Part Seven
He woke to a crick in his neck and a chill all along one side of body because the fire behind the grate was low.
The others had left the room. The winds blew and howled outside but the house was quiet.
Even Bemmi was likely on her cushion before the fireplace near his parents’ bed.
Tommick was curled against Dorrimin’s side, fast asleep with his feet on the floor.
Ollis’ quilt had been thrown over them both.
Tommick was already going to have aches and pains in the morning. They needed to head to a real bed, even if just thinking of it made him hot. He would embarrass himself almost certainly, but again had the thought that Tommick would be kind about it.
“Tommick?” he prompted, nudging a few times until Tommick stirred.
Tommick dropped his head back before opening his eyes, blinking, then frowning at Dorrimin as if very confused.
“We fell asleep in the parlor,” Dorrimin explained, fighting the urge to pet Tommick’s frowns away.
Now that he’d started touching Tommick, he was going to have difficulties stopping.
But that was his problem, not Tommick’s, with his wrecked hair and his stunned eyes. “We should get up.”
“Oh. If you say so,” Tommick murmured, sleepily agreeable or just agreeable at heart no matter what was happening. His family should appreciate that and care for him. But if they wouldn’t, then Dorrimin would.
“I’m going to marry you,” Dorrimin announced, “though it’s not all that usual, you being a topper. But I will be a Guild Master in time, and when we are older, no one can stop us.”
“What?” Tommick stared at him, eyes still glazed from exhaustion. He had tried to walk up the mountain, Dorrimin reminded himself. He was undoubtedly worn to the bone.
“We should go to sleep in a real bed. Come on.” Dorrimin got to his feet, wobbling only a little as the rest of his body woke up, then helped pull Tommick up with him.
His arm went around Tommick again to steady him, and maybe also to preserve as much of his warmth as he could before the journey upstairs to his room removed it.
“You’re so certain,” Tommick said, or complained, allowing himself to be walked back toward the kitchen. “And capable,” he added once Dorrimin got them both some water, and then insisted they take turns in the bathroom.
“It’s a long journey downstairs when it’s cold,” Dorrimin warned him through the door. “You’d rather go now.”
Tommick, waking more as the chill began to return to his bones, mumbled something in reply through the door. But he let Dorrimin curl around him again, at least until they reached the stairs to the top floor, which required they go single file.
The floor was half attic, closed off with a door, and half Dorrimin’s room.
It was just barely tall enough for him to stand up straight, but was quieter than the rooms on the floor below, especially when anyone in the extended family visited.
His room contained a small but sufficient fireplace, a wardrobe, a chair and a desk, along with his bed.
The bed was positioned beneath one of the windows, which all had thick, closed curtains to keep the heat inside.
Dorrimin saw Tommick looking around, but led him to the bed and urged him to sit before he went to the fireplace to add some logs. Tommick felt warm enough now, but Dorrimin wasn’t about to forget how chilled he’d been.
Then he bent over to take off his shoes before he removed his pants. “You should sleep on the side away from the window,” he fretted aloud, and only really considered that he was getting undressed in front of Tommick when silence answered him.
He looked up.
Tommick watched him, teeth in his bottom lip. Their eyes met.
Dorrimin froze, his hands the only things holding his pants up. “I have long legs,” he heard himself saying, out of his mind apparently. “Skinny, I mean. All of me is skinny.”
“But there’s a lot of you,” Tommick returned, maybe also out of his mind. “It’s why you have such a big bed.”
It was long more than big, but Dorrimin knew what he meant. “I can still make up the spare room, if you’d prefer that.” The very idea made him want to drag Tommick to him so he couldn’t leave. “But this really will be warmer.”
Tommick pulled in a deep breath. “You….” Whatever he’d been going to say, he seemed to change his mind. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Aren’t you?” Dorrimin returned, stern and foolish. Nonetheless, he didn’t call it back. “You should get under the covers.”
“Yes, but—” Tommick argued incompletely, then shuffled back and wriggled to get under the covers anyway.
Dorrimin considered, too late, that he should have changed the sheets, but he could hardly do it now. He hoped Tommick wouldn’t mind the bed smelling of him, whatever he smelled like. His hair softener and soap more than likely, or perhaps….
He probably shouldn’t think of what he’d done in bed that morning. Not with Tommick right there in the bed in front of him.
Dorrimin quickly stripped out of his clothes and went to the wardrobe to grab a flannel nightshirt. Once he’d pulled it into place, he looked over again. Tommick’s head was on his pillow. His eyes were on Dorrimin.
