hair was combed back, dark gold against the honey colour of his skin. He was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. His leonine face was lit by a wicked, questioning grin. “How’s the soup doing, Lannie?”
“Oh—almost on the boil.”
“Yes, it looks that way. Did he confess to you yet?”
“No. He’s been trying to spare me. But it’s been on the tip of his tongue, I can tell.”
“Poor Gavin.” Art came to lean on the edge of the table, two inches away from my shoulder. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look away. “As Lance reminded me a year ago, we share a soul. We, um… We share a lot of things.”
“He knows?” It came out as a fractured squawk. Someone took my hand, and I flinched and twisted back to see Lance crouching before me.
“Of course I know, you idiot. Did you think he wouldn’t tell me? Do you think I’d have acted any different, if I’d been trapped in a cave with someone as nice-looking as you?”
Chapter Six
Murmur of conversation from the next room. It felt like an infinite luxury that I didn’t have to attend to it, to care.
I took a fistful of rich linen sheet and drew it to my face, breathing its scent. Clean maleness. Sex, a wash or two ago. I could lie here in this big plain bed—I could see, in the glow of soft light across the half-open door, the solid wooden lines of its construction—and listen, half-asleep, to ordinary talk. Why was that so good? Lazily I probed at my own pleasure. Supposed I should have been embarrassed by the answers, when they floated up… I felt safe, hearing these two men talk about their day. The house was secure. All was well.
Something from my childhood? No, not quite that humiliating. The soundtrack from those nights had been quite different, the hisses and snarls of a marriage melting down. I’d clamped a pillow over my head to shut it out. I’d surged away from home the second I’d been legal to do so. I’d become fiercely independent.
No. I’d become cold. More than a little hard. I could see that, from this sleepy vantage point. Three years into our relationship, Piers and I still lived in separate flats, and that hadn’t been his choice. Catholic or not, he’d asked me to live with him. I’d sidestepped the question. Where would I go when it all went wrong?
It was nice to lie awake in a household where it hadn’t. I listened, letting my eyes close. It hadn’t been easy for Art and Lance, and yet here they were, talking softly, taking life’s pleasures as they came. Back in the kitchen, I thought I’d been about to become one of the pleasures, and I still wasn’t sure which was dominant in me—relief or disappointment—that they’d shown me to the bathroom instead. That afterwards we’d sat round the table in an odd, smiling silence, eating Lance’s soup, until a wave of exhaustion had caught me so suddenly that Art had taken the bowl from my hands before I could drop it. That he’d guided me through to a bed that had to be theirs but then left me in it alone.
Music began to weave around their talk. I thought I didn’t recognise it, then the defining piano phrase rippled through, a soft, powerful question. “Station Approach” by Elbow. Full of yearning and hope, of homecoming; music for a slow dance before bed. In the dark behind my eyes I pictured Lance straightening up from the CD player, Art’s arms going round him from behind.
No. Around me. Art said, “Move over, then,” and eased into the bed beside me.
For an instant it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Then his scent reached me—soap, warm skin, in all ways ordinary except not belonging to Piers—and I struggled away, backing up against the pillows. Lance was in the room too, a fact I found reassuring until he padded across to the bed, scrambled lithely over the footboard and knelt on the mattress, dark eyes appraising.
“Art?” I whispered. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, if that’s what you want. Say the word. Lance goes back to the couch and you and I sleep on opposite sides of this bed.”
“Do you two have…an open relationship, then?”
I cringed. It sounded so naïve—so hopelessly clinical. But Art only smiled. I noted vaguely that both he and Lance were still more or less dressed, jeans in place, Lance in his tee and Art in an unfastened shirt, as if the next stage of the game—how much clothing got retained—had been left up to me. “Well, not wide open. Let’s just say we don’t lock the doors at night. Have we shocked you very much? I thought you were gett
ing the idea, back there in the kitchen. Then you were so tired it seemed inhumane to carry on till you’d had some sleep.”
“I’m not shocked. I did get the idea. But…”
“But ideas are different to reality. It’s okay. Say the word and it stops.”
I couldn’t say a thing. From the living room the music pulsed and murmured, building pace. In the end it was Lance who broke the silence. “Hoi, Your Majesty. Why should I get the couch?”
Art gave him a loving grin. “He was my rescue. But…fair question. Come here, then, handsome, while he makes his mind up.”
