Cold Fusion (21 page)

“Oh, God. Won’t I hurt you?”

“A little bit, maybe. You’re new on the job. Use plenty of KY—on me and on you—and we’ll be fine.”

I hung on to the branch while he unfastened and released me. The chill reached my lifting cock at the same time as the scent of lichen prickled my nostrils, a fusion of scent and sensation I’d never forget, would always associate with this moment now in the pinewoods. In his hands. His cock head brushed my backside, and to my surprise I didn’t have to guide him to use his fingers on me—he rubbed a warm, well-slicked touch around my anus. “Like that?”

I lowered my head, pressing my brow to the tree bark for control. “Mm. God, exactly like that.”

“Inside you?”

If he didn’t know, I couldn’t help him. If I opened my mouth now, I’d yell, and if I heard myself do that, I’d come, and that would ruin everything. He took my silence for assent and pushed what felt like a bold two fingertips inside. The pressure was so good, and what I’d told him about excitable glands came back to haunt me as he gained an inch, and I longed to lean back on him and make it two or three.

The sounds I was making must have alarmed him because he suddenly stopped. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. “Mm. You?”

“Particle physics is easy by comparison with this. I want you so much, and I’m so afraid of hurting you.”

“You won’t. I’m ready now, Viv. You can fuck me.”

He gasped and withdrew his fingers. He put an anchoring arm around my waist. I grabbed it and hung on as if he’d lashed me to the mast for safety on a heaving deck in a storm. I wanted him, needed him close. I glanced back over my shoulder, shuddering in relief as he pressed his chest and belly to my spine. Alan had sometimes bent me over a bunk and stayed on his feet, bolt upright, to do it to me, and his detachment had carried its own kind of cold thrill, but I couldn’t have borne it from Viv.

“Yes,” I rasped out when his shaft slid up between my buttocks. I spread my thighs a little for him, grabbed at his jeans to encourage his thrust, but he didn’t need much more than that—he was there, crying out warmly against my neck as he penetrated me.

The larch rocked gently in the arms of the wind, and it felt as if the whole world shifted to roll and dance with it under the sun. I lost the sense of gravity’s hold. There was only Viv’s arm to keep me from spinning off into the vast vertiginous blue, his firm grip on my cock, allowing me to shove deliciously into his fingers, his knuckles protecting me from the bark. His ragged thrusts found their rhythm as he bore into me. Deep and deeper, deep and deeper, and then with a wild, hot effort that wrung a yell from both of us, the last stretch of his thick root. I lost control and came in a blinding spasm. He’d carried me so high I seemed to hang for ages in the burning blue, only coming down to meet him on his way up to me, to hold still and be the vessel for his pounding, taut-muscled climax. I felt it with snow-bright clarity—his final tremor and release, then his inch-by-inch shuddering withdrawal as we both fell back to earth.

He eased out of me, kissing away the discomfort of it on my cheekbone and the corner of my mouth. “Mallory…”

“Yes, love. Christ, you were good.”

“I was? I did it right for you?”

“Any better and…” I paused to catch my breath. His was coming and going fast as a cat’s. “Any better might have killed me.”

“Good. I’m so sorry. I’ve got to move.”

I sat up a little, subsiding onto my backside on the branch. Viv detached himself clumsily from our tangle and stood in front of me. His restlessness was palpable. What weird reaction had I triggered now? I could hardly bring myself to care—just leaned in, kissed his come-wet belly and quiescent cock, pulled his briefs up and zipped him back into his jeans before he could feel the cold. “It’s okay. Whatever you need to do.”

He turned and strode away. Desperately I resisted my usual wash of post-coital exhaustion—partly because falling asleep here would drop me facedown into the leaf mould, but partly because out of all the lads who’d fucked me, there’d never been one I couldn’t bear to lose sight of, even for the space of a nap. I had to stay awake for Viv. He was striding about among the larch trees, long, springy steps as if he’d had the weight of a world lifted off him. I didn’t feel neglected—every few passes of our low-slung branch he made, he paused to kiss me, to stroke my face or my hair. It left me free to recover from him, if such a thing could ever be done. I could sit here in the floating dazzle of sunlight and the cloud of post-orgasmic glitter still exploding behind my eyes. I could watch him, a privilege I’d never tire of. His grace and power stole my breath even as I was trying to recapture it. Strip him and coat him in deerskins and leaves and he’d make a new lord of the greenwood, vigour informing every inch of him, his hair catching haloes from the sun.

He came to a sudden halt in front of me. He ran a hand down his front, then across his chest, shoulder to shoulder, a blind assessment of his frame’s capacities and strength. He took a deep breath and released it. “I feel so good.”

I smiled up at him. “Yeah. Me too.”

“I feel absolutely fine.” He ducked down, grabbed me in a bone-crushing embrace and kissed me again. He set off upslope at a run. Stiffly I turned round on the branch to watch him. “I feel fine,” he called out, and I didn’t think it was to me. I wondered what entity lay beyond the Glencathadh mountain crests for him, and why it needed to know. His next shout was quite distant, and the wind caught and scattered the words.
You’re wrong,
is what it sounded like.
You’re wrong. I’m fine.

I wasn’t so sure. He was running about in the snow, shouting to nobody. At best he was unhinged. I got up, dusting lichen off my trousers, and went to find him.

I met him coming back downslope. I wouldn’t have to worry about my butterfly net after all—something had already knocked the crazies out of him. He looked as serious as a young priest in the pulpit for his first Mass. He blocked my path, took hold of my shoulders and brought me to a gentle halt. “Mallory.”