“Dorrimin,” he said over the wind and the pounding of Dorrimin’s heart, “you’ve touched me a lot tonight. Are you coming to bed?”
Those sentences next to each other did something to Dorrimin’s thinking. He stared at Tommick, then stared some more, reaching up absently to pull the ribbon from his hair and let it fall to the floor.
“Yeah,” he agreed at last, mouth dry, though unless he climbed over Tommick, he’d have to crawl up from the foot of the bed, which he did end up doing.
Tommick pulled back the covers to allow him in, and the mattress and bedding were cold.
The window added a chill, and normally Dorrimin would have reached for a sleep cap or covered his head with a pillow.
Instead, he shifted and shuffled a bit, turning onto his side with his back to the window so he could look at Tommick, who had turned toward him.
Tommick shivered and Dorrimin’s hands were inching toward him just like that. But Tommick knew it and did nothing except slide forward to make himself easier to reach.
“Touching me again,” he pointed out, watching Dorrimin from up close once they shared a pillow. “You never have until tonight.”
He said it simply, leaving Dorrimin to wonder if he had been supposed to before this. If Tommick had been asking for touches when he’d asked for Dorrimin to go to pubs and parties with him.
“Oh.” Dorrimin swallowed. Tommick probably had. “I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Tommick whispered back. “You know lots of things, Dorri, but you can’t know everything.”
“Like stars,” Dorrimin agreed faintly. “And poetry. And when to….” He stopped, then curled his fingers into Tommick’s nightshirt, wrinkling it. He stared into Tommick’s eyes. Tommick stared back into his.
The wind whistled and shook the shutters, ratting them against the windows.
Tommick flinched a little. Dorrimin pulled him closer, sighing when Tommick ducked his head beneath his chin and his breath puffed against Dorrimin’s throat.
“Is it quieter in your family’s house?”
Tommick shrugged. “Thicker walls, I suppose. But I like your house better.”
Which was why he should stay in it forever, Dorrimin decided, but had some sense left. Enough not to say that.
“Will you stay there?” he asked instead. “Your family has plans for you?”
After a pause, Tommick shrugged again. “I’m not sure. Not that they’ve told me. Once I get my degree, they’ll probably make me a floor manager at the store. They don’t want me importing things, and neither do they want me to truly help run it. Or so I believe.”
“You could travel.” Dorrimin let his hands wander again, stroking one through Tommick’s hair intending to soothe him but perhaps also wanting to make him shiver again.
How Tommick liked to be petted. How Dorrimin wanted to keep petting him.
He was breathing harder. “You could reach for a different career through the college?”
“What?” Tommick didn’t seem to follow his point. Dorrimin wanted to nuzzle him senseless, if that was something people did. He didn’t even care that his blood was pounding, although he didn’t dare move closer lest Tommick feel his excitement.
“Try things,” Dorrimin suggested, losing some eloquence when Tommick’s open mouth brushed his skin.
“And… and if your family gives you a hard time, get a job and live as the rest of us do.” He didn’t push down to encourage more, he would never, but Tommick dipped his head on his own and then his lips were soft and damp at Dorrimin’s throat.
Dorrimin gasped and Tommick backed off, but not far.
“Work here,” Dorrimin told him, strangled, fingers tangled in Tommick’s waves.
“My mother would… ah… hire you on the spot for your selling abilities alone. You are far better at counter work than I would ever be.” He tried to think.
“Although maybe that is a disgrace for a topper? Or…. Tommick?”
Tommick lifted himself up to glare down at him. His hair was wild and he was breathless.
“Shut up. You do more than most toppers. My family employs many people, that is true. But we don’t make things. I think that’s wonderful.” He went still, then frowned. “Would she really? Hire me here? What? Why? Really?”
Dorrimin pulled his hands to his chest and kept them there. “Yes. And not just to….” He snapped his mouth closed, too late, he feared.
Tommick frowned harder, then slid back down to peer at Dorrimin from only a few inches away again. “Dorri? ‘Not just to’ what?”
“Not just to let me be near you,” Dorrimin finished despite his embarrassment. “You must have noticed that I…” he’d liked their touching and heavy breathing much better than this sort of speaking, “admire you.”
Tommick didn’t move. “Because I’m a Fortune?”
He didn’t sound like he believed that, so Dorrimin wasn’t insulted.