Thomas shook his head. “I don’t see it.”
“Then take it up with Ptolemy.”
For a little while, they said nothing more. Micha edged a step closer. Thomas’s head turned ever so slightly, his breath cresting, warm and sinuous, against Micha’s lips. Micha’s pulse was fluttering as frantically as the wings of a captive lark. He felt confused and sick and wanting all at once.Just do it,he thought.Get it over with. While it may not feel like too great a debasement. While I am so close to something like happiness.But Thomas did not respond. His attention was fixed on the heavens.
“The bright star in Cygnus,” said Micha, finally, desperately, “that’s Bessel’s Star. It’s actually two stars close together, the primary star and its companion, but when we look at it from here, we only see one.”
“What a lot of things you know.”
The admiration in Thomas’s voice seemed genuine, and it threw Micha into confusion and resentment. Why did it matter what he knew or didn’t know—it made no difference to what Thomas wanted. “I don’t really. I just picked it up from Isidore. He told me that Bessel’s Star is ten and a bit light-years away from us—they measured it using parallax or something, but I have no idea what that actually is—which means we’re looking at something out of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, what we see is not what’s there. It’s what was there ten years ago. It could be changed or gone or anything.”
“How very remarkable.”
Again, that burgeoning sense of wonder, while Micha had only scorn to cast into the dark. “Remarkable? Really? We could be standing here, admiring the beauty of a dead thing.”
Thomas was silent for a moment, and then he offered hesitantly, “It seems to me rather fitting that beauty transcends time and that lost things still have the power to touch us. Besides, there is nothing to say that Bessel’s Star is lost at all. Perhaps it shines on, with its companion at its side.”
Micha needed laudanum. The conversation was scraping him raw. “You are so fucking sentimental,” he choked out.
“You just said I was deeply unromantic.”
“Well, if a star can be alive and dead, I’m sure you can be both unromantic and sentimental.”
Thomas laughed. “Come, you must be cold standing out here, and it’s been a long journey. Shall we to bed?”
That, at least, dispelled the uncertainty of the moment. Micha stepped back abruptly. Starlit delusions faded rapidly in the harsh glare of truth. What choice did he have? “Yes. Yes, all right then.”
He followed Thomas inside, trying not to fidget restlessly as the hall lights were lit. The interior of the house seemed as effortlessly, comfortably charming as its exterior. The generous golden glow from the lamps illuminated the graceful curve of a broad Georgian staircase and flickered upon rich wood-panelled walls. A clearly adoring housekeeper had left them a cold supper of meats, bread, and cheeses.
Thomas ate with obvious relish, but Micha had utterly lost his appetite. He was irritated with himself—he was, after all, a hardened street doxy, not a virgin sacrifice. And Thomas was young and moderately attractive and showed no signs of harbouring any particularly challenging perversions. Although Philip used to say it was always the quiet ones, so who knew what Thomas might want to do, or have done to him. Micha shuddered, in spite of himself, and Thomas asked if he felt quite well.
“I’m fine,” he answered, with what he hoped was a placid and inviting smile, though it felt stretched and peculiar on his lips.
He realised, then, that it was not the use of his body that troubled him. He could have borne to be fucked by Thomas, as he had borne so many others. It was everything else. Fingers in his hair. A hand in his hand. Thomas laughing. The way he had almost taken a strike from his brother, not in weakness, but in strength. It was flaying Micha like a sandstorm. He was bleeding from a thousand cuts of kindness.
Laudanum would dull the pain. Perhaps Thomas would give Micha some moments alone that would allow him to take some.
Finally, eventually, Thomas led him upstairs. “I was going to put you in the front guest room. I’m afraid it’s not the largest, or the grandest.”
“Whatever you want,” said Micha, listlessly.
“But it’s one of my favourite rooms in the house—it catches the light quite beautifully in the mornings. Edward used to work in there sometimes. I’m afraid his paintings are still on the walls. They can be a little startling, I’m told, but I can have them removed if they trouble you.”
“I don’t think I’ll be looking at the fucking walls,” snapped Micha, his nerve breaking completely.
Thomas gave him an odd look and said nothing more until they came to a door at the end of a corridor. Thomas handed Micha the lamp and pushed it open. The room inside was neat and well kept. The case containing Micha’s meagre possessions—most of which Thomas had purchased for his comfort—had already been placed by the bed.
Fuck, thought Micha, his gaze locked on the floor, I’m a fucking kept man.
“I hope it goes without saying that my home is your home,” Thomas went on. “Do whatever makes you most comfortable.”
Micha put the lamp down on the dresser. He peeled off his coat and waistcoat, let them fall to the floor, and pulled his shirt over his head. Though better than it had been, his body was still—in his estimation—far from lovely, but if Thomas wanted it, he could have it. He had, after all, paid for it.
“Oh.” Thomas’s eyes were wide in the dim light. “That is more comfortable than I anticipated. I shall leave you to rest.”
