Chapter 26
A few minutes later
Matthew opened the door to the flat, gesturing Claudio in. “Don’t have much handy for supper. Little bread and dripping.” They had managed to make it back without making a show of it.
Claudio’s unshakeable self-control had been a tremendous help.
He’d kept up a cheerful conversation about his plans for the week.
There was supper with his friends on Thursday, with the Edgartons on Friday, a notable gap in his schedule on Saturday, and his usual routine on Sunday.
He’d commented— remarkably coherently— about something he’d been reading that had referenced a book on Matthew’s shelf.
And he’d made it look easy. Matthew was entirely envious, but he couldn’t deny how useful it was.
Now, though, they didn’t have to keep doing that.
Claudio immediately took a couple of steps through the kitchen, then said.
“Sofa, to start? It really would be sensible to do the talking part first.” First, however, decidedly implied there might be other things later, and Matthew was certainly highly interested in that.
The entire flurry in the broom closet had just made it crystal clear to him how far he’d gone already, and that there was no way back. Not that he wanted one.
“Sofa.” Without other guidance, he rummaged for two bottles of beer, opened them, and brought them along.
He turned on the lamp as Claudio settled on the sofa, one side of the middle.
After only a tiny hesitation, Matthew sat on the other side, close enough that their knees touched.
He looked down, then back at Claudio’s face, and offered the beer.
“Hey,” Claudio reached out his free hand, resting it on Matthew’s knee. “You nervous I’m going to change my mind?”
“You’ve never done this before. Not with a man. Not really with anyone much?” His voice tilted up on the last word, and Claudio nodded encouragingly. “You must have thought about some of it. I know you enough for that. But you’re— and the Council Challenge.” His voice failed at that point.
Claudio left his hand there, reaching to put the beer down, then coming back, utterly focused now. That should have felt uncomfortable, but it didn’t. Matthew wanted to roll in it, forever. Then he said just one thing. “Matty.”
It was like one of the great bells at the top of the Temple of Healing ringing.
The one that chimed the hour, but was also an alarm bell when it was needed.
The sound was felt, not just heard. Matthew— maybe he was Matty now— felt his eyes go wide, and then Claudio repeated it.
“Matty. That tell you enough about what I want to start? To be someone who calls you that, who lives up to calling you that?”
He hadn’t expected this. Even after the broom closet, after the way everything had been far better than he’d dreamed. He inhaled. “Matty.” His voice half-cracked. “You don’t know what people call us.”
“So. There are a couple of things to talk about then.” Claudio didn’t move, didn’t take his hand.
“Do you know it was about five years ago that I met the first men I knew of who’d loved each other, been there for decades for each other?
Well enough, long enough, to see how it worked for them?
I hadn’t known it was possible before that.
Not really. I knew about others, but they were different.
They didn’t make that bit visible, the same way. ”
Matty wondered, somewhere in the back of his brain he’d come back to eventually, but far down the stack, who that might be, if he knew them. “Your sort of people don’t approve.”
“No.” Just the one syllable, gently. “But I’ve done the approved things my whole life.
I gather a number of people, you maybe head of the list, think that might not be ideal.
For the record, your competition for front of the line involves Orion, Gabe, and Thesan.
I’m not entirely sure where Isembard falls on a few secondary points. ”
Matty felt his mouth twitch into a smile. “Still. You’ll have a lot to deal with if anyone guesses. Besides the people who would actually be all right with it.” He coughed. “Your friends?”
“I want to tell them Thursday. And Gabe, on Friday. If that’s all right with you.
” That came out immediately, like Claudio had already been thinking about it.
“Isembard and Thesan. Leave it at that for a bit. But you’re right, I also have to think about people guessing.
I’m going to be exceedingly public once I officially put my name in.
I’d say you don’t have to be, but we need to talk about that.
And honestly, I wouldn’t lay bets on people not noticing.
It’s the problem with being around highly competent sorts with extensive magical backgrounds.
Good sense involves assuming they might notice.
