11, 12, 13 - Dashing Through the Snow, Visiting, Storm

“Alec, do you trust me?”

They were dressing for work in their one-room, two-chair hovel, by lantern-light and the brightening orange glow of dawnlight through the single crooked window.

“I trust you with all my life.”

One of the many beautiful ways of Alec Scudder was his plain-spokenness; he saw no need to talk around the edges of a thing for the sake of propriety. In others of his class this tendency seemed to those of higher station to come across as coarse or too smart, but in Alec it was only that he was self-assured and earnest. Maurice was simultaneously stung with a pinprick of shock at his frank pronouncements, admiring of his boldness, and enamoured of his honesty. He made the most grand expressions of affection and admiration so easily, so simply.

“Do you doubt it?” Alec asked, after a breath’s-long silence.

“Not a bit,” Maurice assured, fastening his trousers. “Only, I’ve an idea–very nearly a plan–that runs some small risk for us both, but which–if it pays off–I think could be the making of us.”

“I’d follow you anywhere, my dear, and you know it. You only need say the word.”

Maurice smiled, moved close, and kissed him. Folding Alec into his arms, shut his eyes and smiled. “First thing we must do is get a train schedule.”

Continuar a ler

5/6/7 - Shepherd, Joy, Blankets

It wasn’t the sun that woke them in the morning, nor birdsong nor even the bell ringing to urge them up to their day’s work. It was the cold. A slight shift of one beside the other disturbed their three blankets one way or another, exposing them to a rush of sharp air, at their feet or down one’s back or on one’s neck. Once the cold came in, sleep was impossible to find again. Instead, they nestled in closer together, tucking in the loose corners, hands tucked into each other’s nightshirts, trying to warm their noses in the curve of each other’s necks and shoulders.

“Mm, closer,” Alec slurred, his voice thick with sleep, and pulled Maurice’s arms tighter to his chest, snuggling his back against Maurice’s chest. “Why’s it have to be winter all the time?”

Maurice dug in his nose in at the top of Alec’s neck, inhaled deep, kissed him there in the hollow beneath the edge of his hair.

Alec stacked their hands against his chest and curled up his knees, tried to tuck his feet between Maurice’s ankles.

“When I was a boy I snuck in the dogs some nights. My brother and I shared a bed. Head to foot with his smelly socks in my face.”

Maurice let go a silent laugh, just breath against the back Alec’s ear, warm and then cool.

“We had two, one called Tick, and one called Joy, what was the one that made me her favourite. Followed me everywhere, all the day. She was nearly big as me, all laid out, and I’d roll up against her back like you’re doing now to me.”

“My pet,” Maurice mused.

“Guard the house,” Alec corrected. “She was for sheep, but the man what kept them said she was too stupid to be put in charge of them, drove them every wrong way, so I made a friend of her. A dog’s very good for keeping warm in a bed.”

“So’s a lovely man,” Maurice murmured, and his mouth was soft and open against the back of Alec’s neck. His hands broke free of Alec’s tangle and began to roam. “You’ve got me feeling very warm indeed.”

“That so?” Alec grinned and shut his eyes, and moved his thigh out of the way.

Maurice quick-drew up the edge of their shared blanket, right up over their heads, to close out the light, and keep in the heat.