Page 65 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
I can’t let him have me.
My heart tumbles to my feet, flopping and shivering wetly around the spiky awns and kernels and stalks already drifting dry and dead on the floor. My eyelids are burning even as he carefully slides the condom off and puts it somewhere, even as he extricates himself and uses something—his handkerchief again?—to catch any spend as he pulls free.
It wasn’t as if I’d forgotten all my protests, all my reasons and fears, when I let Auden fuck me. It was only that I wanted Auden more than I wanted to be good. And now that we’re no longer joined, now that we’ll have to step back and fix our clothes and leave this chambered tomb of barley, the horror of what I’ve done—knowingly this time, knowing who he is to me—crowds up in my throat and chokes me.
Is it always going to be like this? Me pushing him away, hiding, denying, until our control snaps and we fall on each other like hungry animals? Is it entirely hopeless? Should I stop resisting? I can’t live without his love, and yet succumbing to it will always be wrong, our family and friends would think it wrong, everyone would think it wrong.
Our desires are so forbidden, they shouldn’t even be shaped in words. In thoughts. They shouldn’t even be acknowledged, except to a priest under the cover of confession.
Auden has tidied up behind me, and I know I should pull my tux together too. I just can’t, I can’t move from right here with my forehead and hands braced against the wall. If I move, if I turn and I see him, I will start to cry. And I may not have much to my name, but I’d still like to have some dignity. Some pride.
But again, I underestimate Auden’s attunement to me, his acute perception. His hands on my body as he puts my tuxedo to rights are solicitous and calming, like
he’s coaxing a skittish horse into staying still for him. When he’s done dressing me, he gently turns me around.
“Oh, St. Sebastian,” he says, because I’m already crying, dammit, the shame and the misery of it all is too much. I think I could cry for the rest of my life and still have sorrow yet to spill.
“Come here,” he whispers, and I come, stepping into his arms and clutching his jacket like a child. The minute his arms slide around me—strong and certain and a little bit acquisitive—I cry even harder, as if his comfort doesn’t shore up my walls but rather weakens them, and within seconds, I can barely breathe, I can barely think, all I can do is hold on to him as I cry and cry and cry, as I grieve every single second of a life which seems determined to rip the people I love away from me.
We end up on the ground, I don’t know how. I only know that one moment we’re standing, and then the next I’m in his arms on the floor, sitting between his sturdy thighs and nestled into his chest. He holds me tight, he drops kiss after kiss onto my hair, he croons things so low that I can’t hear them, I can only feel them as they rumble through his chest and throat.
I can’t remember someone ever holding me like this, ever, not even my mother or Richard Davey, even though they must have when I was little. But having Auden hold me and the weight of my unhappiness so easily, like I and it weigh nothing, having him cradling me and tending me like there’s nothing in the world he’d rather do—it’s a gift I cling to greedily. This one thing can be mine right now, this one solace.
I’m not sure how long I cry. Long enough that the breast of his tuxedo jacket is wet and one of my feet has gone numb from having my legs draped over his thigh. Long enough that I feel disoriented when I stop, dizzy from all those juddering, seizing inhales and wild, uncontrolled exhales. But it hasn’t been long enough that Auden’s arms have grown tired. I’m still held as tightly to his chest as ever.
Silence creeps back into our little tomb of grain, filling up the space where my sobs had been. There is only our breathing and Auden’s heart beating steadily against my ear and my occasional sniffles. I feel very small like this, even though I’m not small, even though my legs are as long and muscular as his, even though I fill his arms.
I feel a strange, sad peace. A numb kind of safety.
I wish we never had to leave this room.
I reach up and stroke the line of Auden’s lapel. “Did you get me a tuxedo just so you could fuck me in it at a swanky party?”
“Well, obviously,” he says wryly. Tenderly.
I look up at him. And then I notice his bowtie is gone. “What happened here?” I ask, lifting my hand to stroke the exposed hollow of his throat.
“As I’ve mentioned, you’ve already made use of my handkerchief, and I didn’t want to send you back into the fray still dripping with me.” The corner of his mouth tugs up. “Or rather, I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to.”
“So you used your bowtie?” I ask incredulously. “What happened to not being infrared or whatever?”
“Infra dig,” he corrects, “and in my case, everyone will assume my sartorial transgressions are for the sake of being roguishly fashionable.”
He’s probably not wrong. With his collar open and his throat naked, he’s still the cool, arrogant prince from earlier. Just more rakish now, a little more dangerous. A little more like the wild god he is inside.
“Are you saying I don’t look roguishly fashionable when I transgress?” I ask.
Auden gives a soft laugh and tugs on my lip piercing. “You always look perfect to me, and that’s what matters. Anyway, I think we can both agree there’s a material difference between losing a bowtie and having semen spattered on your trousers.”
We fall quiet again, Auden still using his thumb to toy with my labret. “Tell me why you were crying,” he says.
My voice is tired. Hoarse from the tears.
“You already know why.”
There’s an abrupt stillness to him now. “Do I?”
“Auden.”
