by Lisa Henry
“Well, you can’t. You belong up north, with your father. I intend to return you there.”
“And what if I don’t want to be returned to my father? Don’t I get a say?”
Darragh looked uncertain. “But why wouldn’t you want to? My father …” He shook his head. “Everyone died. All the adults. And every day I want them back.”
Ciaran’s stomach knotted. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
Darragh shrugged and turned away. Crouched down and started to root through his pack.
“You must have been very young,” Ciaran said. “That’s remarkable.”
Darragh shrugged again.
“It is,” Ciaran said. “I don’t think you realise how remarkable. You’ve seen Dublin now. You must know how badly it went in other places.”
“Everyone died,” Darragh repeated, not looking at him. “It went badly in Cúil Aodha as well.”
Cúil Aodha.
“That’s where you’re from?”
Darragh’s back stiffened. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
“But you did. It’s all right, Darragh. I won’t … I’m safe.”
I’m not the one who has trouble keeping names a secret, remember?
“And what if the king catches up with us and makes you talk? Or we do return north, but when we get there your father thinks I’m the one who took you and decides to seek out my people in revenge?”
Ciaran wet his lips, seizing inspiration. “I suppose you’ll have to keep me hostage then, and not return me.”
Darragh snorted. “Clever little shit, aren’t you? You belong in the North, Ciaran. I told the old woman I’d take you there.”
“Whatever you told her, it doesn’t matter,” Ciaran said. “These aren’t the old stories, Darragh. Not every crone you meet is a faerie in disguise.”
Darragh snorted again, but it sounded even more like a laugh this time. “Maybe not, but a promise is still a promise.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do.” Darragh turned around at last, holding out a protein bar. “And I’m making a promise to you, as well. I promise to keep you safe, and that means getting you home. So, please, stop arguing about it.”
“Why do you care? If I’m safe or not. If I’m returned north or not. You don’t owe me anything. I’m nothing to you.”
Ciaran wished he hadn’t said it as soon as it left his mouth. Why couldn’t he just accept what Darragh said at face value? What was the point in arguing? Especially arguing points that made him look so weak and vulnerable. He’d humiliated himself for nothing.
But Darragh didn’t reply to his questions, didn’t respond to Ciaran at all, just pressed the protein bar into Ciaran’s hands with a gentle look that somehow still brooked no argument. “Eat, Ciaran.”
So Ciaran ate.
Ciaran was as beautiful in the sunlight as Darragh had imagined. The way it caught in his hair made it look like twists of gold. It was hard to remember they weren’t far from Dublin, they weren’t properly safe, and Darragh should be keeping his eyes out for trouble. And not the sort of trouble that walked beside him, that clever brain of his ticking over all the time.
Darragh didn’t trust Ciaran’s newfound docility at all, but he could at least work with it. And sooner or later Ciaran’s brain would hit on the truth: he was going home whether he liked it or not. Once he accepted that, he’d settle down.
They kept the road in sight but stayed off it. They saw no one else, but once, a wreck of a car rattled past. The engine gave it away for miles, so Darragh and Ciaran were well sheltered by the time it came into sight.
“Boru’s?” Darragh wondered aloud as it crept by, weaving through the skeletons of vehicles abandoned along the road.
“Who else would have a car this close to Dublin?” Ciaran asked.
“I wonder if he is looking for us.”
“Of course he is. That’s why we should have gone south, not north. He’s expecting us to run this way. He’ll hunt us all the way to the border now.”
But it was one car, and its driver stood no chance of spotting them. Darragh was wary but not alarmed. They’d walk on until nightfall, and then Darragh would find them shelter. They’d stay off the main road. Maybe even snare that rabbit he’d mentioned. Then Ciaran would see that Darragh was a man of his word. That he had Ciaran’s best interests in mind.
They walked for hours, only stopping occasionally to rest. Darragh was mindful of Ciaran’s injuries even though Ciaran didn’t complain about them. Didn’t complain at all, actually, even though Darragh was sure he still had plenty to complain about. Mostly he asked Darragh about where he came from, and Darragh, as reticent as he’d been, found himself obliging. It was strange to talk to someone about his home and his people. To try to draw a picture of it for someone who had never been there. The only people he’d ever been comfortable enough to talk to about anything already knew of Cúil Aodha, after all.
