Fic: Widdershins, (The Eagle AU), part 12
Title: Widdershins, part 12
Pairing: Esca Mac Cunoval/Marcus Aquila
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6k
Warnings: This chapter - Description of consensual underage sexual activity
Summary: The Eagle AU - Esca's a house master and history teacher at a 1950s boys school on the English/Scottish border, where welcoming the new Latin teacher proves to be a challenge
A/N: For awarrington.
“It's a tattie scone.”
Marcus mouthed the name silently, breaking the scone open and sniffing at it.
“It's potato bread. It'll be rather bland without a scoop of this on it. Use your finger.”
The jar was carefully inspected as Esca handed it over. “'Bloater paste'? Not the most inviting of names.”
“It's fish. Try it, it's good.”
Marcus scooped a fingerful out of the jar, lifting his finger to his mouth and touching it with the tip of his tongue to taste, reminding Esca of how that tongue had been rasping and lapping at his arsehole only hours earlier. That was probably the finger involved, too. His cock started to perk up against his leg, Esca resolutely returning his attention to the view ahead and the subject at hand. “Do Italians eat much fish?”
“Mm.” Marcus nodded, finishing his mouthful of scone and paste before speaking. “My favourite is sarde alla grilia, the skin crisp and turning brown.”
“Sardines?”
“Si.”
“Wish I'd known. The shop had some.”
“No matter.” Marcus leaned back against the windscreen where they were both sitting on the front bonnet of his car. He could've been a rajah reclining on a silk bed, his leg propped and crooked at the knee, his body a lean study in line and sinew. “We have no grill.”
“They were tinned, already cooked.”
“No, see, you must eat them straight out of the sea. An hour at most from net to plate.”
“Picky, aren't you?”
“Naturalmente. In all matters.”
Marcus's knee moved to press lightly against his own, Esca grinning into his scone and pressing back, giddy as a schoolgirl. He'd have to collect himself and get some sort of hold on this tipsy, dazzling euphoria that kept effervescing up inside him, but not now. Not till they were closer to home.
“I have to admit, this view's something. You forget how beautiful a place is when you live there. You stop looking, y'know?”
“Esca . . . we stopped for a reason other than the view.”
“You don't agree? Sometimes I'll notice what's around me, truly notice it, and want to start applauding. Someone or something needs congratulating for all this.”
“We stopped to talk.”
“I know.” He morosely picked at his roll, wanting to put off the inevitable a few minutes longer. “Let a chap finish his lunch first.”
They'd pulled up in a viewing spot above a tumbling ravine, craggy lumps of granite covered in moss soaring steeply either side, framing a distant view of misty, purple mountains topped with snow. The sun was struggling to break through the low-lying clouds, a few pale rays breaching the barrier to pour down in shifting shards, highlighting a small village a few miles away.
“See that, the sunlight there? When I was a boy, I'd think that was God talking to whoever was underneath it.”
Marcus shrugged, swallowing more of his roll and sucking at a smear of fish paste on his thumb. “Perhaps it is.”
“I noticed you wear a cross.” It felt like Esca was crossing into personal territory, something more private, and he hesitated briefly. “Are you very devout?”
“No more or less than any other Catholic. I believe in God's love, and that He wouldn't place any burden on me that I was unable to bear.” Marcus finished his roll, reaching behind Esca for an apple and rubbing it on the sleeve of his overcoat. “Then my car breaks down, you walk through the door to assist me, and my burden becomes all the heavier. So I pray, and I remind myself that He above all understands and forgives human frailty. It's all I can do.”
“I'm sorry.”
He waited as Marcus took a big chunk out of the apple and chewed it, eyes glittering as he steadily regarded Esca before swallowing. “It's not your fault you're irresistible.”
Esca snorted in derision as Marcus chuckled, biting off more apple. “It's never been much of a problem in the past.”
“I refuse to believe that, and we're here to talk about the past, aren't we? You've stopped eating.”
“Suppose so.”
He'd put it off as long as he could, a shiver of dread stiffening his shoulders and back as he reminded himself for the hundredth time that this would've been so much easier to do back when he'd hated everything Marcus was and stood for. Back when he didn't give a flying fig what Marcus thought of him. Marcus sighed and tossed his apple core high into the air to tumble into the ravine, moving his hand to lie on the car bonnet next to Esca's leg, purposefully brushing against Esca's thigh with his knuckles where nobody'd be able to see from the road.
“I don't know what you have to tell me, but you must understand that there's nothing, not one single matter, that would turn me away from you now.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“To someone who's learning how to look.”
He wasn't hungry anymore. Esca started to tear his scone into bits, throwing them one by one to the gaggle of crows who'd been beadily observing their picnic. His leg felt warm where Marcus continued to rub a circle into his thigh with one fingertip, the desire to lean into Marcus's body and reach up for a fortifying kiss so strong he had to close his eyes.
“Don't know where to start.”
“From the beginning. What were you like as a boy?”
“Oh, God. A horrible little sod, by all accounts. This is me, you see.”
“You?”
Marcus moved away an inch or two as Esca drew out his cigarettes, struggling to light one in the blustery gusts of wind rolling up the ravine's sides towards them.
“This, me, here with you, the perfect example. I've never done what I'm supposed to, right from the very start. It's absolutely typical of me, never taking the high or the low road but instead throwing the map away and going off in some unknown direction. And promptly getting lost.”
“I'm not certain I understand.”
“Let me put it this way - everyone knew what was coming when my mother was carrying me. Another tall, braw MacCunoval, just like my father, tough as boots, born ready to get stuck into butchery and a nice girl. So then out I pop, as small and pale, English as my mother, and I don't like rugby, I like footie and dancing about with my mother to records instead. I don't like building mud forts or getting my hands messy, I like wandering off with a book and getting myself stuck in a cave, alone. They couldn't find me for two days once. Da about stripped my bum raw after that one, for worrying my mother. I'd barely even noticed the time passing.”
“But that's charming in a child, in its way.”
“People don't respond well to difference, not when the whole town's families had known each other for centuries. The MacCunovals have always been scrappers and leaders, tall and strong, not dreamy, scrawny weeds with their heads stuck in the clouds. My mother got the blame for it because she'd been dancing with Da while she was carrying me. 'It's the English blood', they said, 'Corrupt and weak'. Got roughed up something rotten over it at school. It's how I learned how to fight, and I was quite good at it, too, in the end. I boxed for my boarding school and for my college at university, in the first year before I, um, got busy with other stuff.”
Marcus had unscrewed his flask, taking a sip from it before passing it to Esca. “'Other stuff'? Sounds interesting.”
