35. 35.
35.
D arach had brought a thermal flask, filled with milky tea. Along with devilled ham sandwiches procured from a timeworn canvas satchel. A foresight Folke forever lacked. He’d never needed much before, contentedly labouring on water and bread or porridge until the evenings. But now. . .
“I haven’t had this much of an appetite in a long time.” He sipped from the singular cup he and Darach shared, relishing in the tea’s heat spreading through his belly.
“It makes sense,” said Darach.
“Does it?”
“Ye’ve never been buggered as much before. Yer body needs nourishment to recuperate.”
A harsh cough lodged itself inside Folke’s throat. The hard clap on his back nearly launched him forward.
Chidingly, as he straightened back up, “ Darach .”
The jocular laugh eased the burn of his embarrassment. Somewhat. The kiss delivered to his cheek quelled it. Mostly.
Folke chased after Darach’s retreating mouth with renewed hunger. Readily indulged. He set the cup atop the wall. Heard it tip over and drop into the grass as he stood to position himself between powerful thighs, not once breaking away. Ran his tongue over soft lips, coaxing them open. Slipped in to taste and lavish. Couldn’t help the breathy moan as hands kneaded his rear. Pulled him closer so that he might rock his groin against a hard abdomen.
Then those same hands slapped down on the globes. As if to say, that’s enough, and Darach withdrew.
“It’s too risky.”
Oh, but Folke rather liked the thought of taking a risk. Confident Darach could control himself better than he believed. Eager, if he were honest, to find out what the Serpent felt like.
Again he gave chase, capturing a strong, bearded jawline with both hands and closing his mouth over Darach’s .
Desire reverberated his lover’s chest. A deep, guttural growl that brushed the realms of unnatural. Sending an uprush of excitement along Folke’s back. Into his cock. They broke apart with a faint inhale for dewy air. Darach pressed his face against Folke’s stomach, mouthing the wool of his jumper. Broad hands scoured his back, needily, while he ran his fingers through silken hair, shaved sides a velvety glide against his palms.
Yet Darach pulled away again, straining, “We canae, Folke.”
“Alright,” Folke breathed, disappointed.
He reclaimed his spot on the stone wall. Worked to soothe his roaring want while Darach moved about beside him.
“An–Any sign of creatures?”
A chuff. “Naw. I’m certain we banished the last o’ them for the time being, but there’s usually an upsurge that follows. Could be weeks or months.”
Without a gram of bashfulness, “I hope it’s months.”
And without hesitation, “I hope so too.”
He lost a fight against the smile that broke loose, even as he spoke. “It would be a pity if you had to leave before Thomas’ hard work with the garden pays off.”
“Oh, aye. He’d be heartbroken.”
As much as Folke would be.
After getting a taste of what life could be like, saying farewell would ruin him.
Darach mumbled to himself after a particularly swift slosh of tea. He shepherded Folke’s hands around the dampened cup, pulling him out of his head enough to stop the souring of his thoughts. To ignore the slight sting in his eyes.
Just the wind, more feral by the hour.
“If this keeps up we might need to go home.”
“Ye may be right.”
Was that a hint of worry?
He finished the tea promptly and relinquished the cup, rushed by the sounds of a tin box closing. Followed suit as Darach’s heavy feet stomped away from the wall, toward the sheep. He hollered at them to get them moving. Socks bleated, indignant.
Only a few paces before fingers curled around Folke’s, the walk back made in silence as the wind howled past. Its force sent him staggering forward. He would have said something, but the possible meaning behind it hit him harder, rendering him stiff with fear.
“Shawl, Socks?”
“Dinnae fash, they’re right here.”
He could barely hear their plodding.
It was a relief to round the cottage and bring the ewes into the barn. They remained restless despite Folke’s hushed reassurances as he ran his palms over their sheared bodies. Reassured them again upon closing the pen.
Outside, the winds had calmed somewhat. Unlike Folke’s heart, beating too quickly with the knowledge that the weather had taken a turn for the unnatural. Trepidation followed him into the kitchen, where vapours of fire and forest dew beckoned him into consoling arms.
Finlay said, “You don’t need to worry.”
“We’re right here, mo leannan.”
Folke pressed his mouth along the crook of Darach’s neck. Shifted to Finlay to do the same. Took comfort in the warmth of skin. Fingers raked through his hair. A feeble attempt to tame it.
“I’m taking you to the movies.”
“You are?”
Was there even a cinema nearby?
