And, to Micha’s boundless surprise, he did.
What the fuck had just happened? Had the sight of him killed Thomas’s ardour? Except Thomas had tended him through sickness, so he must have known what he was getting. Feeling suddenly absurdly naked, Micha put his shirt back on. Then he took some laudanum. And that helped. He sat on the edge of the bed, which was covered by a quilted coverlet that looked handmade, and he floated peacefully through nothingness.
If not tonight, tomorrow. Thomas could fuck him tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever. However.
After a minute or so, or perhaps more than that, Micha stood, picked up the lamp again, and directed its light towards the walls, which were, indeed, hung with paintings—heavy oils, the colours as rich and vivid as stained glass, though shot through always with the suggestion of shadow. They were all abstract, depicting a mood or a sense of place rather than any particular image, but, in Micha’s drugged state, they seemed to drag him into their depths. He thought he saw lone figures, devoured by darkness, lost among landscapes of light and colour, bars and chains and the bodies of men, intertwined in acts of pain and passion. He looked and tried not to look, and a terrible despair, painted jewel-bright, conquered even the laudanum.
He took more.
Mostly dressed, and still in his boots, he rolled on top of the bedcovers. Colours spun themselves into cages. Scarlet and violet and green, twisting like serpents behind his eyelids and, when he opened his eyes, twirling and flickering over the walls, as though they had slipped from the paintings to undulate among the shadows.
But, at last, he slept. And it was empty, deep, and dreamless.
Chapter 9
Parish life reclaimed Thomas as though he had never been away and kept him too busy to see much of Micha, who lived in his house so quietly he might as well have been a ghost. Thomas almost suspected his guest was avoiding him, but that would be absurd. What reason would he have to do that? And Micha had seemed to respond positively to Nettlefield, at least initially. His face, turned to the star-filled sky, had been about as content as Thomas had ever seen it, and so beautiful, starkly silvered like some pagan etching, that Thomas had barely dared to gaze upon him. It had been an experience unlike any Thomas had ever known, to stand in the darkness with a man like Micha and speak of the stars. It had made him as dizzy as wine, as though some distant, silent part of him had learned, entirely unexpectedly, how to sing. Through Micha’s eyes, he saw a different world, one filled with beauties he would never have imagined, let alone noticed. It felt hedonistic, almost wicked, to be so captivated by stars, by falling leaves, by the changing landscape of the sky, as though he moved through not the everyday places he thought he knew so well but some enchanted garden, made for him by Micha, like a secret they shared.
Micha had spoken then with such remarkable candour that Thomas had half-believed he might truly have won his trust, if not his liking. A hope proven to be entirely unfounded the moment they had entered the house. Micha had been, frankly, strange. Defiant and uncertain at thesame time, a question and a challenge in his eyes that Thomas had been unable to answer. Perhaps it was simply being in an unfamiliar place. Perhaps he regretted leaving London. Thomas had no way of knowing, and, in truth, it was a baser matter that preoccupied his thoughts.
He had been too startled to react when Micha had carelessly shed his clothes on the night of their arrival. But afterwards, oh afterwards, the sight had haunted him, burned into his eyes like Icarus’s final vision of the sun. And how could he feel anything but shame because of it? Nothing could be more natural than a man naked with another man. He had seen the unclothed bodies of his compatriots often enough at university, and anything he might have felt then, he had lacked a framework to understand and had, therefore, dismissed.
For that matter, he had seen Micha’s body before, when he had cared for him. But this had been different, utterly different. An insensible form was mere clay. Micha, standing there stripped to the waist, his eyes burning in the darkness, like some fallen angel, had been fire given shape. A masterwork, carved by an artist’s loving and particular hand. And, where Thomas’s desire had previously been of an abstract sort—a deep burning, devoid of focus—now images held him like inescapable vines. The shadowed column of Micha’s throat, rough with stubble. The deep slashes of his collarbones. The slope of his shoulders, which seemed made to fit the clasp of hands. The dark hair that dusted his torso. A man’s body undeniably, hard planes and sharp angles, the promise of strength and savagery, and still no check to Thomas’s wanting. He wanted to ... touch. With his fingertips and his mouth. With his skin to Micha’s skin, as though the whole of him could become an extension of his yearnings, an act of worship.
It horrified him that something Micha had done so casually, so innocently, had been twisted by the deep corruption of Thomas’s nature into something carnal. Thomas prayed that night, and the nights that followed, wordless and helpless, just a single idea:Make me good, make me good, make me good. For Micha’s sake.
A few days later, he arrived home from a visit to a sick parishioner to find Micha curled up on the window seat in the garden room. Despite the hour, he was fast asleep in a pool of autumn sunlight, his cheek cradled against his hand and his hair falling wildly across his brow. He looked absurdly young. Even a little fragile, with his naked, tender mouth softened in sleep. Pushing aside such thoughts, Thomas murmured his name softly and, when Micha did not rouse, shook him until, at last, he stirred.
He woke with a start, his eyes blurs of shadow beneath his lashes, his lips forming their customary frown. “Wh-what? What the fuck?”
“Do you often sleep through the day?”
“In case you’ve forgotten”—Micha’s voice was slurred to match his gaze—“I was ill. I nearly died.”
Thomas tried to cover his confusion. Micha had complained so bitterly when he had been bedbound in London, it seemed actively perverse that he would idle away his time now that he was in somewhat better health. In truth, Thomas would have been happy for Micha to do anything he wanted, but he had not thought Micha the sort of man to enjoy indolence. Perhaps he was less well than Thomas had thought. He certainly looked a little strange, pale and blank-eyed. “Would you not,” he suggested, “prefer to be doing something to help you regain your strength?”
Micha’s brows arched lazily upwards. “Why? Bored of me already? If you want me gone, just say.”
Thomas sighed and took a seat on a nearby chair. It had sometimes crossed his mind these past nights, when his body had felt like a crucible, heated hellfire-hot with desire and shame, that it would be easier for him if Micha was far away. But he would not allow his weakness to hurt the object of it. And, besides, there was yet another part of him that dreaded the day of Micha’s leaving, when the world would turn back to its older, greyer self and there would be nothing left but the interminable march of his duties. “You know I don’twant that. You may stay with me as long as you wish. I’m very glad to have you here.”
“Oh are you?” said Micha, with another of his strange looks. “I wish you’d get on with it, then. The waiting fucking kills me.”
Thomas was starting to feel as though he was an inadvertent participant in a different conversation, though its meaning entirely eluded him. “Pardon? What are you waiting for? There’s no need for you to wait.”
Micha laughed harshly. “Down to me, is it? You’re one of those. Fine, if you want me to have the illusion of choice, then you can wait. I’m not in the mood right now.”
Thomas put a hand to Micha’s brow, only to have it knocked roughly away.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I thought you might be feverish. You do feel slightly clammy.” Thomas leaned forward and peered into Micha’s face. “Your eyes look very strange.”
Micha turned his head away. “I’m fine, Mother Goose.”
“As you wish.” Thomas made a gesture of surrender. “But you need occupation, I think, to engage your mind and your body.”
“I’ve had occupations. I didn’t enjoy them much.”
“Micha, there must be something you do enjoy.”