“It was. He was. Jolyon, a very distracting chap indeed.”
“Ahh. I see.”
“It's alright for me to talk about someone else?”
“Of course.” A grin as Marcus accepted his flask back and threw back another gulp. “Providing you keep mentions of his better qualities to a minimum.”
“Easily done. He didn't have many.”
“Was he your first?”
“No, not exactly. Mam took a job as a char at a nearby boarding house so she could send me to school in England. Just fifty miles off, but it was an escape. Crappier place than Cranholme, colder and wetter with worse food, and it was heaven on Earth. I had this one master, Mr. Hall. He wasn't what you'd call handsome, half-bald and with this little moustache he'd wax into points, but I was so in love with him.”
Marcus spluttered on another mouthful of grappa, coughing into his knuckles as he stared at Esca with incredulous eyes. “Your first was your teacher?”
“What? No!” Esca smacked at Marcus's shoulder, Marcus laughing and ducking away. “You've a dirty, suspicious mind. Mr. Hall was the history master, all passion about the past and a true vocation where teaching was concerned. He was wonderful, so inspiring. I set out to impress him and worked so hard, just so he'd smile at me and tell me I'd done well. He's the one who put me forward for Cambridge. I didn't know it was a big deal, at the time. Didn't know it was wrong to be in love with my teacher, either. Or Georgie Brendan.”
“And he was . . . ?”
“An older boy. Oh, Georgie Brendan was beautiful.” Even now, Esca's stomach tightened at the thought of him, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Floppy long dark curls, huge eyes like chocolate buttons. Tall, broad, a bum like a cleft hill growing out of a plain. I was fourteen, nearly fifteen when he transferred to our school and my house after getting expelled for getting caught out drinking in his last. Fell like a ton of bricks the first time I saw him and followed him around like a puppy for a full six months, hoping he'd notice me. Even took up smoking with the others behind the sports hall just so I could impress him with how grown-up I was.”
“The things we do for love.”
Esca returned Marcus's smile, pulling his hat further down as the persistent winds threatened to tug it off his head and carry it into the ravine.
“Precisely. There was this one night when my house master was out for the weekend, one of the older masters house-sitting for him. We knew Mr. Collins would be asleep by nine, so the older boys decided to have a midnight party in their dorm. I'd been awake all evening, knowing that if I could only go to that party, my life would be made. I'd gone to the tuck shop that afternoon and spent my entire month's pocket money on sweeties, then waited till I heard them laughing and joking with each other down the hall. Crept down there in my pyjamas, knocked on the door and Georgie opened it, so I showed him my sweets and said I'd bought them for the party. It got me through the door, although that bastard Markie Loughlin laughed at Georgie for letting me in and called me a bum boy. I didn't know what it meant, but I remember it so well, grinning ear to ear, sitting next to Georgie on his bed and smoking like a bigger boy. Had my first drink, too, a swig of someone's mother's gin. I thought it was horrible and tasted like perfume. Didn't let on, though.”
The sun was moving behind the clouds again, the temperature dropping as Esca shivered and hunched deeper into his coat after throwing the stub of his fag away. Marcus slapped at Esca's leg with the back of his hand, sliding off the car bonnet and limping around to the driver's door.
“Let's sit in the car, I'm getting cold.”
“Smells like it's going to rain, anyway.” He slid off himself, the car welcoming and warm as he opened the door and ducked into the passenger seat, Marcus's hand immediately reaching out to stroke over his thigh. Esca covered it with his own, only realising as Marcus laced his fingers into his own how cold he was. He looked down at their joined hands, rubbing his thumb into Marcus's palm as Marcus squeezed his fingers and encouraged him to continue.
“I'm not boring you?”
“It may break my heart if I learn Little Esca never got to kiss his Georgie, but no, not at all.”
“Ah, well, now. We all gotten quite merry, someone getting out a nudie magazine they'd found in their dad's bottom drawer over Christmas break, and we finished off the gin and my sweets, the room full of smoke. I didn't much like the girls in the magazine but then two of the older boys who'd been sitting together the whole time started kissing on one of the other beds. Nobody else turned a hair but my eyes bugged out, I swear, I almost fainted in shock. About near creamed my pyjama bottoms, too.”
“I can imagine.”
It felt so good to sit here and do something so simple as hold hands with Marcus, like they were sweethearts sitting on a park bench watching the ducks. So silly and so very good, Esca sliding his fingers through Marcus's, wishing he dared lean across the gear stick to lean into Marcus's throat.
“Georgie had a bottom bunk, so we were sitting there in the dark with the feet of three others hanging down by our faces, and he moved to sit back against the wall. Told me to sit back with him, and I couldn't stop looking at the other two kissing, the others ignoring them and carrying on with their smoking and the magazine. Then Georgie touched my shoulder and asked me if I knew how to French kiss. I didn't know what he meant, so said yes so he wouldn't think me stupid. Then he kissed me, and his tongue was pushing at my lips and I didn't know what to do. He laughed and told me to open my mouth, so I did and I remember it so well. He tasted of gin and aniseed balls, and his tongue was like a big, wet slug in my mouth, but I was so hard it didn't matter.”
Esca's mind was dragged out of the past as Marcus chuckled, and he looked across at him, noticing his soft lips, his long eyelashes, deep eyes that could've hypnotised a snake. God, he was beautiful. More so than Georgie Brendon or any other man Esca remembered laying eyes on. “I recall not thinking much of my first open kiss, either.”
“I must've been horrible at it, sitting there with my mouth hanging open and not doing anything.”
“I can reassure you that you're now very accomplished.”
“Heh, you think so?”
“Oh, yes. Very definitely.”
Another squeeze of Marcus's hand around his corroborated it, Esca unable to stop himself reaching up to rub his thumb over a dimple before dropping his hand away, conscious that a car could appear on the empty road behind them any second.
“Your kisses almost convince me I could exist with nothing else but them and the air I breathe. Almost.” A knuckle curled into his palm. “Except for the desire they provoke.”
“Perhaps it's you that inspires me to greatness.”
That he could cause someone like Marcus to blush and bashfully duck his head like that could barely be believed. “I'll humbly accept any part I play in such artistry.”
“Christ, you're good for a man's ego. You know that?” Esca rolled down the window and pulled his hand from Marcus's, needing another smoke to settle the excitable fluttering in his gut. “I'll be walking around thinking I'm ten foot tall.”
“I'm glad, you should do, but it's cruel to leave Little Esca there with his mouth open. Go on.”