I watched them kiss. My own mouth was dry. They were so bloody beautiful, powerful bodies entwining in the firelight. Briefly I felt as if I were watching them on film, or from another planet—at safe distance, anyhow—then Art reached out and put an arm around my shoulders, drawing me in. I had nothing left with which to resist this pressure, though fear and incredulity slammed around inside me like birds off plate glass. Suddenly Lance transferred his attentions and captured my mouth, a firm tongue-tip caressing mine, its ingress easy because my jaw had dropped so hard I doubted I’d ever get it shut again. Through static and the thrumming of my heart I heard Art break into laughter. “Here. Don’t I get first kiss?”
“Sounds to me like you already had it.”
“I mean here, with you. I told you—he’s my rescue. Give him here.”
Lance chuckled and yielded, easing down my body, trailing soft kisses across my throat—helplessly thrown back to allow it—while Art moved in. At the last second he hesitated and let me decide, which I did on the instant, with a cry that cut off as I sought his mouth. Heat flashed through me and my hands clamped tight, one on Art’s shoulder, the other between Lance’s as he caught and held my flailing gesture.
“Newcomer?” Lance asked, with kindly, slightly shaken humour.
Art took a good long time over finishing the kiss, which had been thorough in the extreme; I was wide open to the throat, my head spinning. “Depends what you mean,” he said, flushed, drawing back a little, keeping a tender hold on my jaw. “But I think so. Could use your technical expertise.”
“Certainly.” Lance reached into a bedside drawer, pulled out a tube and handed it to Art with a grin. “There it is, as far as it goes.” Then to my astonishment he straddled my lap and looked straight into my eyes. “Listen, Gavin. He’s the best. He’ll make it good for you, but if it’s your first time, it might hurt. I can help.”
“My first… What? It’s not—”
“Seriously? You and your sweet God-fearing lad are fucking?”
I gulped air and almost choked. I wanted to call up some outrage—some urbane denial, at least—but the dark eyes on me were too penetratingly kind. And the truth was that in three years Piers and I had never got past hurried blow jobs, frantic thrusting rollarounds, cocks buried between one another’s thighs. I’d told myself that was because of him and his taboos. “No,” I confessed helplessly. “I never took the time to try with him. I never gave him the chance.”
“He’ll forgive you.”
“No. It’s over. It’s over.”
Art stroked my hair, as he had in the cave. “Well, just in case it’s not,” he said, his glance wickedly seeking out his partner’s, “pay attention and learn.”
I had to say something. I couldn’t sit here mute and let these two men do as they thought fit to me. Something, to make me real to myself… “Oh, yes. Yes.” And that hadn’t been at all what I’d had in mind, but my cock had lifted hard between Lance’s thighs where he still knelt over me, and further denial was pointless. “Art,” I said yearningly, wanting the more familiar feel and smell of him, and was grateful when Lance shifted aside to let him close. “I…don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“It’s all right. In good hands.” As if to prove it, Art ran both of them firmly down my arms, held me by the wrists—the mild restraint made my heart race—and kissed me again, before gently laying me down on the mattress. Lance removed the pillows from behind my back, and between the two of them they turned me onto my side. I went down bonelessly. “Relax,” Art instructed, his voice a vibration against my ear. “Best way to learn how to give this is to get it. It won’t be easy for your Piers either, so take it slow with him, lots of lube, and… Oh, that reminds me. Lannie, we’re not being gentlemen.”
“Oh.” Lance, who had moved just far enough away to watch with rapt attention, rolled over and opened a bedside drawer. “No, we’re not. I hope to God we’ve got some—you’ve been a bit unsociable this past year… Ah, here we go.” He pulled a couple of foil packets from a box and handed one to Art. The other was for me, I knew, but when I put out an unsteady hand, he held it just out of my reach. “Let me have the pleasure.” He slipped the condom over my tip, rolled it deftly up the length of me, while Art intercepted my shivering recoil from behind. Then he slipped down the bed and took my sheathed cock in his mouth.
