“What you doin’ down here anyway? It’s been a few months now, eh? You sticking around?”
“Um . . . if Brix wants me to, I guess? I’ve got a few long-term projects in the bag at the studio—” Calum stopped, unsure of how much John knew about tattooing.
John stared at him expectantly. “So, you’ve got work lined up? That’s good. I think the boy likes your company, and he’s a good lad. Deserves to be ’appy, don’t he?”
“I reckon so.” Calum didn’t know much, but of that he was certain. “I don’t know if I can make him happy, but I’ll be here as long as he wants me to be.”
“That’ll do me.” John clapped Calum’s shoulder. “There’s room for an emmet in our ranks yet if it makes our Ben smile.”
Ben. Calum often forgot Brix had been known by another name. John brushed past him and strode to the back door, but Calum didn’t follow until Brix appeared and beckoned him forward.
“You okay?” Concern etched Brix’s already strained eyes.
Calum found a smile—a real one—and plastered it on his face. “Yeah, just got a bit Lusmoored. You know how it is.”
“Actually, no. These fuckers are my normal, but I’ll take your word for it. Tea?”
“Sounds good.”
It was gone five—and several pots of tea—by the time Peg ran out of steam. Calum was already a little bit in love with her as he bid her good-bye, but he couldn’t deny she was exhausting, the polar opposite of her brother John, who’d sat quietly with his whiskey, the odd grunt the only sign he was listening to the conversation. Still, Peg was warm and kind, and so obviously fond of Brix that it was hard to match her with the infamous woman who dumped smuggled goods in Brix’s back garden.
A theory Brix seemed to find hilarious when they were alone again. “You really have been Lusmoored if you think that woman’s sweet. She’s an arsehole.”
“But you love her.”
“Aye. I love them all. Don’t make them sweet, though. Makes them family . . . a family of arseholes.”
“Have you ever thought about telling them . . . you know?”
“That they’re arseholes? I tell them all the time.”
Calum waited for Brix to realise his deflection hadn’t worked. It didn’t take long. Brix sighed and turned away to fiddle with the kettle. “I could never tell them. It was their biggest fear when I came out, and I promised them it would never happen.”
Even Calum’s own gently liberal parents had let the terrifying headlines from the eighties get the better of them, but the defeat in Brix was heartbreaking. “Do you really think they wouldn’t understand, if you told them everything? Like you did me?”
“Not everyone’s like you, Cal. You accept everyone for who they are, what they are, and all they’ve done. Most folk don’t have the heart for that.”
Calum scowled. “Me being a gullible idiot is no reason for you to go through something like this on your own.”
“And my family being who they are is no reason for you to call yourself an idiot.”
Brix’s tone was mild, but Calum knew him well enough to see he wasn’t going to budge, which led Calum on an illogical path to the internet research he’d done while Brix had slept beside him this morning. If it was accurate, Brix’s fear of sex didn’t make any sense, but was it Calum’s place to correct him? Or to assume that things would be different if his status was negative? Perhaps Brix wouldn’t want to fuck him regardless. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have sex with anyone else—
“Where did you go?” Brix was suddenly in front of Calum, standing so close Calum’s skin tingled and his hands itched to touch him, but Brix got there first. He tapped Calum’s temple. “I don’t like it when you disappear on me. What are you thinking about?”
Calum pursed his lips, reluctant to let on how quickly his mind had slipped into the gutter, however well-meaning his thought process had been, but as Brix’s gaze turned obstinate, he realised that it would have to be him that got frank. “I’m thinking about sex.”
“Oh.” The shift in Brix was instant. He stepped away, his hands dropping to his sides. “Thinking about where you can get some?”
“Don’t be a prick.”
“Sorry.” Brix backed slowly into a nearby chair and sat down. “I just—I don’t know how to talk about sex anymore.”
Yes, you do. Calum tried not to picture how Brix’s hands had felt on his dick. Fought to bring himself back to the science he’d learned by heart in the misty light of a Porthkennack early morning. “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“I don’t get why you said you’ll never have sex again.”