“You can probably guess the rest. Georgie put his hand down my pyjama bottoms and stroked me off, and instructed me to do the same with him. His cock was so much bigger than mine. I'd have been humiliated if I hadn't been so over-excited, I think I took all of ten seconds. And I was so proud of myself when he stopped kissing me and messed over my hand. He told me to wipe it off on my pyjamas, then shared one more smoke with me before telling me to get off and get to bed. I sneaked back into my room, probably reeking like a brothel in my damp pyjamas, and lay in bed unable to sleep because Georgie Brendon loved me back.”
Marcus waved Esca's smoke out of his face, wincing, his eyes sympathetic. “I'm beginning to form the impression this doesn't end well for Little Esca.”
“Course it didn't. This is me, remember? I ran up to Georgie's room for a re-run the next evening. He wouldn't let me in, and someone behind him asked if it was 'that MacCunoval queer' at the door. Georgie ignored it but hissed down to me to go back to bed and that he'd been practising on me for when his girlfriend visited at half-term. Told me to get lost. It felt like I was going to die, my chest hurt so bad I thought I must be bleeding to death inside.”
“Oh, che roba.”
“It gets worse. I went to Mr. Hall the next morning after class, sobbing my heart out and asked him what a queer and a bum boy was. He was appalled, gave me ten across the backside with his birch, and told me he never wanted to hear such debauched deviancy out of my mouth again or to know I'd burn in hell. So I didn't look at another boy from then on, once I'd found out it was wrong, and disgusting, and something I'd burn for.”
“Esca. I'm sorry.”
Warm fingers stroked across the back of his neck, Esca tilting his head to press against them before pulling away. “It was a long time ago. You must've felt similar at some point.”
“Many times. Still do, sometimes, looking at you, knowing I shouldn't want you and powerless to make it otherwise.”
“So you've tried.” He squinted out the windscreen as raindrops started to splatter against it, rattling the roof of the car and spitting at the side of his face before he flicked his smoke out the car window and rolled it up. “I know I have, even though I'm not sure I believe in eternal punishment. Not anymore.”
“It was quickly apparent to me that, where you're concerned, the fight's unconquerable. I admit I'm beaten.”
Blast. They should've had this talk in bed, Esca wishing more than ever they were naked and wrapped around each other so he could work all the hollow defeat out of Marcus's voice. He reached out with his foot, and down to run the toe of his shoe against Marcus's ankle, his knee pushing against Marcus's as a warm hand wrapped around it. “You're the one who invaded. I'd thought I was in such safe territory, too. But, honestly, I'm not feeling sorry for myself. Did it seem like I was feeling sorry for myself last night?”
“Hah, no. It didn't.” But Marcus had this way of retreating into himself, his eyes fogged windows looking out onto a world and hiding the cogs turning behind. He was doing it now as Esca looked at him, Marcus gazing out into the ravine as if it held all the answers. Then he puffed out his lips on a heavy breath, settling further down into his seat and reaching down to rub at his leg. “Tell me about Jolyon.”
“He was in the year above me at Caius. I'd never met anybody all swishy before, but he was tall, built broad and dark,” He grinned over at Marcus, who smiled back. “And so frightfully frightfully. I mean, everybody was, except me, but Jolly was so posh he probably crapped silver spoons. He boxed, too. He was horrible at it. Different weight class, of course. He had a thing about champagne for breakfast and a tablespoon of brandy in the wine with supper. I wasn't that much of a drinker before I met him.”
“How did you become lovers?”
“He jumped on me in the showers after some third year had knocked seven shades of shite out of me in the ring. It had been so long since Georgie that I can't say I protested for more than a minute. We were together a year till he got called up. He'd spent the two months beforehand growing a moustache to compliment his officer's uniform, and I always thought that about summed Jolly up. He wasn't the sort to let things get him down.”
“I see.” The stare out into the void had turned into more of a glare, Marcus's jaw set like stone. “Did you love him?”
“Thought so, at the time. Don't now when I look back. He was fun, though. Died in a POW camp, Konigstein. His sister let me know. It was pneumonia, but at least he died in a castle. Very fitting. Jolly would've been scandalised if he'd died in anything other than grand surroundings. How about you?” He was going to run out of fags if he kept up this pace. “Ever been in love?”
“Like you, I thought so.”
“What happened?”
“She handed back my ring when I returned home a cripple.”
“Oh.”
Esca didn't know what to say, the breath knocked out of him as he lit his cigarette and slowly let the information seep into his brain. Marcus had closed his eyes and tipped his head back against his seat to rub over his eyes, a good foot of space between him and Esca. “Under Il Duce, boys were raised to be men, to be fighters and to marry good Italian women who'd bear them many sons to add to our nation's glorious strength. I tried. We all did.”
“I see.”
“I don't think it's possible that you can.”
“But you loved her.”
“I did, I think. In many ways you remind me of her. Small and smart, fierce, ready to take the world by the ankle with teeth alone. She could cut the legs from under of you with a single sentence. Very much like you, an inner strength that nobody else seemed to notice. More and more I've come to believe she'd known it wasn't a grand passion, for either of us, and she was strong enough to take the opportunity to set us both free. I wasn't.”
“No? So you knew then, that you liked . . . well, blokes. Like that.”
“It's been a part of me as long as I can remember. The army opened my eyes to that which I'd already known.”
“And you've had gotten married anyway?” Marcus shrugged without answer. “Wow. That's dedication to a cause.”
“As I said, I don't believe you can understand. You weren't there.”
“No, I suppose not.”
The crows squabbling with each other and the raindrops still splashing on the windscreen were the only sounds, both of them caught up in their own thoughts as they sat and Esca smoked, feeling like he'd arrived at a brick wall with no way of getting around it. He watched as each drop of water began to turn slushy, a few wet white flakes falling from the sky, swirling away towards the distant rocks.
“Did you have anything else to tell me? We should continue on if it's going to snow.”
“I did, yes.” His throat was dry, tight with an unndefined melancholy, a strong cup of tea with three sugars in it seeming a thousand miles away. “I was leading up to it.”
“Esca, please, just tell me.” Warm fingers slid into his and he took them in gratitude. “Or are you afraid that I'll fail your test?”
“It's not a test.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I don't know. Maybe.”
He wasn't about to admit that the idea Marcus looking at him with anything other than heatedly potent want or that sweet, steady consideration was already too much to bear. Blundering fool, stumbling blindly into caring too much and too soon. Esca took a deep breath and spat the words out, wanting it done either way.
“I didn't fight. I never went to war.”
A pause, the hand in his not pulling away as he'd expected it to. “Were you too young? I'm not certain of your age, but I thought you were old enough . . .”
“I got my papers in early forty four, three months after my mother died.”