He told Ciaran about Maeve and her stubbornness, about the way Conor could walk on his hands. About Cathleen and the time she delivered a calf that was breech, all from the diagrams she’d studied in a book. About Saoirse, who’d been born after the disaster and somehow survived the sickness that killed her mother, who carried kittens around in her pockets. About all the rest of them.
“Do you have family?” Darragh asked him as they crossed an overgrown field.
“Just my father.”
“But you don’t want to go back to him,” Darragh said.
“I don’t want to go back to the North. I don’t want to be like the rest of them, sitting in their little houses and eating their hot meals while the rest of our people are stuck in those awful camps. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”
“You will be safe there.”
“There are things worth more than safety.”
“Not to me, there aren’t,” Darragh snapped back. To have such high ideals, that was the game of a man whose life had been mostly without death and disease. Ideals were a luxury.
“You say that, but we would both be safe now if you’d fucked me when the king had commanded it. But you didn’t, did you?”
“You think that was safe? Living in chains?”
“It was safer than being sentenced to death, yes. Look, I’m not sorry you did what you did. I’m free now, aren’t I? You saved me from a life of rape and abuse and humiliation. But you did it because of your ideals. There was an easy path and there was a just one, and you chose the just one, and that’s what I’m doing, too.”
Darragh stopped walking. “I don’t understand you, Ciaran.”
Ciaran shrugged. “I know.”
And yet, despite himself, Darragh admired him. To have ideals was the mark of a man born to luxury, but to have kept them after everything he’d suffered … Ciaran was courageous.
“Do you? Have family?” Ciaran bumped his shoulder as they walked, the gesture kind, almost playful.
“I did, once. Before. But my brother was sick and couldn’t live in the hard times. He was … one of the first. After the heartbreak, my parents weren’t able for the winter, when the illness came back. All the adults died eventually. Every winter, one or two more until they were all gone. I’m surprised any of us survived.”
“But you and the other children survived.”
“Not all of us,” Darragh said. “Not even most of us. Just some of us. Some of us were hardier, I guess.” He’d felt guilty, once, that he’d survived when others hadn’t—why had he deserved to be spared?—but guilt, like ideals, was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Not when there was work to be done. “Then, last winter, it came again. The sickness. Cathleen says that maybe the birds bring it, but I don’t know about that. Maybe it’s just seasonal, like the flu.”
“But you’ve had no outside contact,” Ciaran guessed.
“No. So maybe the birds.” Darragh grimaced. “Doesn’t matter, does it, how it gets there? Only that it does.”
“Well it must matter to some
one. Someone somewhere must be trying to cure it. Sad that nobody’s got the money or resources for research anymore, not with everything else.”
Everything else. Darragh had no idea what that meant, only that Ciaran’s worldview was so much bigger—and infinitely more complex—than his own. He knew so much, had access to information that Darragh had been cut off from. And yet, Darragh couldn’t even begin to figure what to ask or how. It was so overwhelming, and after experiencing Dublin, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to know.
If he was going to lose his innocence thanks to Ciaran’s expertise, he had much better things he’d like to be enlightened about. Darragh flushed just thinking about the things he’d like Ciaran to teach him, and his stomach twisted. Because he had no right to ask. No right to even think of asking.
Ciaran shot him a sideways glance. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” he said with a smirk that seemed borderline flirtatious to Darragh.
“Well,” Darragh snapped. “It is.”
Ciaran looked at him curiously. “All right, fine.”
“I’m sorry.” Darragh wanted to blurt out that Ciaran was messing with his head, but he knew there was no way Ciaran would fail to take advantage of that. That, and it was a cruel thing to say. A Boru thing to say. “I’m sorry for getting angry. I’m not acting right.”
Ciaran nodded. “You’re tired, I think. That’s all. Maybe we should stop for a while?”
