Page 14 of Fool Me Twice
“Tor’s a word for a hill, innit?In Old English or summat.You’ll have seen it on your way into town.Got a tower on top.”
“Right, that thing.Yeah, I saw it.”Pretty hard to miss, seeing as it was taller than anything else for miles around.
“Course, in German, see, a tor is a gate.I learned that off a tourist.Which is fitting, like, cos the tor’s s’posed to be a sort of gateway to the spirit realm if you ask the New Agers.Then again, in your old Norse,gatemeans street, and that’s why you get streets called Stonegate or Swinegate and all that bollocks in some Northern towns that were under the Danelaw, way back when.”Si paused for breath.
Zig laughed.“You nervous or something?”
“...No?Just thought you might be interested, like?”Si reddened, or at least the small amount of his face that wasn’t covered in hair did.
Zig slung an arm around Si’s shoulders.Fuck him, they were broad these days.“I’m interested, okay?Tell me more.Seduce me with your sexy dead languages.”
Si pulled away from him, eyes narrowed.“No one’s seducing anyone round here, you got that?”
It was like a stab to the gut.Zig forced a smile.“Not even for old times’ sake?”
“Not even.”
Fuck.“Well, you’re no fun these days.”
“Don’t s’pose I ever was,” Si muttered to his socks.
That twisted the knife.“Who says that?I never said that.You’re plenty fun, all right?Go on, tell me more about archaictongues.”Zig licked his lips and quirked an eyebrow.
Si rolled his eyes, but he was smiling again.“Fine.But this is your last one.Torpenhow Hill, up north somewhere.”
“Hill-pen-how-hill?”Zig guessed.
“Nope.Better than that.It’s in three different languages—Old English, Norse, and Welsh, I reckon?So it’shill-hill-hill-hill.”
Zig laughed, and even to him, the sound was brighter than it usually was.Cleaner.More honest.God, he’d missed this guy.Why had they ever broken up?
Because he saw you for what you were, and he knew you didn’t deserve him, a harsh voice said in his mind.Thank fuck he’d learned years ago how to ignore it.
“Got time for one more beer before bed?”he asked with a grin.He was prepared for Si to say no.It was well late now for someone who worked nine to five or whatever hours locksmiths did.
“Just the one, then,” Si said.
Internally, Zig cheered.Maybe Si had missed him too.
Maybe.
Si got out another couple of beers from the fridge.Drinking with Zig probably wasn’t the best idea right now, or ever, come to that.But Si was buggered if he was gonna do this stone-cold sober.Whateverthiswas.
He wasn’t daft.Well, not all the time, anyhow.He could tell Zig was coming on to him.And it was working, because, well,Zig.It was just so bloody good to see him again.All them thoughts he’d had about Zig over the years...They hadn’t been happy thoughts.Si wouldn’t have been at all surprised to hear Zig had ended up in prison—or worse.Truth be told, it was a relief and then some to see him looking so well, and smiling that smile of his.Si would simply have to remember it didn’t mean nothing, not to Zig.
But why was he here?Now?It had to be trouble, had to be.There was no way Zig had spent the last six years pining over his teenage sweetheart.Nobody was daft enough to do that.Present company excepted, of course.
Si laughed bitterly under his breath as he reached for the bottle opener.Thing was, Zig had always been able to make him feel like he was the centre of the bloody world.Like it was only the two of them, and no one and nothing else mattered.
Except they did, didn’t they?Family mattered.Friends mattered.And when he’d found out what Zig had been up to when Si wasn’t with him...
Didn’t feel so good then, did you?
Si shook his head, cracked open the beers, and headed back to his sofa.And Zig.
Six years ago
Si could remember the night it’d all come out.Adam had come back from uni for the Christmas holidays, and it’d been great to catch up with him, but it’d been different, somehow.All his stories were about people Si didn’t know and places he’d never been.Adam was always on his phone, in touch with someone or other.
