Chapter 14
Micha was in hell. It was not supposed to be like this.
The opium was the barrier between his body and anything it might have to feel.
And yet, somehow, he was breached. Thomas had barely laid hands on him, but he had given of himself so utterly that it had not mattered.
Every sound he’d made was seared into Micha’s skin like a brand.
His mouth tasted of Thomas’s mouth. The skin on his palms, where he had touched the untouched, felt raw.
He’d drugged himself into a stupor, but still the memory would not release its hold on him.
It was not a thing of the mind. It was a thing of the body, indelible somehow, written into him and onto him, as surely as Isidore and everyone who had taken Micha since.
But Thomas was unblurring, the freshest, the deepest and brightest, as though he had drenched Micha in sunlight.
Micha lay in bed, waiting for the laudanum to help him, but it felt as though ants were crawling inside his skin.
Edward’s paintings swarmed across his vision.
In a blur of too-brilliant colour, he saw Thomas’s body arching red-gold under his own, his hair spilled across leaves only one shade lighter, pale hands clutching at nothing, gleaming like the moon.
That night, for the first time in months or even years, Micha touched himself by choice.
His flesh responded only distantly, like the bells that used to chime daily over the gables of Oxford.
He wrapped a hand around his half-stirring prick, imagining it was Thomas’s hand that touched him or Thomas’s prick he touched, but his ardour was a guttering thing, and both hand and prick were too familiar to inspire anything beyond contempt.
He raked his nails over the head of his cock until he hissed. That, at least, he felt.
He gave up. He wanted, but not this.
He wondered what it had been like for Isidore the first time they had lain together.
If Isidore had watched the wonder dawn in Micha’s eyes as today he had watched it dawn in Thomas’s.
And felt the power of it, so terrifyingly sweet.
Micha tugged the covers over his head and curled in on the memories, trying to smother them in heat and darkness.
He did not want to want.
He had chosen his craving.
But Thomas had made him into a world. A whole universe, star-studded with kisses.
Micha could still not entirely untangle the impulse that had made him yield himself.
Thomas’s grief. The white horse. The empty palms of history.
He had thought, grinding Thomas into the oak tree, forcing their mouths together, that he would take something from him.
But all Thomas had done was give and give and give.
Isidore had said there was no sin or shame in love.
It was not until Thomas that Micha had come close to believing it.
The next evening, they attended the first meeting of the Nettlefield Reading Group, which was held up at Chalfont Manor, or “the big house,” as most of the village residents called it.
They walked there together through the evening haze, Micha slouching along, doing his best to appear as if nothing had happened, and Thomas practically bouncing.
The man had an absolutely ridiculous glow about him and a smile that kept slipping onto his lips like a guest who refused to go home.
Micha felt annoyed and pleased and absurd. “If you turn up for an evening of improving literature looking like that, they’ll think you’ve been at the communion wine.”
“Like what?” asked Thomas, whose eyes brightened as they alighted upon Micha.
Micha made an ill-conceived gesture. “Like . . . that. All happy for no reason.”
“Is happiness a sin now?”
“You tell me.”
Thomas made a visible effort to contain himself. “I’m sorry. I just feel so very blessed.”
Blessed? How could he possibly. “From one . . .” Micha made another ill-conceived gesture, and Thomas went pink to the tips of his ears.
“Not just that,” he said, quickly, “though it was lovely. Everything. You. Being with you. Knowing I am not utterly alone. And feeling, for perhaps the first time in my life, truly myself.”
“And how are you squaring this with your God?”
“I’m not.”
Micha widened his eyes.
“It’s so very strange. I’ve never felt so confident in the beauty and benevolence of the world, and its creator, but I suppose I must be very far from grace indeed, to be who I am, and do what I have done.
” Thomas shrugged. “I presume an answer will come to me in time. But, whether it does or doesn’t, I must consider how to proceed with my life. ”
This had not been a conversation Micha had ever envisioned having. Certainly not less than twenty-four hours after a few kisses and a hand job. “Why? Can’t you just go on with it?”