“It’s not dark yet.”
“When did you sleep last?”
“I don’t know.”
Ciaran reached out and caught his forearm. “Let’s find somewhere, and we can both sleep, all right? Get some rest, get your head on straight. You’ll feel better afterwards. We can get an early start tomorrow morning.”
“We should keep going,” Darragh muttered.
“What, and collapse of exhaustion further down the track? Don’t be stubborn. That’s Maeve’s job, remember?”
Darragh smiled. “You say that like you know her.”
Ciaran squeezed his arm. “I liked listening to your stories. I like stories.”
“Do you have any?”
Ciaran smiled, and it lit up his face. “A million. Let’s find somewhere to rest, and I’ll tell you one.”
Darragh looked tired. More tired than Ciaran, possibly, who’d at least gotten a few hours of sleep in the sewers. Darragh’s steps were becoming uneven, and the dark shadows under his eyes threatened to engulf his face. Also, he’d talked. About his people and a place called Cúil Aodha. And if one place like that had survived, why not another? There must be other people out there, people who were struggling. People who could use help. Darragh had built a life in this fallen country. Ciaran could, too. He couldn’t solve Ireland’s greater problems—the hunger, the corruption of the exiled government, the anarchy of Dublin—he knew that now, but small change, that he could do. Just as Darragh had in his village, taking care of his own people.
They found shelter in an abandoned house set far enough back from the main road not to attract attention. It had once been a modern bungalow, one of the new builds from the Celtic Tiger that maybe had never been lived in, surrounded by dozens of abandoned houses just like it, all boarded up and in various states of disrepair. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack, trying to find them here.
Darragh pried the board off the house’s side door and stepped aside to let Ciaran in first. Inside, the house was damp and dark and stripped of anything useful, but all they needed was a roof over their heads for a while. For long enough for Darragh to fall asleep and for Ciaran to run. He wasn’t going to be handed over to his father like a thing, to be bartered and sold. If he ever went back, it would be on his own terms. Not as a thing. Not as a victim.
Ciaran sank down on the floor of the front room, trying not to peer too hard into the dark corners. He hated spiders, and the place was probably crawling with them. He was tired but couldn’t risk closing his eyes.
Darragh crouched down beside him, rooting around in his pack. He tossed out a sleeping bag and a kerosene lamp but kept on digging until … he withdrew a length of rope.
Ciaran stiffened. “What’s that for?”
At least the big lug had the grace to look apologetic. “For your hands and feet, while we sleep.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Heart thumping hard and fast, Ciaran cast a look around the small, dim room. “I’m not going to—”
“I want to trust you, Ciaran, I do. And I know you don’t like being tied. But I really am tired and I need to rest, and I won’t be able to if I’m keeping one eye open all night. So do it? For me?” He smiled sheepishly, offering the rope as if in supplication.
Damn.
Ciaran raised his hands with a heavy sigh.
“Thank you,” Darragh said. He moved forwards, callused workman’s hands skimming over the softer skin of Ciaran’s wrists as he looped the rope. At least he was tying Ciaran’s hands in front of his body, rather than behind him, like …
“Boru tied me,” Ciaran said quietly. “When he wanted to punish me. He’d tie my hands behind my back until my shoulders nearly broke. He’d blindfold me sometimes, too. Just to keep me scared. And then, after … after you revealed us, he had me tied all the time.”
Darragh jerked back.
Good. It was supposed to sting.
Ciaran lifted his hand to Darragh’s cheek. “It’s all right. I’ll let you.”
Darragh wouldn’t meet his gaze. He readjusted the rope, fumbling, and Ciaran lowered his head again, holding his hands out obediently in front of him as the loops coiled and tightened. It was terrifying, feeling them slowly closing in, scraping his skin, constricting him. He whimpered, and it wasn’t all artifice.
Now Darragh looked like he was about to cry, his big stupid blue eyes swimming.
