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It was a perfect day, just as Ben had maintained. Aleksey could not remember seeing Dartmoor looking more beautiful. They rode slowly away from their valley, no racing now, meandering around tors, following worn trails through the bracken. Radulf and PB were ranging far ahead, occasionally returning to relate long and involved stories concerning sheep.
As with other moorlands, Dartmoor exploded with beauty in May, whole hillsides covered in bluebells, a purple-blue haze almost tinting the air. In shady places alongside streams, foxgloves added splashes of pink and white to the many shades of the green ferns. The water, crystal clear in some places, deepest peat-brown in others, swarmed with tiny, iridescent dragonflies as it tricked over pebble-dashed beds, which occasionally sparkled as if holding tiny nuggets of gold in sediment.
There was no sound at all except birdsong and the creak of leather from their saddles, the occasional clink from the tack or a snort, as one or other of the horses expressed their thoughts about the day or their companions.
They dismounted at the base of a tor which rose from a deep, verdant valley of oaks and willow. Despite his earlier promise, Ben wanted to pitch camp by the river, in a shady spot by a little pebbled beach. For the dogs he claimed. So they could play in the river.
Aleksey knew the real reason they were not climbing the tor, but he could not say, in all honesty, that the place they were in could have been bettered. Once again, the slightly disturbing thought returned to him that he had not survived the fall into the mine shaft earlier that year. That he was, in fact, dead. And, yes, he realised that this belief in his shift from earth to heaven didn’t fit in with other things that were currentlyruininghis life, but he’d put some more thought into it, and had concluded that actually…it did. Because he’d always doubted he’d be allowed into heaven. Ifhewas, then everyone would be, and then it really wouldn’t be heavenly, as presumably the exclusivity of paradise was its main attraction. It sure as hell wasn’t the pastimes. So, if not heaven, then the other place for the dead was the only alternative, and that fit very well with the pain, the loss of dignity, and the…well, existential crisis. The being old, fat and damaged. Yes, hell was just the sort of place where you took someone like Aleksey Primakov and broke him slowly from the inside out. So, he’d reasoned, he might be hoveringbetweenthese two places, until, as he’d once hoped might delay this essential decision, they’d actually translated the book of his life. Maybe they were short of Russian speakers in heaven. Maybe, and this was a novel thought, someone had taken up his suggestion to study and blame the shit and not the man trying to keep his head above the swell, and was consequently desperately arguing his case in the courtroom of his life: objection, Your Honour, hearsay…
Hanging precariously between heaven and hell, waiting for the judgement to come down one way or the other, wasn’t all that bad, he’d concluded. This was clearly a heaven day. His warrior angel was here, after all. What more did any would-be supplicant need?
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing in particular.’
They were lying on the cool grass, the little stove hissing alongside them, water beginning to make the kettle sing.
‘We should bring Molly here. She’d love it.’
Aleksey grinned, chewing a stalk of grass. It tasted better than the ones in Ben’s curry. ‘We’d have to put our clothes on then.’
Ben chuckled, whether at this or his current activity, Aleksey couldn’t say. He felt the soft breath on his skin, cooler than the sun which illuminated his pale, bony frame. Ben had reached a hollow in one hip and was swirling his tongue around, licking teasingly near where Aleksey would have insisted the game progress if he was not already fairly sure Ben had it on his to-do list. He tugged thoughtlessly at the dark strands he had tangled within his fingers, his other arm bent, pillowing his head.
When he finally got there, Ben started at his root.
He mouthed against it almost painfully, and Aleksey sucked in his breath and hardened enough for his cock to rise off his belly and stand proud. Apparently inspired by this slight, Ben swung one solid thigh over him and impaled himself slowly on the projecting shaft.
Aleksey suddenly remembered a joke about a gay pilot and a joystick. It made him smile, and then he started to laugh, and then he swallowed the grass and started retching, and then Ben lost his stroke on some softening and…flopped off. Other things flopped too.
Ben’s shout of mock fury, or perhaps his consequent physical attack onhisbare ribs, or even his grunts of faux-pain whilst curling into a protective ball, brought the dogs galloping from the stream to assist in any way they could. They were both streaming water, which they flicked and shuddered over the writhing naked bodies, nosing in, rubbing muzzles, nipping at things that might have resembled much loved squeaky-sausage toys, and then rushing back to the water to bring some sticks, seeing as everyone was in such a cheerful mood.
* * *
Chapter Ten
Was it good or bad that you noticed things like bluebells? It wasn’t demonstrating a high degree of floristry knowledge. After all, they were blue and shaped like bells. But he wouldn’t have given them a thought a few years ago. And why, when sex had failed—the one thing that had always obsessed them, defined them—did they feel even closer than before? Bluebells and laughter and a lazy dip into the stream before dressing, saddling up, kissing leaning out of saddles, smiling as they joined their lips—all this mining a depth of intimacy they had not known they could possess.
Aleksey sat at the table that evening, watching Ben chatting with his friends, passing plates of food, laughing, and received private glances that spoke of an awareness of this intensely cherished personal life running beneath the surface. Just theirs.
Had their previous obsession with sex actually prevented them from finding this deep-buried seam in their relationship?
The rightness of it all brought his thoughts back to the worry that niggled him: that maybe none of this was actually real.
If this was a heaven day, as he’d previous thought, then would not every moment be perfect? Wasn’t that the point of the place? Which is why, obviously, he’d always dismissed of the whole concept as a deceit. Perfection was only possible throughcontrast.
But now? He’dflagged,he’d…failed,but he washappy. Ben seemed almost invigorated, a man so clearly in love that it radiated from him. Did heaven therefore actually allow pain and failure and being old and broken? Was it actually built into the concept, so that these very disappointments highlighted the moments of flawlessness?
Had he in fact just wasted his entire fucking life trying to be faultless: the suits, the hair, the manicures, the cars, houses,watches—every fucking thing he’d projected out into the world to create the illusion of a man without a single defect? To hide the genuine chaos beneath…
And all he’d apparently had to do was admire bluebells and flop?
Fucking hell.
‘You gonna eat those?’
Ben was pointing at some uneaten chips with his fork.
Aleksey shook his head. Ben stabbed them, then just lifted the whole plate and swapped it for his empty one.