The silence seemed to stretch on forever, Marcus's fingers not moving against his own, Esca's heart filling his throat until he had to gulp for air and take a draw on his smoke. He waited until the quiet became too burdensome to bear.
“You have to understand that the war took everyone I'd ever loved or been close to from me. My home, my family. Jolly. Everything. I was alone, and now they wanted to send me off to die. The last of the MacCunovals sent to his pointless end. I wasn't having any of it.”
More silence, Marcus waiting for him to carry on. It was like someone was sitting on his chest, Esca's ribs aching.
“The reason I can't get another job is because I was a conscientious objector.”
A soft huff of breath, Marcus shifting in the driver's seat, his fingers remaining loosely tangled in Esca's. “I see.”
“No, you probably don't, and that's alright. Here, I've still got it.” Esca clamped his cigarette in his mouth and dug around in his coat pocket with his free hand, drawing his other away from Marcus's grip in order to go through his wallet. It was crumpled, a grubby grey whisp, but started to take shape as he straightened the quill and fluffed up the down. “You know what this signifies?”
“It's a feather.”
“A white feather, for cowardice. That was my first one, thrust at me by my landlady when she kicked me out. I lost three lots of lodgings before I learned to lie.” He took the feather from Marcus's fingertips, tucking it back away. “It was the first of many. People who'd heard turned their backs on me in the street. I went back home to clear out the house and the whole place knew, without me even having to say. I probably got three or four feathers a day through the post box. There can't have been a pillow left alone in a ten mile radius.”
He pocketed his wallet, aware of Marcus sitting next to him as motionless as a statue. “So I went back down south, got my degree, then found that nobody wanted a CO working for them. I got one temporary job and everyone walked out once they'd heard. They wouldn't work beside someone who'd not fought when their loved ones had died fighting the good fight.”
“On what grounds did you apply? Was it a matter of faith?” It was quietly spoken, Marcus frowning down at the steering wheel.
“I had no faith, Marcus. I still believed, but I hated God for what he'd allowed, hated him. No, I applied on moral grounds. Told the judge about my family and he agreed I had reason to believe war was immoral and that I couldn't serve its machine in any capacity. Got a full exemption. So,” His voice wavered and Esca gritted his teeth, determined not to make a fuss. “If you think ill of me and don't want to associate with a known coward, I'll understand. I won't like it, but I'll understand. You wouldn't be the first.”
“This would prevent you from finding work elsewhere?” It was full of disbelief, as if Esca hadn't laid the shameful truth out at all but instead had come up with a silly comment to lighten the mood.
“I was lucky to get Cranholme. It was only my da's reputation that got me in. He'd known the old headmaster. I went to him in desperation after six months in my family's empty house with nobody talking to me and my letters of recommendation coming back second class. People don't want COs around their boys, messing with their heads and tutoring them in the ways of the pacifist. The staff at Cranholme know, it got out a few months after I arrived, which wasn't pretty, but they keep it from the boys and parents or I'd be out on my arse.”
A nod, Marcus's lips tightening. “I see.”
“I'm not ashamed of it. I had my reasons, and my anger to see me through. But a man's got to make a living.”
“A phrase very familiar to me.”
Say something, say more. Say anything! He wanted to grab Marcus to shake him out of his stupor, to get the inevitable cold shoulder over and done with. It felt as if there wasn't enough air in the car and Esca reached for the door handle, about to get out to stretch his legs in the slushy snowfall and give Marcus the opportunity to find the words. But, as his hand closed around the door's handle, fingers gripped his other elbow, pulling him back and around to face Marcus.
“I can't say that I understand. The things I've seen . . .”
“I know. I mean, I don't, but it's alright.” God, get it over with. Say it.
“No, Esca. You're not a coward. You were in pain, and I think I know pain better than most.”
“You don't want to . . . most folk despise people like me.” He didn't dare hope. Not for a second.
“And most would despise me, if they knew how I felt about you.”
Esca's heart stopped, a paralysing pause before it gave a great lurch in his chest and started pounding there at twice its normal speed. “You could forgive that about me?”
“That's not up to me. You saw beyond my nationality and allowed yourself to get to know the man beneath. You didn't judge me on that one criteria.”
“Eventually.”
A dimple, oh Lord, a blessed dimple twitching in Marcus's cheek as his mouth began to lift. “True.”
He started to laugh. Esca didn't know where it came from but it burst out of him, too loud in the quiet car, carrying on until he had tears in his eyes and Marcus had started to join in, looking at him in cheerful bemusement.
“I've said something so amusing?”
“No!” It was a hoot, Esca's stomach starting to ache and he clutched at it. “Oh, Christ, I was so sure you'd not speak a word to me again once you'd found out. A wounded soldier and a cowardly queer who refused to fight? That's not just a funny joke, that's fucking hilarious.”
“Esca . . .” A tweak of his earlobe like he was a cheeky boy. “It's not that simple.”
“Oh, it hurts. I have to stop. Don't look at me for a moment, you'll start me off again.”
He was drunk on relief, his head spinning as he gasped for breath, his chuckles slowly subsiding as Marcus brushed a knuckle along his jaw before bopping him gently on the nose with it. “I have something to ask you, if you have nothing else you need to tell me."
"No, that was it."
"Then I want you to think about it for longer than it takes you to draw the breath necessary to dismiss it.”
“Yes? What's that?”
Sod it. Three fags would be enough to last him till their next stop. Esca stuck a cigarette in his mouth, moving to light it before Marcus plucked it out of his lips. “Attenzione, per favore.”
“Now you've done it. You don't touch a man's fags. Bloody foreigners.”
He snatched it back and lit it, puffing his first inhale towards Marcus, who waved it away with a sour look.
“Think about it for a few days. There's plenty of time.”
“Alright, you've got my attention. I hereby promise to think about it, whatever it is.”
“Easter.”
“Sounds familiar. Something to do with all that churchy business?”
“The boys will be with their families, yes?”
“Most of them. Why? You want to do this again?”
“No. I'll be returning home, to my uncle's, for the holiday. I want you to come with me.”
Don't be stupid. Esca even opened his mouth to say it, Marcus giving him an 'I told you so' look that shut him up. “I might've been saying yes.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Then think about it.”
“I don't think there's much point.”
“The point is that your lover's asked you to do so, and you wish to please him.”
"My . . ."
Just like that, Esca was distracted from the impossible, his guts liquifying as his prick twitched and started to unfurl, Marcus stroking down over Esca's thigh to give his groin a quick squeeze before moving away to start the car.
“You're a tricky fucker, Marcus Aquila.”
“Which is why you'll think about it.”
“So long as you're planning to drive to somewhere less public in the next five minutes, you've got yourself a deal.”
