Chapter XXI Felix
Chapter XXI
FELIX
D escending the mountain proved far easier than the journey up, and the sun hung low when Felix and Loren joined a stream at its base.
Every inch of Felix’s skin itched, sweat and dust and dirt caked thick.
A quick plunge would do wonders. He made to kick his sandals off and jump in, tunic and all, but Loren pulled him back.
‘Not here,’ Loren said. ‘These streams have been sour for months.’
‘I’m already sour.’ Felix tugged his neckline, and dust puffed. ‘I smell like an egg gone off.’
‘A little road dust won’t break you. Come on, I know a place.’
He led Felix further downstream, through a rich grove of olive trees, limbs bursting with fruit begging for harvest. Shade shielded them from the relentless evening heat.
At a point, Loren stretched back a hand.
A mindless gesture on Loren’s part, but one Felix hadn’t dared consider.
When he accepted it, their fingers tangling, warmth that had nothing to do with the weather settled deep in his belly.
The grove opened, and the sea spread before them.
Beneath the setting sun, the water glistened yellow and orange, fire licking the surface.
Felix sucked in a breath. Brine filled his lungs, driving out Vesuvius’s stench.
Low waves foamed and sloshed. There was no beach, just a field to the edge of the land, where the bank dropped into waist-deep water.
Thick grass thronged the coast, tall and green and lush.
In the distance, to the south of this quiet nook, Pompeii glimmered.
‘This is . . .’ Felix said, swallowing. ‘Nice.’
Loren smiled, and Felix had to look away.
He wasted no time disrobing, shucking his tunic with a grimace.
Tossing the helmet to the side, he dived in.
After the scorching afternoon, the seawater came as a cool relief.
With handfuls of sand, he scrubbed his skin until it tingled.
Then he let his hair writhe in the current before surfacing for air.
Loren had perched on a tree stump, legs crossed. Dappled light filtering through leaves cast freckled shadows across his shoulders.
‘You stink, too,’ Felix said when he kicked back to shore to drag his tunic in the water. He scrubbed a mystery stain with his fingernail.
‘Thanks,’ Loren said dryly.
‘Are you shy?’’
Delicious red washed across his face, wine overturned on table linen. ‘ No .’
‘Then swim with me. I don’t want to smell you all night.’ Cackling, Felix ducked to avoid the pebble Loren threw. If he was offended, Felix couldn’t be sure, but he watched from the corner of his eye as Loren stood and – fingers fumbling – pulled off his own garments.
Felix forced his gaze to drift, counting the handful of clouds in the pink sky.
Another body joined his with a splash.
‘I won’t look,’ Felix said. ‘Swear it on my mother’s life.’
‘Your dead mother?’ Loren asked. Then, ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘She isn’t dead. She’s a nymph, I bet.’
Felix fell back until he was floating, vulnerable in the current. Weightless. This felt safe, somehow, water muffling the earth’s hum and offering respite to think. So much had happened on the mountain, and he couldn’t tell if he understood more or less than before. Could both be true at once?
For a long while, no words were exchanged, only the sounds of Loren’s ablutions and the sea’s quiet lapping.
Until Loren said, ‘I dreamed this.’
Frowning, Felix righted himself. He’d been so lost in the trance of floating, he hadn’t realised he’d drifted so near Loren. Loren, who studied his face like trying to read a particularly impossible text. Or any text, if you were Felix.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘You were floating to me.’
‘Another vision.’
‘Maybe.’ Loren’s mouth pinched. ‘But my visions aren’t normally so peaceful.’
‘Maybe I’d drowned and you hadn’t realised yet,’ Felix said.
Loren shivered. ‘Don’t speak like that.’
‘Worried I’ll will it into reality?’
No response. Instead, Loren began undoing his tangled braid, slender fingers working.
Abruptly, Felix’s mouth dried. Fishing his tunic from the water, he hurried to land, wearing nothing but damp shorts, and sprawled in the grass.
‘I could stay here for ages,’ Felix mused. ‘The sea, the breeze, fuck, it’s nice.’
‘Your mouth is a sewage pit,’ came Loren’s response, closer than Felix expected. He cracked open one eye to watch a figure climb from the sea, a silhouette against the slow burn of sunset. ‘And you have no shame.’
Unbidden, Felix grinned, a little wild. ‘Can’t afford shame.’
