Chapter 31
In the masia, Dídac helped Kim over to the fire.
Dragon was standing, hackles raised on the sofa, but as they approached, she fled into a cubbyhole near the fireplace that his grandfather had used as a coal bin.
When she finally came out of there, he’d have to try and give her a wipe down, or she’d be painting everything with black.
Kim could barely walk, the cold and wet had seeped so deeply into his bones.
But before letting him collapse on the sofa, Dídac made him shed his wet things.
Questions were flying around his head. How on earth had Kim ended up here in the dead of night in a storm?
Why wasn’t he back in Barcelona directing his beloved production? But Kim’s teeth were chattering.
“Dídac… Dídac…” he whispered, and kept repeating it.
He stood there like a child or frail pensioner as Dídac helped him out of his cotton jacket, then his shirt. Quickly, Dídac grabbed the blanket from the sofa and wrapped him in it.
“Take off your shoes and pants—they’re soaked. I’ll grab a towel.”
But when he came back from the bathroom with one of the thick, pink, fluffy towels his mother insisted on stocking the masia with, Kim was still standing where he’d left him, the blanket draped around his shoulders, gazing into the log fire with a lost look on his face.
Not wanting to admit the worry in his heart, Dídac threw the towel over Kim’s head and began to scrub his hair dry.
Somehow, somewhere, Kim had fallen in the mud, and his face and hair were caked with it.
Dídac used the towel to clean him as best he could, and dried his torso.
He tried not to think about the last time he had touched that chest. Although Kim was shivering, the fine golden hairs were now gleaming seductively in the firelight.
He wanted to cry, he wanted to caress those beautiful hairs, but he kept his mind on his task.
Leaving the towel around Kim’s shoulders, he dropped his hands to Kim’s belt.
“Come on, Kim, help me. We need to get you out of those wet clothes.”
He undid Kim’s belt, while Kim began to shudder in big spasms. Kneeling, Dídac undid his laces.
“Lift your foot, come on.”
Kim responded slowly, and Dídac pulled off first one shoe and then the other. Dídac pulled Kim’s trousers and underwear down his thighs. He got up, placing one arm around Kim’s back under his arms.
“OK, now sit down on the sofa. There you go.”
Deftly, he pulled off Kim’s wet trousers and underwear.
Seeing his cock, shrunken and pale like that, it looked to him like the equipment of some stranger, not the man he’d made love to with such passion in Kim’s hotel.
Grabbing the towel, and forcing his mind away from that chain of thought, he dried off Kim’s legs, and then wrapped him in the blanket.
“OK, lie back. I’m going to get you some more blankets. And you need to eat something hot. I have a stew. I’ll heat that up and be back.”
“No!” Kim reached out to him in panic. “Don’t go, Dídac! Stay with me, please stay… my beautiful Dídac… I’m so sorry… please…”
“I’m not going anywhere, Kim, but you need to eat something hot. Do you understand? I’ll be five minutes.”
Kim nodded stupidly. All the forcefulness of his personality had evaporated, and he was showing the awareness of a small child.
Dídac took another couple of logs and angled them against the log he had put on earlier, which was now burning merrily.
But Kim clearly needed heat, a lot of it.
After checking that he was tightly wrapped in the blanket, Dídac hurried out into the kitchen and lit the gas under the big pot of stew he had made earlier in the week, the same day he’d arrived.
Then he went upstairs and grabbed the thick white duvet off the bed, and a couple of pillows.
Downstairs, he propped the pillows behind Kim and spread the duvet over the blanket he was wrapped in. Kim’s eyes were closed, and his teeth chattering.
“OK, I’m going to get you some stew because you need to eat something hot. I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
As he headed back toward the kitchen, Dídac couldn’t keep the fear from his heart.
If Kim needed a doctor, he wasn’t sure where the nearest one was.
He hadn’t paid much mind when the medical clinic in the village had closed last year.
The Amats were a healthy family, and tended to rely more on a good diet, exercise, and home remedies, rather than doctors and drugs.
But Kim was worrying him. He might have to drive him into the hospital in Girona, a good hour away.
He stood there stirring the stew, willing it to heat up.
Had he had a microwave, he would have used it, but that was another piece of technology the Amats didn’t set much store by, preferring slow cooking over a stove than quickly heated slop.
Finally, when it was ready, he ladled some into a large mug, grabbed a spoon and carried it through to Kim.
In the living room, he found Dragon sitting on Kim’s chest, purring loudly. Black swathes of coal dust marked the duvet like Chinese calligraphy, showing the moves Dragon had made in her decision to settle where she had.
“Ai, Dragon! What will we do with you!”
Ca n’Amat wasn’t a homestead in which cleanliness reigned supreme.
Rather it was a rural farmhouse, where mud got regularly tracked in on people’s boots, despite his mother’s best entreaties to make sure everyone removed their footwear at the door.
He would have to wash the duvet cover tomorrow though, or the next time his mum was up here, she would have a living piece of his hide at letting his cat dirty her clean bedding.
He sat next to Kim on the edge of the sofa.
“Hey… Kim… Can you eat something?”
Kim opened his eyes and stared up at him in earnest love. Dídac could tell he was going to speak, but he forestalled him:
“No words, just eat right now.”
He took a spoonful of stew and brought it to Kim’s mouth. His director opened his mouth to receive it, all the time his eyes never leaving Dídac’s face. Dídac took another spoonful and like that, spoonful by spoonful, fed Kim the stew.
Finally, Kim shook his head. He had eaten most of the stew in the mug. “Thanks,” he whispered.
Dídac took the empty mug, placing it down on the floor.
Dragon quickly jumped down to investigate, nose twitching inquisitively, trying to decide if enough meat flavor from the broth remained for it to be worth her while licking the mug clean.
Dídac pulled back duvet and blanket, and slipped in beside Kim fully clothed.
He wrapped his arms around him and pulled the blanket close over them both, the duvet on top.
His mind was a whirl. What was Kim doing here?
How was it possible for him to have left his precious theatrical production and come battling up here into the wilds in the midst of a raging storm?
Kim’s arms found his torso beneath the blanket and they hugged.
He felt Kim’s breath on his cheek, at first labored, but gradually becoming deeper and more relaxed.
He inhaled his lover’s odor, a grassy blend of mud and sweat, his breath carrying a faint trace of eucalyptus.
Slowly the shuddering relaxed into shivering and then even that stopped, and Kim’s breath rose and fell more calmly as he fell into sleep.