Perfect; it was perfect. To be filled and at the same time held and filling in my turn. Neither Art nor Lance had moved for some time now, in deference to my shock and the sudden stunning tears that had broken from the heart of it. Letting me get used to the perfection, both of them. Art with his shaft at full stretch inside, Lance holding mine in his mouth—in his throat, because I had got so hard so fast I had slipped over the root of his tongue. And I had wept. I should have been ashamed but it had been such a relief, a final abdication of control. My sobs had sounded almost like laughter, and Art had kissed and soothed me, and now my tears were dry. “Move,” I whispered, reaching a trembling hand back for Art’s flank. It had been so hard to let him in, even wet with the lubricant he had pushed into my body on strong, careful fingers. Art had said to Lance, “Distract him, sweetheart,” and Lance had curled himself comfortably on the mattress and sucked my pain-diminished erection. The stretch of my arse where Art was pushing had suddenly become bearable, then necessary, then urgent, a pressure that made me groan and clamp my hands tight in Lance’s hair. “Move,” I said again, and Art thrust at my command, just once and very carefully, like a promise. I breathed shallowly, dazed by the prospect of its fulfilment. I wasn’t sure I was built to handle it, to withstand whatever I would feel when the hot shaft inside me began to move in good earnest. Even the thought of it excited me unbearably; I raised one knee to accommodate him and felt him push deeper. “Yes. Do it now, please do it now.”
The first slow shift in and out, withdrawing to the tip then sliding carefully deep once more, almost finished the game for me. Confused signals raced up and down my spine: I didn’t know whether to pass out or come like an avalanche. Lance forbade me to do either, snaking a powerful arm round my thigh, circling the base of my shaft with his forefinger and thumb, squeezing back my response. Art stopped at full engagement inside me. “Easy, sunbeam,” he said, unsteady with pain and laughter. “That’s a lot of unused muscle in there. Relax before you crush me to death.”
“I’m sorry!”
“That’s okay. Just let Lance suck you. Just let me… Oh, there.”
Something unclenched in me, an icy resistance as old as the awakening of my sexuality. I hadn’t wanted to be gay. I’d grabbed the flag and run with it, but I hadn’t wanted it any more than, presumably, Piers had done; it hadn’t gone over any better in my ex-mining community than it would with the aristocratic de Vals. I’d taken it—taken him—angrily, fighting all the way. “Christ,” I groaned, as Art began his rhythm and Lance ate me whole. “I want Piers.”
“I know. It’s all right. Are you… Are you my rescue? Did I bring you back alive?”
“Yes!” I writhed against Art, too far gone to hear or worry about the question’s strange intensity. “Yes, alive, yes.”
“Tell me. Promise me.”
“I swear! I’d have died without you. Faster, Art—harder!”
He clutched my hips. His breath came warm and fast against my shoulder. Lance reached up and wrapped an arm around his backside, holding all th
ree of us close for conclusion. Fear shot through me—of suffocating Lance, of dying myself in the joyous explosion beginning to be shaken from my bones, my gut, my convulsing arse where it was clenched on its impalement. Then the inside flipped to outside, my struggle to a white-hot outward rush that blinded me. I howled like a speared bull. Art’s cry tore at me—the grief and the love in it, as if he were leaving something behind him forever, beyond reclamation. And even spent, the last pulsations of climax running from me like hourglass sand, I didn’t want him to be done. Wanted the feel of him inside me always. His life, the sheer good he could do to everything he touched…
“You brought me out alive,” I tried to tell him, my raw throat closing up. I didn’t know if he heard me or not but he kissed my neck and shoulders tenderly, and Lance continued to tongue and suck at my cock, all through the difficult business of withdrawal. That hurt worse than I’d imagined. I glanced behind me and saw he was still hard.
Lance came up for air. He was flushed, his dark fringe sticking to his brow. He bestowed on me one swift smile, but his attention was all for his lover. “Come here, you,” he growled, thrusting out a hand. “Come and let Lannie finish you off.”
They fell on one another. I watched, beached on the pillows. They were fierce and lovely as a pair of brawling wolves. The big solid bed shook beneath them. At last Lance pinned Art with his whole weight, spread his legs and powered down on him until his cries of surrender and release filled the room.
In the hard-breathing silence that followed, Art whispered, “I think I can go now.” I tried to lift my head, although I was on the edge of an abyss of sleep. I didn’t want anyone to go anywhere—it was the middle of the night, the bed a warm refuge in the cooling flat. But neither he nor Lance stirred, other than to make a bit of room for me between them. Art put out a hand, and I crawled into their waiting embrace.