Chapter 38 #2
“Play that by ear, maybe. I honestly don’t know what feels right. What will feel right then. I’m going to be rearranging a map. I don’t know what it’s going to look like after. Maybe have something for breakfast here, but bring a change of clothes with you? And I’ll do the same.”
“Fair.” Matty hesitated, then turned his head to kiss at Claudio’s shoulder. “One of the things I like about you is that you think about the practical bits. Like where we’re sleeping.”
Claudio’s fingers shifted, just a whisper on the skin.
“And that I am thinking about you as well?” Matty could feel his cheeks heat up.
He couldn’t say anything for a minute around the lump in his throat, but he nodded and hoped that would be a start.
Claudio gave him a little space. “You should think about what you’re all right with at the Challenge.
How I am with you. I can’t— I can’t promise anything about when I come out.
What might show?” He said that last bit as if it in particular might be a problem.
It at least got Matty able to say something. “Why is that the thing you’re bothered by and not the rest of it?”
“I don’t have the right to ask you to take risks.
That sort. It’s one thing for there to be gossip.
It’s something else for it to be visible.
And it will quite likely be visible. Boethius’s mother is a gossip.
Prosper’s knows just about everyone. Besides, you know, Mother and the actual Council.
If you chose not to be there, I’d entirely understand. ”
There was a space and distance there that hadn’t been a minute ago, even though Claudio hadn’t physically moved at all. Matty swallowed hard. “And what if I want to take that risk?”
“I’ll be glad of it.” Claudio shifted somehow, again not with his body exactly.
“There will be people there who love me and want the best for me. There will also be my mother, whose motivations and emotions are at least half beyond my accurate reckoning. But I will be—” He rolled the word around for a moment before saying it.
“Relieved. Reassured. If you are there.”
Matty closed his eyes, holding still. “I don’t know if I can be enough for you. For what you deserve. That’s the place that’s— there’s a chasm, and maybe there’s a way to the other side, and I can’t see it right now.”
“Ah.” Claudio let his fingers move slightly, not constraining, just making it clear he was there. “Do you want to learn?”
“I don’t know what it means if I do. I— we can’t make a life together. Can we? One where people know that, not just gossip?”
“That depends on what you want, a fair bit. If I’m successful, Gabe is right. There have been far worse choices made by people on the Council. We’re chosen for our magic and what we do with it, not who we spend our time with in bed. Or otherwise. I like the not-bed parts with you too.”
“What— tell me about that.” It wasn’t an order. It was more along the lines of what a small, plaintive kitten might attempt to order, and only be granted because they were harmless and adorable.
“Time with you. Lots of it. Having tea or coffee, both of us with whatever we’re doing for the day handy.
Newspapers. I keep thinking about being somewhere, a room I don’t really know.
Both of us reading, both of us with desks, something like that.
Being in the same place, occasionally commenting, but working on our own pieces of the world. ”
Matty caught a slight oddness there. “A room you don’t really know?”
“Not one that’s a thing right now? But it’s—” Claudio stopped. “It’s presumptuous.”
“Presume.” Matty nudged him gently. “There. That’s a thing I’m deciding right now.”
It got a small chuckle, and then Claudio went on smoothly.
“It’s shaped like the other room upstairs.
At Auctoritas. I sketched that out for you.
Bedroom, bathing room. And then the rooms that were Mother’s, the entire time I was growing up.
My office looks out at the front, but there’s the one she used for her bedroom.
Separate bath off of it, that’s the larger of the two, with a broad window along one wall. ”
“Large enough for two desks and some range of other furniture. Were we, perhaps, elderly in this view?”
“Not too different in age from now. Give or take a year, maybe two?” Claudio added. “You have just a little silver coming in at the temples. There wasn’t too much more.”
“Do I?” Matty blinked. “Really?”
“I do notice things. Anything involving you, particularly.” Now Claudio sounded relaxed and amused again.
“Mother is the challenge here, obviously you wouldn’t want to be running into her at odd times the way things are.
But I suppose we can posit a world in which— for whatever reasons— that is not the case at Auctoritas.
She moves elsewhere. I don’t know. Something.
