Chapter 35
Claudio came awake suddenly, but he held himself still. It took a second for him to remember where he was, how solidly he’d made the warding, and that everything was probably fine. Then he heard a quietly amused voice from next to his head. “Morning.”
He blinked, then rubbed his eyes. Matty was facing him, one shoulder bare, the rest of his body under the sheet and eiderdown. He looked more awake than Claudio felt, and Claudio let his head settle on a pillow he didn’t remember putting there. “Morning.” One thing at a time.
Matty shifted his hand, reaching out, then pausing. “May I?” Claudio nodded, and then the hand was resting on Claudio’s own bare left shoulder, warm and steady. “How do you feel? Or do you know yet?”
Claudio woke fast. It was a survival skill in his line of work, but he always had.
He’d never been the sort of person to enjoy the dozy warmth of a bed without getting on with the day.
Now, however, he was wondering if he could figure that out.
He stretched cautiously, running through the full set of checks that had been habit by the end of the first year he’d had under Isembard’s teaching.
With the newer additions about the flow of his magic that Gabe had added.
He let himself tip over onto his back to get a better sense of it, Matty’s hand drifting across his chest to rest on his right shoulder now.
He felt different. And entirely himself. The two weren’t separate, overlaid, one on the other, but more like vines, twisting against each other in a satisfying way. Then he twisted his head. “You’re not grumpy in the morning, are you?”
“No?” Matty looked bemused. “Were you expecting me to be?”
Claudio laughed, then stretched, or at least the arm that wouldn’t immediately bump against Matty’s nose.
“I feel different, but good. Need more information to say anything remotely useful. Like standing up.” Then he added, because explaining himself was both kind and amusing.
“When I told Orion about you, he sort of stopped, and said you were rather like him, then? I said I hadn’t had the chance to find out if you were as grumpy in the morning.
He asked how we could get me the opportunity to find out. ”
“My.” It made Matty laugh, curling in on himself a little, before he pushed up on one arm. “What’s he like? And—” There was a hesitation. “Am I like him?”
“That second bit needs coffee or tea or something. Food. And— um.” Claudio considered.
“May I wash up first? Make use of your bath or shower? And Orion’s quite grumpy until he’s been awake for five or ten minutes.
Disciplined enough not to make it anyone else’s actual problem, though, but the grumpy, definitely there. ”
“Oh, go right ahead. And no, generally not grumpy. Though I don’t know how I’d know my usual, I mean, there’s no one around until I decide to face the world.
” Matty pushed himself upright, stretched enough that something in his back made an audible pop.
“Glad to use my egg ration on this, if you’re good with that?
And I’ve got decent bread, and there’s the honey cake. ”
“Grand.” Claudio worked himself sitting, and yes, definitely, it was going to take a bit to figure out what his body felt like now.
The bath or shower would help. Hot water generally did help with that sort of thing.
It made figuring out the boundaries and limits of his physical self easier to sort out or feel or know. Whatever that verb was.
He’d brought a dressing gown, but in the end he took his whole satchel with him. He spent a quarter hour soaking, dealing with a depilatory charm and brushing his teeth while the tub filled. Through the door, he could hear the small sounds of Matty moving around, a clink of plates, a kettle.
By the time he came out, Matty had got dressed in a shirt and trousers, the sleeves rolled up, and Claudio very much liked the look of that.
He’d done much the same, actually, and he set his bag down to come over.
“Still feel different, still feel good.” Other men— Claudio, before— might not have managed this.
Even if he’d been observing the benefits of actually saying a thing to people he cared about since he’d come into Thesan’s orbit.
But he could now, and he wanted to, besides it being a grand idea.
“Thank you for making that an excellent night. I should have said so sooner.”
Matty flushed, and that just made Claudio lift a finger to brush against the cheek. “I wanted to be excellent for you. For it to be excellent for you.” He stammered a little over it.
“You wanted both of those. And I got that. Wholeheartedly. Energetically. And, mmm, the way you were talking to me.” That rewarded him with a deeper blush. “Do you want to wash up or whatever, and then we can have breakfast?”
“Sure. Just a minute or two. I’ll have a bath when you have to leave.
” Matty disappeared into the bathing room, leaving Claudio to put the last bits together for the meal, bar actually cooking the eggs.
One egg each, Matty had obviously actually been saving up his ration for this since last week.
Claudio would have to see if Matty would accept eggs from the hens Auctoritas kept.
They certainly didn’t go through all of them as a household.
When Matty came back, Claudio had poured the coffee, and shortly after, they had an egg, toast, and a square of honey cake to go with it.
They ate in silence for a little, Claudio shifting a bit on the chair, feeling how his spine felt now.
“What I keep noticing is how you and Orion go at the world the same way. He ought to have been in Boar. Everyone agrees now. Isembard and Thesan maybe most of all. You look something alike, the hair and the general build. Not entirely move alike, you’ve had different training.
Well, to be specific, he’s had a lot of Isembard’s, and you didn’t have that chance the same way. ”
“I suppose it has to be different, just the two of you, and for hours every week. A lot of the boys in my year were envious. You, and then the others he took on.” Matty set his fork down, thinking.
“Best thing in my life, honestly, my parents setting that up. I wish more people had that. I can never decide if it was more Isembard or Orion. But between them, I’m a different person.