“Well, of course I shall go on with it. But I can hardly remain in the church, can I? I cannot preach duty, chastity, and obedience when I am neither dutiful, obedient, or”—Thomas smiled—“chaste.” And, suddenly, he whirled round, right there in the lane, and pressed a swift, clumsy kiss on Micha’s astonished lips.
“What the fuck are you doing?” cried Micha, looking wildly in all directions in case someone had seen them.
Thomas burst out laughing. “There’s no one here.”
“Yes but . . . yes but . . . you don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“What do you mean, ‘Why not’? It’s obvious.”
“The only sensible reason,” said Thomas mildly, “that I can imagine for not kissing you is you not wanting to be kissed.”
“There are lots of sensible reasons.”
“Is that among them?”
“N-no but—”
So, of course, Thomas kissed him again. Micha froze, though his heart hammered wildly.
This was stupid. Madness. Somebody would surely catch them.
And then Thomas made a soft, yearning noise against his mouth, and Micha found his fingers had coiled into Thomas’s hair and he was dragging him closer until their bodies met as intimately as their lips.
Thomas, it seemed, was a swift learner. There was no hesitation in him, no anxiety.
He shaped the kiss, but he did not control it, and he claimed Micha with painstaking care, and a thoroughness that made his knees shake.
Thomas’s tongue slipped lightly between Micha’s lips, explored him, worshipped him, took possession of the deepest corners of his mouth.
It was a sweet, certain communion, and Micha felt precious.
Annihilated. He heard someone actually whimper and realised—with some bewilderment—it was him.
He pulled away, pressing fingertips to his mouth, as though he had never been kissed.
“I love doing that.” Thomas gazed at him with naked adoration. “I think about it all the time. I love the sounds you make. I love the way you look at me.”
“Stop it.”
If only it was more of an act. That might have made it bearable. It was what a whore did, after all. But this was neither entirely truth nor entirely fiction. It was something else, something both and neither.
“Sorry.” But Thomas spoke so entirely unrepentantly that Micha had to bite back a smile.
“Stop looking at me like you want to propose. I told you, it’s just sex.”
“Oh,” said Thomas, in the same giddy fashion, “if only we could be married.”
“You can wear the gown.”
“A small price to pay.”
“Stop it. It’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t trying to be amusing. I think it makes perfect sense. How could love ever be sinful, whatever form it took? So really our only wickedness is fornication. And that is only because we are denied an alternative.”
Micha sneered. “Does this help you sleep at night, Father? Look at yourself in the mirror in the morning? It’s still wrong. And pretending there’s more to it makes you a hypocrite as well as a pervert.” Thomas reached for his hand and Micha jerked away. “What the fuck are you doing now?”
Thomas made a gesture of surrender. “Micha, if I truly believed that what I did with you was wrong, I would not do it. That is why we are granted conscience. I am pretending nothing. I love you. It’s very simple.”
Micha’s mouth fell open. Pure disbelief.
A touch of horror. And a swirl of something else much less easily articulated.
How could Thomas just say that? Out of nowhere.
As if it was easy. Of course, Micha had said it to Isidore often enough, the words such meagre messengers of his fervour, and Isidore had always said it back.
Always said it back. As light as his caresses.
This was nothing like that. And yet there it was, something else Thomas had given unasked.
“Oh dear,” Thomas went on, rather wryly. “I can see by your expression I have not pleased you. I know you’re not in love with me.”
“You can’t love me,” whispered Micha. “You don’t know me.”
Thomas smiled at him gently. “What has knowledge to do with love? Love is a kind of faith, is it not?”
Micha rolled his eyes. “Damn priests.” But perhaps Thomas was right.
What had he truly known of Isidore, after all, beyond his brilliance and his beauty?
He might as well have been a stained-glass saint.
And yet Micha loved him still, for loving Isidore was the last part of himself he did not hate.
“Anyway,” he added, “if you want to practice the tenets of your newfound faith, I can think of some interesting things for you to do on your knees.”
“Such as?” Thomas had the attentive air of a pupil at lessons.
“I’ll . . . I’ll show you later.”
“I shall look forward to it.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. The smile was still glimmering at the edges of Thomas’s mouth, but at least he managed to restrain himself from any further alfresco displays of his feelings.