” Claudio wasn’t saying the worse sort of things, like a death. Matty had to admire that.
“You told her you weren’t going to introduce me until she could be decent. I can’t even imagine introducing you to my parents.” Matty admitted that. “They— at least she knows about me? Whatever she thinks, it’s not a shock now.”
“Your choice. If you don’t, I understand. If you ever want to, you let me know what you want from me. You’re dealing with my mother exceedingly well, given everything.” Claudio shrugged. “And my friends.”
“I like your friends,” Matty protested. “That part’s not hard.
Not now. It’s a bit much sometimes. But then Orion’s right there explaining something so I don’t feel left out.
And Hypatia’s always grand to talk to. She knows her work so well.
Cammie’s just endlessly fun.” Matty added after a moment.
“All right, Cammie’s just expanded her range of amusements.
She was always a bit like that. That part isn’t really as intimidating. ”
“And she’s barely threatened to bite you,” Claudio agreed.
“All right. We can see what happens there. But a life with you, whatever that looks like.” He shifted again on the bed, and the tone of his voice changed.
“The thing about the Challenge is that if I am going there as myself…” As he’d said earlier, Matty nodded.
“The self I want to be is one who has been thoroughly had. Taken? What’s the right verb here? ”
“Some people might say buggered,” Matty offered, though now he was teasing a bit.
“So full up of what you’re not supposed to do that there isn’t room to worry about all the things you’re not doing?
” He felt Claudio’s reaction well before there was anything audible, a shiver.
“Ah. Just like that, then.” There were a number of parts of him, not just physical, that very much wanted to do that.
It was the most glorious challenge to fling himself at and decidedly into.
“I don’t know if I can do it right. Not when the timing’s so delicate. ”
“Mmm.” Claudio considered, then tugged Matty closer, so that the two of them were tight against each other.
Matty was on his side with his cock pressed against Claudio’s hip, and Claudio’s arm around his shoulder and fingers trailing down his back.
“If it doesn’t work, I’ll make do. I’ve had lots of practice with things failing. And recovering after.”
“You have?” It did not fit with Matty’s image of him at all.
“Mmm. One thing Isembard hammered home early and often. Also, bohort. The two being related in his way of going at the world.” Claudio made another of those little rumbling noises.
“Though I suppose he didn’t spell it out in the general classes.
He did explain it to Orion, my fourth year.
The thing about bohort is that it’s made of failures.
You try something and it doesn’t work. Not that match, anyway, or that practice.
And so you go away and you figure out if there’s anything you could do differently, and you try again.
But there’s also a space to fail, to not get it right the first time. ”
“Also, a lot of pressure,” Matty pointed out.
“With a team, yes. Working on your own? Less. But that’s part of why Orion and I duel regularly. We can try things and get them wrong. Good for both of us. And it keeps us on our toes. He’s a better duellist. I come up with more new tricks.”
Matty chewed on that for a moment, and the way Claudio put that. “You’re not putting yourself down when you say he’s a better duellist. I mean, it just is for you.”
“It’s true.” Claudio sounded amused. “Gabe told me, a while back, that I’m not the best in the room at anything, the sort of company I keep.
Which, admittedly, includes a lot of people who are the best in the room at what they do.
But he pointed out that I’m often second or third best at everything.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot since.
And trying to draw on it. Not the best duellist, but I can hold my own.
Not the bravest, but I’ll keep doing the brave thing. You see?”
Matty did and didn’t. He understood the concept, and everything he’d seen from and about Claudio suggested that Gabe’s analysis was probably accurate.
Or at least, he could agree that Gabe was making that judgement based on sound evidence.
But he wasn’t sure what it was like to live like that.
Now, he took a breath. “And now you’d like to be thoroughly debauched.
Best at being debauched in the room? Most surrendered to the experience? ”
“Oh, yes.” Claudio twisted a bit more onto his side, so he could let his left hand run down Matty’s hip. “Want to talk about exactly how we might go about that?”
Matty did. The talking did in fact work them both up, rather quickly, in a way that devolved into hands and oil and Matty working his way in after they’d covered the most necessary parts of the outline.