” Claudio considered it. “I knew people were envious. And I was an awful brat, my first and second years. Into my third. Arrogant, and people let me get away with it.”
“To be fair, you’ve got a lot to be arrogant about.
You are ridiculously competent. You put the work in.
I know that. But it shines for you, in a way it doesn’t for most people.
You listen. You’re not grabby about being right.
You want someone to be right. If no one else is, you’ll make sure you step up.
” Matty reeled it off as if he’d been thinking about it for a long time. “You really think I’m that like Orion?”
“Oh, been thinking about it since that conversation. And then him asking me if I’d ever felt like that about him, that particular sort of liking.
And no. He’s my brother. But I think I could want it with you, because of him?
The shape of that in my life and knowing how good it feels.
I know you follow through on what you choose, and what it means.
What I can be sure of, that you’ve chosen me.
” Claudio glanced up, and now he felt impish, even.
“I want to sleep on it, and do a fair bit more actual research. But if I asked you to plan to do what you wanted. Take me hard, so that there’s nothing but the sex, all that surrender?
If we did that the morning of the Challenge or the night before, would you? ”
Matty’s expression was glorious, and it was a good thing he’d put down both fork and coffee already. His eyebrows went up, his jaw dropped, and then there was such abandon on his face. “When do you need to leave?”
“Is that the sort of reaction where you want to take me to bed again?” Claudio asked.
“Mm. Not inside you. You need a little to get used to it. But my fingers, maybe, and certainly talking through this idea of yours. Exploring it thoroughly together, the implications. I’d want to make sure to have a well-constructed agenda.
Such an important occasion. And there are parts we should actually talk through directly.
What your limits would be. What mine are, when I figure that out. ”
“If you are going to flirt in bureaucracy, we definitely ought to do that in bed,” Claudio said, chuckling. “Finish the food, give us a couple of minutes to digest it, set the alarm, and see what we do?”
“That. Not that it’ll take us long to get worked up again. I feel like a teenager, I swear, back in school.” Matty turned his attention to his plate again.
Claudio focused on his own food for a moment, then he asked, “What was it like for you? When did you know you wanted men?”
“Oh. School. Spring of my fourth year. The caves were handy, but it was a lot of— actually, I was thinking that last night.” Matty glanced at Claudio, obviously realising he had all of Claudio’s attention before he went on.
“Well. Maybe before spring of fourth year. I watched you a lot, actually. Enjoyed watching you at bohort.”
Claudio blinked at that, then felt himself flushing. “You did?”
“Oh, yes. Mind, I continue to like watching you. Even more now.” Matty flushed slightly, and Claudio wouldn’t press him about that.
After a moment, Matty went on. “It’s been rare I’ve been able to be comfortable with doing things.
Leisurely. A lot of groping and up against a wall or bracing someone over a table, somewhere quick and private enough.
No time to linger. That was dangerous. A bit of oil, nothing like what you made up.
We’ll have to try the others, too. Proper testing.
” Claudio snorted at that, because yes, they would.
Matty continued, softer now. “Nothing I could really trust. Let myself go. Always had to keep an eye out.” There was a little sour note in his voice.
“But we’re private here, and— well. We’ve talked about the rest of it.
Not much at all for a decade, and well.” He shrugged.
“Not much of anything for a decade that wasn’t the war and after. ”
Claudio nodded, then he said slowly, going back to the earlier topic of the similarity to Orion.
“Mother noticed you at the Midsummer Faire. Well, first she thought you were Orion at a distance. When she came by. And then she realised you weren’t.
I said you were a friend, you were chairing the Materia committee, all entirely ordinary.
And it’s not like the pavilion wasn’t full up most of the afternoon. ”
“I keep thinking back to how good that was. Your particular friends. People I like, just I only barely know a tiny bit about them yet. But also all the other people.” It had been a pleasant range of people Orion knew, that Claudio knew, that Hypatia knew, from their years at school and their various professional contacts, all amiable and cheerful and largely undemanding.
“I’d— I hadn’t known I could have that.” Matty’s voice came out small there, and Claudio immediately reached out a hand, feeling Matty’s fingers in his a moment later.
“That feels fair, at least. You teach me all sorts of things we can do in bed and with walls and whatever other furniture appeals?” He made it a little teasing at the end, and Matty smiled, shy again.
“And we can introduce you to people who’ll be pleasant to be around.
Between the four of us, we know rather a lot of people.
So you gesture vaguely at which sets you’re interested in and we’ll figure something out.
” Claudio added after a moment. “And Duncan knows an entirely different set, but I’ll admit that mostly they want to talk about motors and aeroplanes and such. ”
It got a proper laugh out of Matty, and Claudio filed that away.
Whatever Matty had done earlier, some of it had been good, but some of it had left cracks and sore spots.
Not a conversation for today, not more than this, that would be a difficult bit to untangle.
If and when Matty was ready for it, they could pick it up again.
Then Matty stood. “Let me tidy? Do you know how to dry dishes, with all your other skills? And then we can go back to bed.”
“Charm, dry dishtowel, or some other method?” Claudio asked. “Full Penelope. I probably know six ways to manage it, though usually it’s alchemy spills, not breakfast dishes.”
Matty laughed, and then they were there, shoulder to shoulder, tending to the small domestic needs before the more lusty ones.