Pairing: Esca Mac Cunoval/Marcus Aquila
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6k
Warnings: This chapter - Description of consensual underage sexual activity
Summary: The Eagle AU - Esca's a house master and history teacher at a 1950s boys school on the English/Scottish border, where welcoming the new Latin teacher proves to be a challenge
A/N: For awarrington.
“It's a tattie scone.”
Marcus mouthed the name silently, breaking the scone open and sniffing at it.
“It's potato bread. It'll be rather bland without a scoop of this on it. Use your finger.”
The jar was carefully inspected as Esca handed it over. “'Bloater paste'? Not the most inviting of names.”
“It's fish. Try it, it's good.”
Marcus scooped a fingerful out of the jar, lifting his finger to his mouth and touching it with the tip of his tongue to taste, reminding Esca of how that tongue had been rasping and lapping at his arsehole only hours earlier. That was probably the finger involved, too. His cock started to perk up against his leg, Esca resolutely returning his attention to the view ahead and the subject at hand. “Do Italians eat much fish?”
“Mm.” Marcus nodded, finishing his mouthful of scone and paste before speaking. “My favourite is sarde alla grilia, the skin crisp and turning brown.”
“Sardines?”
“Si.”
“Wish I'd known. The shop had some.”
“No matter.” Marcus leaned back against the windscreen where they were both sitting on the front bonnet of his car. He could've been a rajah reclining on a silk bed, his leg propped and crooked at the knee, his body a lean study in line and sinew. “We have no grill.”
“They were tinned, already cooked.”
“No, see, you must eat them straight out of the sea. An hour at most from net to plate.”
“Picky, aren't you?”
“Naturalmente. In all matters.”
Marcus's knee moved to press lightly against his own, Esca grinning into his scone and pressing back, giddy as a schoolgirl. He'd have to collect himself and get some sort of hold on this tipsy, dazzling euphoria that kept effervescing up inside him, but not now. Not till they were closer to home.
“I have to admit, this view's something. You forget how beautiful a place is when you live there. You stop looking, y'know?”
“Esca . . . we stopped for a reason other than the view.”
“You don't agree? Sometimes I'll notice what's around me, truly notice it, and want to start applauding. Someone or something needs congratulating for all this.”
“We stopped to talk.”
“I know.” He morosely picked at his roll, wanting to put off the inevitable a few minutes longer. “Let a chap finish his lunch first.”
They'd pulled up in a viewing spot above a tumbling ravine, craggy lumps of granite covered in moss soaring steeply either side, framing a distant view of misty, purple mountains topped with snow. The sun was struggling to break through the low-lying clouds, a few pale rays breaching the barrier to pour down in shifting shards, highlighting a small village a few miles away.
“See that, the sunlight there? When I was a boy, I'd think that was God talking to whoever was underneath it.”
Marcus shrugged, swallowing more of his roll and sucking at a smear of fish paste on his thumb. “Perhaps it is.”
“I noticed you wear a cross.” It felt like Esca was crossing into personal territory, something more private, and he hesitated briefly. “Are you very devout?”
“No more or less than any other Catholic. I believe in God's love, and that He wouldn't place any burden on me that I was unable to bear.” Marcus finished his roll, reaching behind Esca for an apple and rubbing it on the sleeve of his overcoat. “Then my car breaks down, you walk through the door to assist me, and my burden becomes all the heavier. So I pray, and I remind myself that He above all understands and forgives human frailty. It's all I can do.”
“I'm sorry.”
He waited as Marcus took a big chunk out of the apple and chewed it, eyes glittering as he steadily regarded Esca before swallowing. “It's not your fault you're irresistible.”
Esca snorted in derision as Marcus chuckled, biting off more apple. “It's never been much of a problem in the past.”
“I refuse to believe that, and we're here to talk about the past, aren't we? You've stopped eating.”
“Suppose so.”
He'd put it off as long as he could, a shiver of dread stiffening his shoulders and back as he reminded himself for the hundredth time that this would've been so much easier to do back when he'd hated everything Marcus was and stood for. Back when he didn't give a flying fig what Marcus thought of him. Marcus sighed and tossed his apple core high into the air to tumble into the ravine, moving his hand to lie on the car bonnet next to Esca's leg, purposefully brushing against Esca's thigh with his knuckles where nobody'd be able to see from the road.
“I don't know what you have to tell me, but you must understand that there's nothing, not one single matter, that would turn me away from you now.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“To someone who's learning how to look.”
He wasn't hungry anymore. Esca started to tear his scone into bits, throwing them one by one to the gaggle of crows who'd been beadily observing their picnic. His leg felt warm where Marcus continued to rub a circle into his thigh with one fingertip, the desire to lean into Marcus's body and reach up for a fortifying kiss so strong he had to close his eyes.
“Don't know where to start.”
“From the beginning. What were you like as a boy?”
“Oh, God. A horrible little sod, by all accounts. This is me, you see.”
“You?”
Marcus moved away an inch or two as Esca drew out his cigarettes, struggling to light one in the blustery gusts of wind rolling up the ravine's sides towards them.
“This, me, here with you, the perfect example. I've never done what I'm supposed to, right from the very start. It's absolutely typical of me, never taking the high or the low road but instead throwing the map away and going off in some unknown direction. And promptly getting lost.”
“I'm not certain I understand.”
“Let me put it this way - everyone knew what was coming when my mother was carrying me. Another tall, braw MacCunoval, just like my father, tough as boots, born ready to get stuck into butchery and a nice girl. So then out I pop, as small and pale, English as my mother, and I don't like rugby, I like footie and dancing about with my mother to records instead. I don't like building mud forts or getting my hands messy, I like wandering off with a book and getting myself stuck in a cave, alone. They couldn't find me for two days once. Da about stripped my bum raw after that one, for worrying my mother. I'd barely even noticed the time passing.”
“But that's charming in a child, in its way.”
“People don't respond well to difference, not when the whole town's families had known each other for centuries. The MacCunovals have always been scrappers and leaders, tall and strong, not dreamy, scrawny weeds with their heads stuck in the clouds. My mother got the blame for it because she'd been dancing with Da while she was carrying me. 'It's the English blood', they said, 'Corrupt and weak'. Got roughed up something rotten over it at school. It's how I learned how to fight, and I was quite good at it, too, in the end. I boxed for my boarding school and for my college at university, in the first year before I, um, got busy with other stuff.”
Marcus had unscrewed his flask, taking a sip from it before passing it to Esca. “'Other stuff'? Sounds interesting.”
“It was. He was. Jolyon, a very distracting chap indeed.”
