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Grinning, Alastair said, “Gladly.” He was quiet for a spell, shifting so both of his hands were on Paul’s shoulders. Then he coaxed him to roll more properly onto his side.
“Where do you want me?”
“If you rest with your back facing my chest, like this… I can get both of your shoulders and that gorgeous neck that doesn’t look like it’s moved for years.” He kissed the side of Paul’s throat, his tongue lingering as though catching the juice of a ripe plum.
“My…” he writhed, pleased when his arse scarcely brushed Alastair’s prick. “Um, what about my neck?”
“I’m going to melt you. You’re too tense.” Soft lips spoke against his ear, then kissed his temple. “You have too much going on in here.”
“Good luck.”
He heard the smile in Alastair’s voice. “Give me time. I’ll manage.”
“Will you?” A trace of vulnerability strayed into his voice, but he tried to give himself over to Alastair’s warm hands and reassurances.
“Think so. I have faith in how this feels. I trust the man who let me hide in his cellar… who gave his night’s earnings to a woman running away… and takes in her lover’s fucking canary. I trust you.”
“You…” Paul went from feeling arousal to gratitude to mild shame. “Wait.” His pulse quickened out of nerves.
Alastair’s hands paused. “You all right?”
“Yes, I just have to tell you something.” He sat up with great reluctance, gathering the sheets over his lap and angling his back against the cold metal headboard.
To Alastair’s credit, he didn’t try to stop Paul or coerce him into carrying on. He just looked up at him warmly and rested one of his hands atop Paul’s thigh, slipping it under the covers. “What is it?”
Paul drank the sight of him in, his hair spread on the pillow, all the raveled tattoos that were revealed as he undressed, just as he’d said they would be. “Will you do me a favor?” Apprehensive, he used the tip of his pointer finger to trace the edge of a scalloped design atop Alastair’s collarbone.
“Just tell me, angel. Whatever you’re not saying.”
Huffing, Paul supposed his anxiety was clear enough. “Well, you might think I’m mad.”
“I’d never call you mad. Dunno if madness actually exists. Life is mad, really.”
“If you trust me, I want you to know…” he sighed and kept tracing the tattoo, watching Alastair’s chest move as he breathed. “I need you to know… before you really decide that you do…”
“Whatever you’ve done, I’ve either done worse or seen worse. And if you’re mad, it’s both of us who are.”
“It’s nothing so interesting,” said Paul, and he had to meet Alastair’s eyes with a smile. Despite himself, he trusted Alastair fully even though he knew there was much to learn about him. “You sweet man. Besides, I doubt you’re as monstrous as all that.”
“Go on, then.”
“I saw us doing this, but we were older. I mean to say, I saw you under me on my bed; I didn’t see myself. But you were older, so I must’ve been.” Paul considered it. He’d been so engrossed by how it felt that he hadn’t tried to catalogue his future surroundings. But he could hazard a confident guess that they were in this bedroom. “Same bed, though.”
And it had all exited in a jumble that wasn’t fully cogent. There was no scaffolding to explain how he’d seen it, or even that he could see the future. He winced. Alastair’s hand stilled on his thigh; Paul stilled his finger on Alastair’s skin. “But, we were fucking and it was glorious. And the entire time I was seeing it in my head, I had to act like you weren’t here — Sykes was sniffing around.”
Then it fell so quiet that Paul could hear the tick of the clock in the next room, intermingling with his and Alastair’s breaths and someone else’s smothered snores. The window was open just a sliver and allowed the waves to be heard, a low, underlying comfort.
When Alastair did speak, his voice was a soothing rumble. “You’ve got the sight.”
The equanimity wasn’t what Paul expected, not in a time of science and progress. He’d braced himself for denials and questions, or some manner of derision. “I… don’t call it anything. Like that.” It sounded like something out of an Arthurian legend, not anything he’d apply to his own humdrum life.
Then, perhaps upon hearing Paul’s stunned tone and realizing how taken aback he was, Alastair began to laugh. “Jesus, you’d seen that by the time you came back to fetch me, and you could still walk? Look me in the eye? Pull Sykes a pint? I’d have to go find a quiet room and a bed. You should consider being a fence… you didn’t falter at all.”
Relieved at the feeling of having said it, or more precisely, Alastair having said it, Paul began to smile. “You’re… not angry, or… frightened?”
“No.”
“No?”
