Chapter 18 #2
‘Have you been to the Netherlands? Our mountains are little hills compared to here. So, no, I never learned how. I did play football and field hockey, and I tried speed skating once. I do a little weights training.’ That, thought Murray, remembering glimpsing his thick, corded arms, was an understatement. ‘And I like to run, I dance…’
‘You dance?’
‘Don’t you?’ Kurt challenged, going in for a slice of smoked sausage.
‘I suppose I do.’ Murray had learned ceilidh dancing as a kid, like everyone else who ever went to a school Christmas party in Scotland.
He resisted the urge to suggest giving him a demo of the Gay Gordons, a pacey couples’ dance with lots of spinning and stomping, trying hard not to let the tasty, ice-cold beer that so easily chased down the salty, oily, smoky food go to his head.
‘I never learned to ski, either,’ Murray said instead. ‘Outside of lessons with school, and I didn’t love those. I’m just not a very outdoors-in-the-snow sort of person.’
This was safer. Calmer. He had to work with Kurt, or at least occupy the same repair shed as him, for the next month or two.
He couldn’t let himself get carried away.
But if that was really the case, why had he cared so much about dressing well tonight and making a good impression?
He was sending himself seriously mixed messages.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Kurt was saying.
Oh no. Here it came. So why are you single? Have you been in many serious relationships? What is it you’re looking for in a guy? He’d watched enough dating shows to know what was coming. ‘Shoot,’ he said, as casual as you like.
Kurt looked especially wicked. ‘Is that supposed to be a tattoo, or what?’
‘Hah! You noticed?’
Hamish set down two more beer bottles and was gone again, giving Murray time to compose himself.
He turned his wrist, pulling back his cuff to reveal the jagged line of black ink. ‘It’s the peaks of Mount Cairn Dhu. See? Nothing as extensive as yours.’
Kurt was laughing, and not unkindly. ‘I think you asked for a proper tattoo but the pain was too much you wussed out, and now you tell people, “Oh, this? It’s a mountain.”’
‘Rude!’ Murray couldn’t help laughing too. There was a grain of truth in there somewhere. That zigzag line had hurt like hell. ‘There’s definitely no way I’d get another one.’
He expected a tour of Kurt’s arms to follow this, an explanation of the reasons behind each artwork on his skin, but Kurt kept his sleeves rolled down and drank his beer, eyes only on Murray.
‘Are you… missing home?’ Murray ventured. There had to be more to say. ‘It must be hard, working away, especially in the winter.’
‘It’s OK. I got used to it. I’ve been eco-build contracting all over Europe for years. But this is my first time in the Highlands.’
‘You like it?’
‘It’s… different.’ He chucked another big cube of bread in his mouth with a smile. His lips were glossed from eating. Another layer of Murray’s armour dissolved at the sight.
‘What is this music?’ Murray said after a long moment, just as birds began to caw over swirling astral chords.
Kurt had stopped talking completely now and was just watching him, amused and, it appeared, contented. Murray felt a little like a mouse being played with by the Cheshire Cat. The beer made him not mind it all that much.
‘I haven’t been out for ages,’ Murray threw in, before stopping himself confessing to anything more, like the fact he’d been in broken-hearted hiding for months.
He took a long drink from his bottle and looked around at the people coming in. It was getting busier and the sky loomed pitch black outside. It was almost ten o’clock. Why wasn’t Kurt talking? He was just sitting there, smiling with his eyes.
‘Have you been here before?’ Murray asked, temperature rising.
‘Ja, of course. It’s the only place for miles.’
‘Course.’ Murray nodded, picking at the beer label. He wasn’t going to pry into Kurt’s social life.
‘With the other builders,’ Kurt added quickly. ‘But they are boring, going home to their wives and kids by nine.’
‘Ah.’ A tiny hit of relief softened Murray’s shoulders. ‘They’re both Cairngorms guys. I forgot you’re the only one who doesn’t live here.’
‘Yeah, I think they feel sorry for me, alone at the hotel after work.’
Kurt locked eyes with Murray and the atmosphere around them seemed to pulse as though Kurt was emitting his own aurora of charged sun particles.