“Ahh. I see.”
“It's alright for me to talk about someone else?”
“Of course.” A grin as Marcus accepted his flask back and threw back another gulp. “Providing you keep mentions of his better qualities to a minimum.”
“Easily done. He didn't have many.”
“Was he your first?”
“No, not exactly. Mam took a job as a char at a nearby boarding house so she could send me to school in England. Just fifty miles off, but it was an escape. Crappier place than Cranholme, colder and wetter with worse food, and it was heaven on Earth. I had this one master, Mr. Hall. He wasn't what you'd call handsome, half-bald and with this little moustache he'd wax into points, but I was so in love with him.”
Marcus spluttered on another mouthful of grappa, coughing into his knuckles as he stared at Esca with incredulous eyes. “Your first was your teacher?”
“What? No!” Esca smacked at Marcus's shoulder, Marcus laughing and ducking away. “You've a dirty, suspicious mind. Mr. Hall was the history master, all passion about the past and a true vocation where teaching was concerned. He was wonderful, so inspiring. I set out to impress him and worked so hard, just so he'd smile at me and tell me I'd done well. He's the one who put me forward for Cambridge. I didn't know it was a big deal, at the time. Didn't know it was wrong to be in love with my teacher, either. Or Georgie Brendan.”
“And he was . . . ?”
“An older boy. Oh, Georgie Brendan was beautiful.” Even now, Esca's stomach tightened at the thought of him, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Floppy long dark curls, huge eyes like chocolate buttons. Tall, broad, a bum like a cleft hill growing out of a plain. I was fourteen, nearly fifteen when he transferred to our school and my house after getting expelled for getting caught out drinking in his last. Fell like a ton of bricks the first time I saw him and followed him around like a puppy for a full six months, hoping he'd notice me. Even took up smoking with the others behind the sports hall just so I could impress him with how grown-up I was.”
“The things we do for love.”
Esca returned Marcus's smile, pulling his hat further down as the persistent winds threatened to tug it off his head and carry it into the ravine.
“Precisely. There was this one night when my house master was out for the weekend, one of the older masters house-sitting for him. We knew Mr. Collins would be asleep by nine, so the older boys decided to have a midnight party in their dorm. I'd been awake all evening, knowing that if I could only go to that party, my life would be made. I'd gone to the tuck shop that afternoon and spent my entire month's pocket money on sweeties, then waited till I heard them laughing and joking with each other down the hall. Crept down there in my pyjamas, knocked on the door and Georgie opened it, so I showed him my sweets and said I'd bought them for the party. It got me through the door, although that bastard Markie Loughlin laughed at Georgie for letting me in and called me a bum boy. I didn't know what it meant, but I remember it so well, grinning ear to ear, sitting next to Georgie on his bed and smoking like a bigger boy. Had my first drink, too, a swig of someone's mother's gin. I thought it was horrible and tasted like perfume. Didn't let on, though.”
The sun was moving behind the clouds again, the temperature dropping as Esca shivered and hunched deeper into his coat after throwing the stub of his fag away. Marcus slapped at Esca's leg with the back of his hand, sliding off the car bonnet and limping around to the driver's door.
“Let's sit in the car, I'm getting cold.”
“Smells like it's going to rain, anyway.” He slid off himself, the car welcoming and warm as he opened the door and ducked into the passenger seat, Marcus's hand immediately reaching out to stroke over his thigh. Esca covered it with his own, only realising as Marcus laced his fingers into his own how cold he was. He looked down at their joined hands, rubbing his thumb into Marcus's palm as Marcus squeezed his fingers and encouraged him to continue.
“I'm not boring you?”
“It may break my heart if I learn Little Esca never got to kiss his Georgie, but no, not at all.”
“Ah, well, now. We all gotten quite merry, someone getting out a nudie magazine they'd found in their dad's bottom drawer over Christmas break, and we finished off the gin and my sweets, the room full of smoke. I didn't much like the girls in the magazine but then two of the older boys who'd been sitting together the whole time started kissing on one of the other beds. Nobody else turned a hair but my eyes bugged out, I swear, I almost fainted in shock. About near creamed my pyjama bottoms, too.”
“I can imagine.”
It felt so good to sit here and do something so simple as hold hands with Marcus, like they were sweethearts sitting on a park bench watching the ducks. So silly and so very good, Esca sliding his fingers through Marcus's, wishing he dared lean across the gear stick to lean into Marcus's throat.
“Georgie had a bottom bunk, so we were sitting there in the dark with the feet of three others hanging down by our faces, and he moved to sit back against the wall. Told me to sit back with him, and I couldn't stop looking at the other two kissing, the others ignoring them and carrying on with their smoking and the magazine. Then Georgie touched my shoulder and asked me if I knew how to French kiss. I didn't know what he meant, so said yes so he wouldn't think me stupid. Then he kissed me, and his tongue was pushing at my lips and I didn't know what to do. He laughed and told me to open my mouth, so I did and I remember it so well. He tasted of gin and aniseed balls, and his tongue was like a big, wet slug in my mouth, but I was so hard it didn't matter.”
Esca's mind was dragged out of the past as Marcus chuckled, and he looked across at him, noticing his soft lips, his long eyelashes, deep eyes that could've hypnotised a snake. God, he was beautiful. More so than Georgie Brendon or any other man Esca remembered laying eyes on. “I recall not thinking much of my first open kiss, either.”
“I must've been horrible at it, sitting there with my mouth hanging open and not doing anything.”
“I can reassure you that you're now very accomplished.”
“Heh, you think so?”
“Oh, yes. Very definitely.”
Another squeeze of Marcus's hand around his corroborated it, Esca unable to stop himself reaching up to rub his thumb over a dimple before dropping his hand away, conscious that a car could appear on the empty road behind them any second.
“Your kisses almost convince me I could exist with nothing else but them and the air I breathe. Almost.” A knuckle curled into his palm. “Except for the desire they provoke.”
“Perhaps it's you that inspires me to greatness.”
That he could cause someone like Marcus to blush and bashfully duck his head like that could barely be believed. “I'll humbly accept any part I play in such artistry.”
“Christ, you're good for a man's ego. You know that?” Esca rolled down the window and pulled his hand from Marcus's, needing another smoke to settle the excitable fluttering in his gut. “I'll be walking around thinking I'm ten foot tall.”
“I'm glad, you should do, but it's cruel to leave Little Esca there with his mouth open. Go on.”