The thought of returning to Brenin Bach didn’t provoke a desire to become one with the hills, at least.
Deciding to simply accept his fate, Folke muttered, “Alright.”
Finlay snorted. “Fuck, if you keep on being so precious I’m really going to fall for you.”
Folke froze in the midst of moving away to shrug off his chore coat. Both his lovers had grown silent and the air taut with uncertainty. Maybe even regret.
He wanted to ask, did you mean to say that?
More urgently, do you mean it ?
Blurted, “Then my plan is falling into place.”
Laughter reverberated the kitchen walls. Relieved. Folke left the coat hanging from the hook by the back door and followed Finlay to the hallway, where he paused. His turn to be uncertain—for reasons far more superficial.
“Do. . .I need to change?”
Intrigue thrummed Finlay’s throat. “I did see another decent shirt in your wardrobe—don’t make that face. I wasn’t poking around, only put the laundry away.”
“Oh.” Folke dragged his fingers across buttons under his jumper. “I can fold my own washing, you realise. I just—”
Forget to do it.
Can’t be bothered.
Who was there to impress with mundane chores?
Finlay and Darach, now.
“I’ll go and change,” he said.
He did not go up alone, this time. Finlay was right behind him. His discerning touch glided along the inside of Folke’s thigh while he stood before the wardrobe.
Aiming for casualness, Folke said, “We could skip the cinema and hop straight into bed, if you prefer?”
“Not a chance.”
He kept his sigh to himself. Felt along shirts and jumpers—many more than there ought to be. His hand caught on Shetland wool.
He asked, “You hung your clothes in here?”
And Finlay answered, “You wanted us here.”
Folke struggled to swallow. That same panic he’d felt the night before clawed upward into his throat.
No, not panic as he’d thought.
It was the realisation that this precious thing he had with Darach and Finlay, no matter how transient, was real. They were his lovers, and he theirs. They were here to stay for however long allowed. Wanted to stay. And he was free to feel what he wanted for them.
“You put your clothes in my wardrobe.” Emotion wavered his otherwise dulled voice.
Most unapologetically, “We sure did. If it’s a problem, you’ll just have to deal with it. Rummaging through my backpack for wrinkled shirts is a pain in my ass.”
“Six days,” Folke said. A vacuous response, but it was all he could come up with.
Bed springs pinged. “Things have moved fast.”
“I suspect that’s the way things usually go for soldiers.” He flicked through the articles, taking note of the spaces separating Finlay’s from Darach’s and his. “It’s strange,” he continued, finding unfamiliar, stiff fabric hanging alongside the rest of his old shirts. “It feels like it’s been a lot longer and like no time has passed, both at once.”
“That’s the shirt,” Finlay said, simply, coming up behind him. “Pale blue stripes that’ll bring out your eyes.”
“I don’t recognise it.” Maybe it was one Eleanor had snuck into his wardrobe.
Fingers traced up his right side, inducing a ticklish tremble as Folke pulled the jumper off over his head. Flung it aside. A hard body pressed into him from behind, and a firm mouth lavished his nape with a kiss. Languidly, as if to savour the bite mark that would surely be there from the night before. The palm sliding up his abdomen ran as hot as Finlay’s groan.
“Has anyone ever told you that your ass is a marvel?”
Rough hands grasped his hips. Jerked him back against a stiffening cock. Folke suppressed a breathy groan of his own.
He managed, “Yes, of course. In between their bleating, my sheep tell me all the time. My offer of forgetting about the cinema still stands.”
Folke thought himself successful until his lover moved away with a sharp smack delivered to his rear. Something lithe draped over his right shoulder.
“Change. And put that tie and vest on. The one right next to the shirt you’ll be wearing.”
Comprehension caught in the centre of Folke’s chest. He traced the silky fabric of a necktie hanging across his chest. Moved his hand forward to a finely knit, cabled pattern, recognising neither. “You were planning this?”
Whose clothes were these, Finlay’s?
“Definitely.”
Definitely no hope for plans changing, then.
At the bottom of the stairs, Folke allowed himself to crash into a large body. Revelled in the way Darach’s arms coiled around him and dragged him off the last step. Their lips met, and Folke wondered if it was too soon to say he’d miss him.
It would’ve been true.
“Enjoy yersel,” Darach murmured.
Unwilling to be discourteous, Folke kept from responding. As he and Finlay hopped down the porch steps and crunched along gravel toward the car, he thought to revisit the idea of half days. He liked and wanted both their company at the same time. It didn’t feel right to slide into the car without Darach there to tilt it to one side.