‘You could try for modesty.’
‘Thievery is the humblest profession. ’
A weight settled beside him. Loren had dressed again, donning the embroidered yellow tunic Julia had gifted the day before, now stained and unpolished. Felix liked it better that way.
Pushing to his elbows, he said, ‘Your hair is a rat’s nest.’
‘You always know what to say.’ Loren dug in Nonna’s satchel until he withdrew a comb with a victory cry and set to work detangling.
Felix studied the narrow slope of his shoulders. He could drink his fill of this, watch Loren the way a thirsty man begged for water, toe the surface of his depths, so long as Felix didn’t let himself drown.
‘You seem happier,’ he said after a time, ‘since the mountain.’
The comb slowed. ‘Do I?’
‘ Happier isn’t the right word. Lighter , maybe. Like a burden was lifted.’
‘I wasn’t honest before when I told you nothing happened in my dreams. In truth, they’re nightmares. Horrible visions. Things I can’t repeat, but – you heard me in the Forum yesterday.’
‘Pompeii. You worried – saw – something happening to it,’ Felix guessed. ‘Something involving the helmet?’
Loren picked at the tines. ‘Even I underestimated what its power could do.’
It sounded like another half-truth. ‘And now?’
‘Now I have an answer. Everyone will be safe once you put it back come morning.’ He hit Felix with his burning smile, sunshine made tangible in the sweet upturn of his lips. ‘I think everything will turn out all right.’
He resumed the steady drag of his comb.
Felix’s nerves, meanwhile, felt flayed.
He had done all Loren asked, hadn’t he? He had talked to Nonna, trekked up and down a mountain, confessed fears he had never divulged to anyone else. Yet Loren kept the truth obscured. Whatever answer he’d found on Vesuvius about the helmet, he wasn’t telling Felix in full.
Felix had a sick sense those answers would come out the hard way before this ended.
Rules clashed in his head. Avoid attachment.
Stay in the present. Belief is never worth it.
Felix lived by his mantras to keep from dying if he went against them, but in the span of three days, Loren had systematically sorted through each one, pondered it, then flipped it on its head.
Still, even through the jumble, Felix kept hold of the one he’d learned first: trust your gut.
Others could keep religion and magic, augurs and oracles.
None had ever served Felix the way his instincts did.
What started that night with Servius, when he first felt the ground shake under his knees, had spiked to a maddening buzz he couldn’t put from his head.
A constant chatter of wordless talking, disembodied hands grabbing his ankles, tripping him.
Like a skittish animal, he wanted to lay his ears flat against his skull, turn tail and duck away until the storm passed.
Everything about Pompeii was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Tossed in the tall grass, Mercury’s helmet gleamed red. That siren’s song still, beckoning Felix closer. A thread of a memory, demanding its knots be unpicked.
An inhuman whisper, muttering the worst was still to come.
He knew he should be angry that Loren posed yet another barricade in Felix’s quest to understand himself. He was angry. But he didn’t want to waste their last night, and if nothing else, Felix had mastered compartmentalising his feelings. Separating his emotions from the task at hand.
Loren pulled his hair over his shoulder, dividing the strands into three.
‘No.’ In a surge of boldness, Felix touched the back of Loren’s hand, fingers prickling. ‘Leave it loose.’
Loren’s lips parted. He blushed. ‘You didn’t let me finish telling you before.’
‘About your floating dream? ’
A nod.
‘I think,’ Felix said, ‘I can guess.’
This time he kissed Loren, and they were both completely sober.
Still, Felix thought as his mouth moved against Loren’s, a jug of wine may well have been decanted directly into his gut.
His veins burned. Loren’s movements were still sweetly clumsy, but he caught on quick, lips soft but sincere.
Want scorched through Felix, thrill and terror coupled in equal doses.
This, now, was all too much. Not enough.
Too much. He didn’t permit touch like this.
He didn’t allow it. Another rule Loren upended, simply by noticing – without being told – that Felix had such a rule at all.
When he reached to draw Loren closer, his hands shook.
‘Fuck,’ Felix panted, breaking free. He moved, chasing a bead of salt water rolling down Loren’s neck.
Loren’s breath hitched. ‘Sewage pit.’
‘You like it.’
‘Your – depravity?’
Felix responded with a nip to the tender skin behind Loren’s ear, coaxed his mouth open again. Conversation dissolved.