Page 24 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
Under the water, St. Sebastian shuddered.
“How were your exams?” Auden asked, his voice quiet now too, as if he realized that they’d started on a new path now, a path that could take them much further than bickering ever could, and he didn’t want to jeopardize a single step of it.
St. Sebastian felt the same way. “They went well,” he said cautiously. He didn’t know how to talk about his grades, because he found that people simply did not expect him to earn the grades that he did—and when they learned he was at the top of his class, or that he’d scooped up enough A*s to make even the strictest parent beam with pride, they usually couldn’t hide their disbelief. To his family back in Dallas, it was a given that Jennifer’s boy should be smart and special, and if he sometimes got into scrapes, that was normal and right, because what boy didn’t? It was nothing a few good meals and a girlfriend couldn’t cure, at least according to his abuela.
But to the people of Thorncombe, every fuckup of St. Sebastian’s was an indictment, a reminder that he didn’t belong and neither did his cheerful, friendly, tired mother, who tried and tried and tried to fit in, and who was rebuffed all the harder for it.
So then for the poor, sullen boy to also get the best marks—
Well, no one liked it. Not even St. Sebastian, because any perverse pleasure he might have taken in it was drowned out by the oblique, subtle little cruelties that then came his mother’s way because of his success. That was Thorncombe for you—if you behaved as they expected you to, you were reviled, and if you somehow exonerated yourself of their stupid stereotypes, you were resented.
Winning was never something St. Sebastian could hope for. Not here.
But Auden wasn’t Thorncombe. He tilted his head and waited for St. Sebastian to say exactly how well he’d done and in what subjects, and then when St. Sebastian told him, with a nonchalance that sounded fake even to his own ears, Auden gave him a devastating grin. A grin that hitched ever so slightly on one side of his upper lip, a grin that St. Sebastian had to look away from or he didn’t even know what. Just that something would happen, something would crack open in him and there’d be no putting it back together.
“Well done, you,” Auden said, and there was nothing surprised or condescending in it, just a genuine compliment, and St. Sebastian flushed. He flushed everywhere. He could fight off Auden’s arrogance and hauteur, but he couldn’t fight off his respect, and he didn’t know what else he’d give up if he stayed here right now. He’d already given up his pride, his silence, and his solitude—he couldn’t give up anything else today. He wouldn’t.
“I should go,” he said, standing up in the water, hoping his boxers would hide the worst of things.
He was wrong.
The boxers were thin, so very thin, and now sodden with river water, and so they rode dangerously low on St. Sebastian’s hips at the same time that they clung embarrassingly everywhere else. And now his wet, gingham erection was eye-level with Auden, and there was nothing to be done about it, those hazel eyes were already seeing, already searing, that oh-so-beautifully imperfect mouth was already parting in surprise and realization.
The secret was out. Auden could now surmise what only Jennifer Martinez and Jared Kress knew for sure about him.
But St. Sebastian had underestimated Auden’s reserve yet again, because Auden didn’t look away in defensive discomfort, he didn’t tease or say anything cruel. Instead he stood up and put his hand on St. Sebastian’s water-dotted shoulder.
It wasn’t a brotherly clap, it wasn’t even a friendly reassurance. Auden’s grip was firm, demanding; the points of his fingertips dug into St. Sebastian’s lean muscles, and his eyes burned into St. Sebastian’s.
“Come back to Thornchapel with me,” Auden said. “Have dinner.”
“I can’t,” St. Sebastian answered. It was the truth, even if he didn’t know why it was the truth. He just knew he couldn’t, he couldn’t bear to, not yet.
Auden frowned. “Then I want to see you tomorrow.”
St. Sebastian swallowed. Agreeing would expose something much more personal than his hard-on, and what if it was some kind of trick? What if St. Sebastian said yes and then Auden went home and laughed and laughed because the poor kid really thought Auden wanted to spend time with him?
Then Auden’s eyes dipped to St. Sebastian’s mouth, and with his other hand, he reached up and traced the bowed curve of St. Sebastian’s bottom lip. “I couldn’t draw a better lip,” Auden said, so quietly it was almost to himself. “Not even if I tried.” And then his finger stopped right in the middle, testing the firm crescent with an ownership that did nothing to help St. Sebastian’s erection. “And I’ve tried so many times.”
This confession was too much. St. Sebastian couldn’t hold onto his dignity any longer. “You’ve tried drawing me? Since Sunday?”
Auden looked back to St. Sebastian’s eyes, looking a little shy. “For a long time, St. Sebastian. I’ve been trying to draw you for a very long time.”
“But we haven’t—I mean, you haven’t seen me in so long—”
Auden smiled then, a smile St. Sebastian would never forget for as long as he lived.
“I told you before,” Auden said softly. “I always see you.”
Chapter 9
Proserpina
Present Day
* * *
I wake to rain.