Such thoughts distracted him from the wind that had picked up again. Finlay’s kiss to his jaw placated some of his dismay, but not his concern for Socks and Shawl.
The car’s engine rumbled. Pebbles flicked out from under tyres, and his body jerked with the sudden motion.
“Did you put those traps around the barn?” Folke hadn’t thought it possible, catching Finlay off guard, although the silence suggested perhaps he had. “I don’t need another Barghest to come crashing through there, is all.”
“There may be a few.”
A rather evasive response that Folke gleaned a surprising amount from. They had placed traps all over his land and not told him, brazenly relying on him to keep to known paths.
An overbold risk to take.
“What are they, if not landmines?”
“They’re a type of pressure plate with enhanced crystals that attract and store electric charges. Anything heavy enough that treads on them will initiate a lightning hit.”
“What crystals on Earth can do this?” He hadn’t meant to sound quite so disbelieving.
“You’re fucking a dragon and you get hung up on what rocks can do?”
“I haven’t yet fucked a dragon,” Folke corrected. Spitefully added, “Despite my best efforts.”
Finlay made a noise of dissent. “You’re lucky Darach has practised some self control.”
Maybe he was.
Folke rested his forehead against the window as silence fell between them. Let the cool, vibrating glass distract from the possibility that he’d irritated Finlay, that the man didn’t have a bottomless reservoir of patience, not even for a lover.
Maybe he ought to apologise, explain himself as he had with Darach.
Folke took note of each passing gust, wondering if he would soon be able to tell how long until they reached their destination. If his lovers liked going places and insisted on dragging him along, this wouldn’t be the last time he was headed to Brenin Bach. If indeed they were headed there.
“Where—”
“Llanfelydyn.”
Folke paused. Tried, “Isn’t that—”
“Over an hour away.”
And grit his teeth. Quelled his own vexation. Understood that Finlay’s intention was unlikely to be rude. “You said your senses are increased due to your lineage.”
“I did.”
“Do you also have an increased sense of what someone feels?”
They both knew the answer already, yet there came a deliberating pause. “Sometimes.”
That felt like an understatement, when Finlay could predict his questions and sense his worries. “Does that make your life more difficult?”
“A little.”
Folke imagined it would, for both parties. He would never be able to hide anything, and Finlay would be subjected to his fretting for as long as he stayed.
“Sorry in advance,” he mumbled, unsurprised his lover had heard him and seemed to understand the meaning.
An amused chuff was all he was granted by way of response.
Although he would have preferred to sit in silence, unwilling to bungle the fragile bond between them, Finlay prevented a deeper descent into his own head. Asked idle questions, mostly. Such as, “What’s with your sheep’s names?”
Folke replied, “What else do you make such clothing articles out of?”
Something that seemed to amuse.
“Were you the one to name them?”
“Yes. We never used to,” Folke said. “There were too many of them, and sheep more or less sound the same.” Not until his herd had dwindled to the last few had he gotten to know them better.
Had Darach told Finlay, he wondered.
The question stumbled past his lips without permission. Folke snapped his mouth shut, frustrated.
Finlay said, “No. Tell me.”
A gentle command, but a command all the same. One Folke felt inclined to obey. He considered himself fortunate that this time, at least, he could recount events without the tremor in his voice, or the spill of tears. Yet the regret remained, saturating his entire self with a persistent sense of inadequacy.
Darach had told Folke he’d given him more than anyone else. Knew he’d meant understanding and a willingness to accept the men for who they were. Mysterious, incomprehensible. Their presence impermanent.
But Finlay was not Darach.
Finlay, who said, “I’m a failed doctor.”
Prompting Folke to push away from the window and turn to his right. “What? I thought you’re a field medic?”
“Only because they were short on actual medics.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I failed my exams. I guess it’s a good thing that in the middle of war, there’s learning on the job.”
Something told Folke that Finlay had learned many harsh lessons this way .
It occurred to him then, what Finlay was doing. He was trying to empathise. A gesture both kind and endearing. Folke reached out. Found a hard thigh to squeeze with heartfelt appreciation. Relieved to know that they had yet more in common.
They’d both lost something important enough to deem themselves unworthy of better things. Folke knew, in the way Finlay grasped his hand and held it firm, that he felt the same relief as Folke himself did. At the similarities. The lack of judgement.