‘I don’t think we’re going to catch the northern lights from in here, you know?’ Kurt said.
Murray looked at the black sky beyond the glass, the glossy white of compacted snow on the floodlit slopes. ‘Twenty per cent chance,’ Murray said, weighing up more than the possibility of aurora sighting tonight.
Kurt said nothing, letting him deliberate.
‘You know…?’ Murray ventured at last.
Kurt tipped his head, a blue fire burning behind his eyes.
What did it matter if their spark was more of a happy glow, or their conversation shallower than a paddling pool?
‘You might be right,’ Murray went on. ‘There’s too much reflection on the glass in here to catch the northern lights.’
Kurt’s smile turned up another notch. ‘Take these with us?’ he said, standing, holding his half-finished bottle.
Murray threw his beer back in a long swig. When he reached the last drop, he wiped his mouth and sprang to his feet, decision made. ‘Let’s get some more to carry out.’
* * *
The kiss, when it came, had made something in Murray break loose, like he was going to howl.
On leaving the Ptarmigan, they’d walked along the road lined with streetlights, drinking, laughing at nothing. Kurt kicked his boots on the pavement, his hands shoved deep in his tight jeans pockets. He was acting cute and Murray couldn’t help laughing harder.
Then suddenly they were walking faster. Then, after turning the corner into the grounds of the stuffy old Cairn Dhu Hotel, they broke into a run, Kurt grabbing Murray’s hand, and they’d thrown their empty beer bottles into the big hotel bins and hurtled into the cold shadow at the back of the building where, in an instant, Kurt had him pushed up against a door and breathing hard.
Murray could feel the muscles in Kurt’s hard stomach swelling and falling against his soft tummy as they pressed up close, white clouds of breathy vapour in the bitterly cold air around them.
They were in the dank, wintry darkness of the hotel’s back yard with its row of pre-fab rooms that the hotel rented out to seasonal workers. The door at Murray’s back was a rough, raw wood. Murray let his head loll back against it as Kurt brought his mouth down on his in a kiss.
Warmth. Hops and barley. Soft pillow lips. Christ! Murray had needed this more than he’d known.
Kurt said something in Dutch, nestled into his neck, his lips running over tingling goosebumps. Murray didn’t care what it meant; it sounded divine.
There was the sound of a key pulled from Kurt’s jeans pocket.
Then the key was in the lock and Kurt’s hands were taking Murray’s in his, lacing their fingers, and Murray was absolutely sure he actually whimpered at the shadowy sight of Kurt kissing across their hatched knuckles, the sensations of his nervous system crackling like fireworks almost too much for him and yet… what was that?
Kurt had pulled back too. ‘Are you… whining?’ Kurt said.
Murray strained his ears. ‘I’m sure that wasn’t all me,’ he said, trying to make light of whatever was happening, still drowsy with wanting to kiss again. But something was definitely not right.
‘There it is again. Listen!’ Kurt untangled his fingers, stepping away, and Murray felt the loss of his warmth like someone had thrown an ice bucket over him.
Yet neither of them could ignore the whimpering sounds coming from the bushes along the hotel’s stone boundary wall.
‘Foxes?’ Kurt guessed.
‘Light up your phone.’
Together they approached the sound, shining the phone torch into the low branches of the evergreen hedging.
‘Oh my God!’ Murray crouched down.
Kurt dropped to his knees and reached a hand into the moving black bundle of sorry little sounds. He lifted out not one, but two shivering, complaining pups, only weeks old by the size of them.
‘Shit!’ Murray’s heart sank as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, revealing another, adult, dog deep undercover. ‘The mother? Looks like they’ve been dumped.’
Behind him, Kurt was already unlocking his door, flipping on lights, carrying the pups, searching for towels to wrap the shivering creatures in.
Murray leaned in closer to the poor, panting dog, already pulling his phone free to ring the twenty-four-hour vet practice in the next big town, half an hour from here.
‘Don’t worry, mamma,’ he told her gently. ‘I’ve got you.’
Murray (admittedly, reluctantly) stripped off his lovely Moncler jacket and draped it over the dog, knowing as well as Kurt (who was clomping around inside his rooms) that the odds of resuming their date tonight had reduced to zero.