“You can probably guess the rest. Georgie put his hand down my pyjama bottoms and stroked me off, and instructed me to do the same with him. His cock was so much bigger than mine. I'd have been humiliated if I hadn't been so over-excited, I think I took all of ten seconds. And I was so proud of myself when he stopped kissing me and messed over my hand. He told me to wipe it off on my pyjamas, then shared one more smoke with me before telling me to get off and get to bed. I sneaked back into my room, probably reeking like a brothel in my damp pyjamas, and lay in bed unable to sleep because Georgie Brendon loved me back.”
Marcus waved Esca's smoke out of his face, wincing, his eyes sympathetic. “I'm beginning to form the impression this doesn't end well for Little Esca.”
“Course it didn't. This is me, remember? I ran up to Georgie's room for a re-run the next evening. He wouldn't let me in, and someone behind him asked if it was 'that MacCunoval queer' at the door. Georgie ignored it but hissed down to me to go back to bed and that he'd been practising on me for when his girlfriend visited at half-term. Told me to get lost. It felt like I was going to die, my chest hurt so bad I thought I must be bleeding to death inside.”
“Oh, che roba.”
“It gets worse. I went to Mr. Hall the next morning after class, sobbing my heart out and asked him what a queer and a bum boy was. He was appalled, gave me ten across the backside with his birch, and told me he never wanted to hear such debauched deviancy out of my mouth again or to know I'd burn in hell. So I didn't look at another boy from then on, once I'd found out it was wrong, and disgusting, and something I'd burn for.”
“Esca. I'm sorry.”
Warm fingers stroked across the back of his neck, Esca tilting his head to press against them before pulling away. “It was a long time ago. You must've felt similar at some point.”
“Many times. Still do, sometimes, looking at you, knowing I shouldn't want you and powerless to make it otherwise.”
“So you've tried.” He squinted out the windscreen as raindrops started to splatter against it, rattling the roof of the car and spitting at the side of his face before he flicked his smoke out the car window and rolled it up. “I know I have, even though I'm not sure I believe in eternal punishment. Not anymore.”
“It was quickly apparent to me that, where you're concerned, the fight's unconquerable. I admit I'm beaten.”
Blast. They should've had this talk in bed, Esca wishing more than ever they were naked and wrapped around each other so he could work all the hollow defeat out of Marcus's voice. He reached out with his foot, and down to run the toe of his shoe against Marcus's ankle, his knee pushing against Marcus's as a warm hand wrapped around it. “You're the one who invaded. I'd thought I was in such safe territory, too. But, honestly, I'm not feeling sorry for myself. Did it seem like I was feeling sorry for myself last night?”
“Hah, no. It didn't.” But Marcus had this way of retreating into himself, his eyes fogged windows looking out onto a world and hiding the cogs turning behind. He was doing it now as Esca looked at him, Marcus gazing out into the ravine as if it held all the answers. Then he puffed out his lips on a heavy breath, settling further down into his seat and reaching down to rub at his leg. “Tell me about Jolyon.”
“He was in the year above me at Caius. I'd never met anybody all swishy before, but he was tall, built broad and dark,” He grinned over at Marcus, who smiled back. “And so frightfully frightfully. I mean, everybody was, except me, but Jolly was so posh he probably crapped silver spoons. He boxed, too. He was horrible at it. Different weight class, of course. He had a thing about champagne for breakfast and a tablespoon of brandy in the wine with supper. I wasn't that much of a drinker before I met him.”
“How did you become lovers?”
“He jumped on me in the showers after some third year had knocked seven shades of shite out of me in the ring. It had been so long since Georgie that I can't say I protested for more than a minute. We were together a year till he got called up. He'd spent the two months beforehand growing a moustache to compliment his officer's uniform, and I always thought that about summed Jolly up. He wasn't the sort to let things get him down.”
“I see.” The stare out into the void had turned into more of a glare, Marcus's jaw set like stone. “Did you love him?”
“Thought so, at the time. Don't now when I look back. He was fun, though. Died in a POW camp, Konigstein. His sister let me know. It was pneumonia, but at least he died in a castle. Very fitting. Jolly would've been scandalised if he'd died in anything other than grand surroundings. How about you?” He was going to run out of fags if he kept up this pace. “Ever been in love?”
“Like you, I thought so.”
“What happened?”
“She handed back my ring when I returned home a cripple.”
“Oh.”
Esca didn't know what to say, the breath knocked out of him as he lit his cigarette and slowly let the information seep into his brain. Marcus had closed his eyes and tipped his head back against his seat to rub over his eyes, a good foot of space between him and Esca. “Under Il Duce, boys were raised to be men, to be fighters and to marry good Italian women who'd bear them many sons to add to our nation's glorious strength. I tried. We all did.”
“I see.”
“I don't think it's possible that you can.”
“But you loved her.”
“I did, I think. In many ways you remind me of her. Small and smart, fierce, ready to take the world by the ankle with teeth alone. She could cut the legs from under of you with a single sentence. Very much like you, an inner strength that nobody else seemed to notice. More and more I've come to believe she'd known it wasn't a grand passion, for either of us, and she was strong enough to take the opportunity to set us both free. I wasn't.”
“No? So you knew then, that you liked . . . well, blokes. Like that.”
“It's been a part of me as long as I can remember. The army opened my eyes to that which I'd already known.”
“And you've had gotten married anyway?” Marcus shrugged without answer. “Wow. That's dedication to a cause.”
“As I said, I don't believe you can understand. You weren't there.”
“No, I suppose not.”
The crows squabbling with each other and the raindrops still splashing on the windscreen were the only sounds, both of them caught up in their own thoughts as they sat and Esca smoked, feeling like he'd arrived at a brick wall with no way of getting around it. He watched as each drop of water began to turn slushy, a few wet white flakes falling from the sky, swirling away towards the distant rocks.
“Did you have anything else to tell me? We should continue on if it's going to snow.”
“I did, yes.” His throat was dry, tight with an unndefined melancholy, a strong cup of tea with three sugars in it seeming a thousand miles away. “I was leading up to it.”
“Esca, please, just tell me.” Warm fingers slid into his and he took them in gratitude. “Or are you afraid that I'll fail your test?”
“It's not a test.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I don't know. Maybe.”
He wasn't about to admit that the idea Marcus looking at him with anything other than heatedly potent want or that sweet, steady consideration was already too much to bear. Blundering fool, stumbling blindly into caring too much and too soon. Esca took a deep breath and spat the words out, wanting it done either way.
“I didn't fight. I never went to war.”
A pause, the hand in his not pulling away as he'd expected it to. “Were you too young? I'm not certain of your age, but I thought you were old enough . . .”
“I got my papers in early forty four, three months after my mother died.”