That’s something I need advice about.” He stopped, obviously thought back, and added, “I haven’t told Mother I’m going to Challenge yet. ”
The first part, about people noticing, was a thorny knot.
The last bit about Claudio’s mother, that was an entire morass that Matty was not going to touch.
Not tonight. Not until Claudio showed some sign of being ready for it, either.
Not until he’d talked about other things with people he trusted, at least.
He had a sense of the pacing Claudio needed, instinctively, now, even though he couldn’t have laid out the details if his life had depended on it.
It was like he could see the pacing he’d need to get Claudio to a point where this man would stretch out in front of him, on a bed, entirely vulnerable and willing to be open to whatever came next.
He wanted that. He ached with it, and it was a thing that couldn’t be. Not yet.
That gave Matty an idea of what to say, though. “Do you hate yourself? For not being what they wanted you to be?” He gestured. “Especially, um. Preferring men? At least being interested in men? Guessing your mother will be awful about it, from everything I know.”
Claudio shrugged, the false casual shrug Matty was getting better at spotting instantly. “I can always do better. That’s been true my whole life. Being disappointing in a new way might, in fact, be a change of pace.”
He said it somewhat lightly, and Matty needed to figure that out. “That’s not what I asked. Do you hate yourself?”
Claudio leaned back, his fingers distractingly a little higher up Matty’s thigh. Not on purpose, Matty was fairly sure. Claudio always knew where his body was. That was something he’d figured out early. “It’s not the label I’d have put on it. But I hadn’t thought about it quite that way. Why?”
“Why do their work for them?” Matty gestured with his free hand.
“Look. I don’t know what it means to be your partner, anyone’s partner, doing something complicated like a Council Challenge.
Or a masterwork in whatever field, I suppose that’s sort of comparable.
” Claudio’s mouth opened in a smile, so that was at least a good way to start.
“Most of my relationships have been very private. Or even more, brief. I don’t know how to do whatever it is we’re doing any more than you do.
Some bits of it, yes. Things with our bodies.
The rest of it? We’re going to have to figure it out as we go. ”
“Well, I think we make a superb team at that, don’t you?
Solving puzzles?” Claudio’s eyes gleamed.
“Seems to me this one might keep me busy for ages. Decades. A lifetime?” He laid it out in a way that stole Matty’s breath.
“What it means to be Matty and Claudio, together in the world. One possible path. We don’t have to take or keep taking it.
But there it is, existing as an option.”
“You’re— you’re going to do this.” The only question, the only remaining question, was whether Matty was brave enough to go do it with him.
Then he said as much. “Look. If your mother is awful?” He didn’t know how to label the possible varieties of awful.
He just left it there. “What does that mean for you? All the parts?”
“Excellent strategy. Orion is going to approve of that, for the record,” Claudio considered, then he shifted slightly, thigh to thigh, the warm strength of it, just deliberately present.
“I have my own money, besides my actual salary. She has the right of residence in the house until she dies, but we have other houses. There are flats that can be rented. At least three people would offer me rooms. You too, if needed. I’m pretty sure. ”
He added after a moment, “More than one person has nudged me about where my interests might actually lie in the last month or three. The people I’m closest to, they’ll be surprised about the broom closet and the urgency.
And the fact that I want to toss every bit of my schedule into the air and ignore everything for time with you.
But the actual idea of you, not a shock.
Mother’s an entirely different problem.”
“Which you are still not talking about,” Matty pointed out.
“She can’t stop me Challenging for the Council.
She can try, but what it needs is someone telling me when and where to show up.
Which Gabe, Alexander, and Orion have already done now they’ve set the official date.
” Claudio shrugged. “Can’t say I much like the idea of being on the Council, getting things done, if she is difficult, but there have in fact been worse disagreements and arguments.
She’ll be civil. She’s not at her best when shouting, and she knows it.
Besides, she’s wanted me to Challenge for years, with everything it means. Probably since I was born.”
The analysis there, the cut and careful commentary, made something in Matty ache. For all his Mum didn’t understand things, he trusted things about her that Claudio obviously didn’t have. “And the Penelopes?” This one was easier. He had some of his own evidence.