Page 58 of By Any Means

“Well, now you have seen it.” So to speak.

“Also,” Chary added, “Laurie isn’t a wolf, I am almost sure.” Modus operandi or not. “And I rather feel he would resent your assumption.” After he’d laughed until he was weak, that was. August hadn’t seen the kiss firsthand. It seemed a lot had been lost along the wire that was Mr. Herbert.

And when had he felt confident enough about Laurie Tulley’s character—to say nothing of preferences in bed he hadn’t experienced, and never would—to speak for him so? When had that begun?

“I like kissing men,” he said primly. “So, there you have it from my very mouth.”

August’s defensive disdain had apparently been broken by shock. He laughed, a little weakly. “Yes, so do I. And women, too. Anybody, really. Since we are being revelatory.”

“Well,” Chary said awkwardly. He hadn’t known that, and it deflated most of his indignance. It was true, wasn’t it, that they’d only known each other a few years? It had to show somewhere. “Well, good.”

“I thought it was disgust,” August blurted. “That you’d come to find me on the Bowery, miring yourself through the filth of Gotham to rescue me because you had to, and that it was the worst thing you’d ever had to lower yourself to. Meanwhile I… Well. I didn’t mind the work, most of the time.”

Chary shook his head. “No. At the brothel? I was shocked to see you where I least expected it. I didn’t know you were even in New York. I’d tried to find you, and nothing, for months. And that night, I was… honestly, I was stumbling fresh off an experience that left me wondering if I was truly bent or just insane.”

August laughed, creaky and wheezing.

In fact, that particular instance had been the first encounter Chary had attempted since he had come of age. But he hadn’t managed an erection through his anxious nausea, nor even to be able to be touched by anyone; he’d had to leave, had to dash out the front steps back out to Bowery.

“Rafael,” August said, mock-seriously, “would be real offended to hear he wasn’t for you.”

“Was that his real name?”

“Mais non. ’Course not.”

“It had nothing to do with him or his person… Oh, wait a moment. If you knew I had—and you still didn’t think⁠—?”

“Normal men came all the time. A hole’s a hole.”

“Ergh,” Chary said heartily, and then regretted it. “I mean⁠—”

August waved. “I’m prettier than a housemaid in drag. So too were half of the boys there. It didn’t have significance to me that you’d come out of the brothel.”

“And I never told you one way or the other. Nor hinted. Not in three years.”

“It isn’t obligatory to disclose,” August said, rolling his eyes. “And I wasn’t entitled.” He reached over, plucked at some grass, and fiddled with it, clearing his throat. “You waited all that time—until your majority? To try and… find it out?”

“Yes. With you as the track-layer? As the example? I waited until I had a will made, the ink was dry, and our father was seven years rotted.”

August chuckled, though he looked a little pale yet. “Right. You were smarter than I was. You kept safe an’ all.” He stared down at the grass. “As long as it was worth something.”

“I’d much rather have had a brother,” Chary said softly, “than any amount of inheritance. You know that, yes?”

August raised his head, worked his jaw. Their father’s eyes—almost the only physical trait the two of them shared—gleamed, whiskey-brown.

“And I earnestly… thought you knew that about me,” Chary said. “That it was quite obvious.”

“Should’ve been, I guess. To hear you talk of wolves… I’m not drunk enough for this.”

“No, and thank goodness. It makes you even more reckless than usual. And cruel.”

“Cruel?” August scrambled to his feet. It was well past dusk now, and the dark blurred even his fairness into shadow against the near-black of the stream. “How cruel? Because I don’t want my brother to be strung up by libel and worse for something he didn’t ask to happen?”

“Ask to happen? When it is a choice? Put into the plainest language, it would never be libel.” Chary paused to breathe, because he seemed to need it. “And it was never farce. I was always… queer. How could you not know it, August?” Some indignance remained.

“You just said amendment of sin is lifelong, you Catholic, sainted—” August let out a frustrated scream. “Martyrdom is not a large logical leap⁠—”

“And simply liking men is?”