“It really is all right,” Ciaran said quietly, unsure which of them he was trying to convince. The knots tightened one last time. It would be his feet next. Unless …
He bit his lip as Darragh dropped his bound hands. Raised his eyes to Darragh’s sad, determined face, and leaned forwards, softly pressing their lips together. Darragh huffed in surprise and pulled away.
“Wh-what was that for?”
“You looked sad,” Ciaran said. Jesus, they wouldn’t need to light the lamp if Darragh’s face burned any brighter.
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I wanted to,” Ciaran said. As a means to an end, sure. Maybe even something more. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever do anything like this again without it being complicated or tainted. But it was true: Darragh had been the one to bring him closest to pure and simple pleasure since he’d been taken. “I liked talking to you today, Darragh. Learning about who you are. I liked you.”
Darragh’s eyes slipped closed, and he shuddered with relief. “I like you, too, Ciaran. Have since I first saw you in the library. Maybe even lo—”
No, Ciaran wouldn’t be having any of that. He launched himself forwards, completely trusting Darragh to catch him before he fell. He kissed Darragh hard and furious, looping his bound arms around Darragh’s neck as Darragh’s hands came to rest at his waist. Kissing him back. Oh yes.
“Please, Darragh,” he said, as breathless and wanton as he’d ever sounded for Boru. Smothering his guilt. “Please would you …”
“What?”
Untie me, Ciaran thought, but that would give away the game. He only had one chance at this; after, Darragh would never trust him again. He had to make it count. “I need you to fuck me, Darragh.” He pulled away from Darragh’s lips, leaning back just enough that he could look the man in the face. “I need you to make me feel good. I need you to give me back what Boru took.”
Appeal to the man’s sense of heroism. Darragh loved Ciaran best when he was saving him. Loved Ciaran helpless, just like everyone else, just in a slightly different way. Ciaran reminded himself of that, even th
ough a part of him despised himself for what he was saying, and wished he could stop. Stop hurting Darragh, stop lying, stop manipulating, just stop all of it, because with every passing moment he felt less and less like Ciaran and more like Boy.
He had no choice, though. No choice but to play this cruel game, because otherwise he’d be trapped. So he reminded himself of all of Darragh’s faults and all of his mistakes. He’d need his hate, his ruthlessness, to go through with what he was planning. And it might still destroy him yet.
“I—” Darragh was clearly torn. Lust and fear warred for dominance over his features. “I’ll hurt you.”
“Look in the pack,” Ciaran urged. “In the first aid kit. There will be something there, something we can use so it doesn’t hurt.”
“We can use?” Darragh asked, a little stunned. Ciaran could feel his erection straining up to where Ciaran straddled him. He ground down on it with an expert roll of his hips, and Darragh let out a strangled groan.
“Yes. To make me slick for you, Darragh. So it won’t hurt. It will feel good, I promise. I’ll be tight and hot and wet.” He toyed with the hair at Darragh’s nape. Watched as Darragh’s pupils dilated. As Darragh wet his lips. He lifted his arms to allow Darragh to move. “Check it, please.”
Darragh nodded, like a man in a trance. Took Ciaran by the waist and lifted him off of his lap and set him aside like a doll. Ciaran sat on the floor and waited while Darragh dug through the pack and pulled out the first aid kit. Just like Ciaran predicted, it was well stocked. Ex-army issue by the look of it, a big proper kit with something for every eventuality … including a rectal thermometer and a tube of lubricant to go with it.
“That’s it,” Ciaran said. “That’s what we need.”
Darragh held the tube up uncertainly. “What do I do?”
“You put it on you,” Ciaran said. “And on me first. Come and undress me and I’ll show you how.”
He fumbled with the button on his fly before Darragh could refuse, but he couldn’t shove his pants down very far. Then Darragh was on his knees in front of him, his rough hands moving across Ciaran’s skin almost too gently, tugging his pants down. Ciaran almost laughed as they tangled around his knees. So much for seduction; this was hardly elegant. He let Darragh lay him back on the hard floor, let Darragh yank off his boots and socks, then helped him by wriggling the pants off as Darragh gave them a downwards tug. And then before he knew what was happening, his cock was in Darragh’s mouth.