The silence seemed to stretch on forever, Marcus's fingers not moving against his own, Esca's heart filling his throat until he had to gulp for air and take a draw on his smoke. He waited until the quiet became too burdensome to bear.
“You have to understand that the war took everyone I'd ever loved or been close to from me. My home, my family. Jolly. Everything. I was alone, and now they wanted to send me off to die. The last of the MacCunovals sent to his pointless end. I wasn't having any of it.”
More silence, Marcus waiting for him to carry on. It was like someone was sitting on his chest, Esca's ribs aching.
“The reason I can't get another job is because I was a conscientious objector.”
A soft huff of breath, Marcus shifting in the driver's seat, his fingers remaining loosely tangled in Esca's. “I see.”
“No, you probably don't, and that's alright. Here, I've still got it.” Esca clamped his cigarette in his mouth and dug around in his coat pocket with his free hand, drawing his other away from Marcus's grip in order to go through his wallet. It was crumpled, a grubby grey whisp, but started to take shape as he straightened the quill and fluffed up the down. “You know what this signifies?”
“It's a feather.”
“A white feather, for cowardice. That was my first one, thrust at me by my landlady when she kicked me out. I lost three lots of lodgings before I learned to lie.” He took the feather from Marcus's fingertips, tucking it back away. “It was the first of many. People who'd heard turned their backs on me in the street. I went back home to clear out the house and the whole place knew, without me even having to say. I probably got three or four feathers a day through the post box. There can't have been a pillow left alone in a ten mile radius.”
He pocketed his wallet, aware of Marcus sitting next to him as motionless as a statue. “So I went back down south, got my degree, then found that nobody wanted a CO working for them. I got one temporary job and everyone walked out once they'd heard. They wouldn't work beside someone who'd not fought when their loved ones had died fighting the good fight.”
“On what grounds did you apply? Was it a matter of faith?” It was quietly spoken, Marcus frowning down at the steering wheel.
“I had no faith, Marcus. I still believed, but I hated God for what he'd allowed, hated him. No, I applied on moral grounds. Told the judge about my family and he agreed I had reason to believe war was immoral and that I couldn't serve its machine in any capacity. Got a full exemption. So,” His voice wavered and Esca gritted his teeth, determined not to make a fuss. “If you think ill of me and don't want to associate with a known coward, I'll understand. I won't like it, but I'll understand. You wouldn't be the first.”
“This would prevent you from finding work elsewhere?” It was full of disbelief, as if Esca hadn't laid the shameful truth out at all but instead had come up with a silly comment to lighten the mood.
“I was lucky to get Cranholme. It was only my da's reputation that got me in. He'd known the old headmaster. I went to him in desperation after six months in my family's empty house with nobody talking to me and my letters of recommendation coming back second class. People don't want COs around their boys, messing with their heads and tutoring them in the ways of the pacifist. The staff at Cranholme know, it got out a few months after I arrived, which wasn't pretty, but they keep it from the boys and parents or I'd be out on my arse.”
A nod, Marcus's lips tightening. “I see.”
“I'm not ashamed of it. I had my reasons, and my anger to see me through. But a man's got to make a living.”
“A phrase very familiar to me.”
Say something, say more. Say anything! He wanted to grab Marcus to shake him out of his stupor, to get the inevitable cold shoulder over and done with. It felt as if there wasn't enough air in the car and Esca reached for the door handle, about to get out to stretch his legs in the slushy snowfall and give Marcus the opportunity to find the words. But, as his hand closed around the door's handle, fingers gripped his other elbow, pulling him back and around to face Marcus.
“I can't say that I understand. The things I've seen . . .”
“I know. I mean, I don't, but it's alright.” God, get it over with. Say it.
“No, Esca. You're not a coward. You were in pain, and I think I know pain better than most.”
“You don't want to . . . most folk despise people like me.” He didn't dare hope. Not for a second.
“And most would despise me, if they knew how I felt about you.”
Esca's heart stopped, a paralysing pause before it gave a great lurch in his chest and started pounding there at twice its normal speed. “You could forgive that about me?”
“That's not up to me. You saw beyond my nationality and allowed yourself to get to know the man beneath. You didn't judge me on that one criteria.”
“Eventually.”
A dimple, oh Lord, a blessed dimple twitching in Marcus's cheek as his mouth began to lift. “True.”
He started to laugh. Esca didn't know where it came from but it burst out of him, too loud in the quiet car, carrying on until he had tears in his eyes and Marcus had started to join in, looking at him in cheerful bemusement.
“I've said something so amusing?”
“No!” It was a hoot, Esca's stomach starting to ache and he clutched at it. “Oh, Christ, I was so sure you'd not speak a word to me again once you'd found out. A wounded soldier and a cowardly queer who refused to fight? That's not just a funny joke, that's fucking hilarious.”
“Esca . . .” A tweak of his earlobe like he was a cheeky boy. “It's not that simple.”
“Oh, it hurts. I have to stop. Don't look at me for a moment, you'll start me off again.”
He was drunk on relief, his head spinning as he gasped for breath, his chuckles slowly subsiding as Marcus brushed a knuckle along his jaw before bopping him gently on the nose with it. “I have something to ask you, if you have nothing else you need to tell me."
"No, that was it."
"Then I want you to think about it for longer than it takes you to draw the breath necessary to dismiss it.”
“Yes? What's that?”
Sod it. Three fags would be enough to last him till their next stop. Esca stuck a cigarette in his mouth, moving to light it before Marcus plucked it out of his lips. “Attenzione, per favore.”
“Now you've done it. You don't touch a man's fags. Bloody foreigners.”
He snatched it back and lit it, puffing his first inhale towards Marcus, who waved it away with a sour look.
“Think about it for a few days. There's plenty of time.”
“Alright, you've got my attention. I hereby promise to think about it, whatever it is.”
“Easter.”
“Sounds familiar. Something to do with all that churchy business?”
“The boys will be with their families, yes?”
“Most of them. Why? You want to do this again?”
“No. I'll be returning home, to my uncle's, for the holiday. I want you to come with me.”
Don't be stupid. Esca even opened his mouth to say it, Marcus giving him an 'I told you so' look that shut him up. “I might've been saying yes.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“Then think about it.”
“I don't think there's much point.”
“The point is that your lover's asked you to do so, and you wish to please him.”
"My . . ."
Just like that, Esca was distracted from the impossible, his guts liquifying as his prick twitched and started to unfurl, Marcus stroking down over Esca's thigh to give his groin a quick squeeze before moving away to start the car.
“You're a tricky fucker, Marcus Aquila.”
“Which is why you'll think about it.”
“So long as you're planning to drive to somewhere less public in the next five minutes, you've got yourself a deal.”