“What is it? Are you okay?”

“Yes. May I see your aunt’s letter again?”

It was such an odd request that I didn’t even think about why he was making it. I took the folded sheet out of my pocket and handed it to him. I knew his eidetic memory would have recorded every word. He had something to tell me, and the letter was a prop, a means of conveying the news.

He scanned the page, swallowing dryly. “All right. I understand now.”

So did I. His pallor, the palpable shock in the air around him, brought the message home. “My dad said he’d taken care of things, had her taken away. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. She never left. She’s still here.”

Chapter Thirteen

I followed him up the slope. I stumbled, and he reached back to steady me. He didn’t let go of my hand, and so we arrived like scared children, Hansel and Gretel, at the foot of the tallest larch tree of all. It marked the boundary of Lilian’s property. A dry-stone wall was tumbling down on either side of it. Sitting between the roots was a small human figure, half-buried in melting snow.

Her spine was resting against the trunk, her knees drawn up. She looked as if she’d stopped for a rest and to enjoy the views that opened up from here out to the Braeriach mountain. She was wearing her wellies with socks underneath them, and the old sheepskin coat she’d used to go blackberry picking in. One of her fearsome nylon headscarves was knotted under her chin.

I let go of Viv’s hand and crouched in front of her. Terrible thoughts raced through my head—that my father had killed her for the value of the house, for however many sessions at Mackie’s pub her poor belongings would buy. Then I saw the empty quart bottle of scotch lying on the ground at her side. She’d been a true Mallory to the last, and the cold would have done the rest. The letter she’d left for me was to all intents and purposes her suicide note.
I’m getting frail. I’ll be seeing to things for myself.

She was the only family I’d ever cared about. She hadn’t been able to keep me, but her home had been a refuge to me, our fireside silences easy. When I’d heard that she’d died out here, I’d imagined her drifting off painlessly to sleep in her armchair by the stove. I lifted the edge of her headscarf so I could see her face. It was less terrible than the horror-movie versions I’d encountered. Her eyes were closed. The cold had partway mummified her before decomposition could set in. If I resembled anyone physically, it had been her, and like her I’d have ended up shrivelled and dead on the shores of Kerra, her own fine young man, right down to the empty quart bottle of scotch in the sand beside me. The weird connection sent a pang of grief through me, pure and relieving. I lowered my head.

“It doesn’t look too bad, does it?”

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. Viv had intervened between me and that lonely death. If he’d found something to admire about all this, some neatness that appealed to him, I ought to cut him some slack. I’d told him I loved him just as he was, and it was true. “What doesn’t?”

“It must have been a peaceful death. It doesn’t look too bad.”

The yearning note in his voice triggered all my alarms. I got up. Viv was leaning on the wall, watching the scene as intently as a play.

“You listen to me,” I said. “She looks peaceful now, but I had to learn some stuff when I was working for PW, and I can tell you that it would have taken her a good couple of hours to start feeling anything but freezing fucking cold. And alone. I don’t know what kind of death wish you’ve got going on, but forget about it. You’re young, brilliant, you fuck like an angel, and you’re probably gonna save the bloody planet. Okay?”

His eyebrows had risen all the way into his fringe. He looked chastened and surprised in equal measure. “Yes. Okay.”

“Good.”

“Mallory?”

“Yes? What now?”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

I went to sit beside him on the wall. I put my arm around his shoulders and drew him roughly close. “Don’t pretend to be human,” I said, kissing his brow. “It doesn’t really suit, and I don’t expect it. Say what you want to say when you want to say it.”

“All right. In the remote event that I have to die someday, I hope I look as content as she does afterwards. That’s all.”

“Okay. When we both die at a ripe old age, I hope we both look that way.”

“Should we inform someone? The police?”

“Probably. But they’ll just take her off and cremate her in some grim little chapel, with some minister who never knew her praying to a God she never believed in. She’d have hated that.”

“But without a coroner’s report and a death certificate, you won’t be able to inherit the house.”

I surveyed him. This whole business of inheritance was important to him—he wanted me to own my patch of serious earth. At some point soon I was going to have to ask him why he wasn’t in possession of half of Scotland right now.

“I’m not worried about the house,” I told him gently. “The only person who’d fight me for it is my dad, and he must have come out here one day, found the place deserted and not bothered to investigate. Then he scavenged everything he could lift. So he’s got what he wanted from it. As far as I’m concerned it’s still my aunt’s, and mine at the same time because she wanted me to have it. And in summer, we’ll…” I took a deep breath, thinking about how summer would be here with Viv. “We’ll come back, and when the ground’s soft enough, we’ll bury her here where she belongs.”

I took him back into the house. Viv and I were where we belonged too. I didn’t know how long it could last and for now I didn’t care. In the kitchen, we laid out both sleeping bags in front of the fire. I opened the stove door, Viv sliced his fresh loaf into perfectly equal chunks, and we ate nearly all of it in one sitting, toasted in the flames. I couldn’t remember ever being hungrier in my life. I regretted the lack of rabbit stew, but couldn’t begrudge the conies their day in the sun, not when I’d been granted so much during mine. We went through two pots of tea, pouring out a third ceremonial mug for the old lady and leaving it on the hearth.

We didn’t talk. Once fed and warmed through, I took off my jacket and sweater. Viv watched intently, then he did the same. A signal passed between us, an inexpressible need. We undressed slowly, making frequent eye contact, neither of us wanting to get too far ahead of the other. Jeans, thermal vests. Standing up together to steady each other while we peeled underwear and kicked it aside.

I took his hand, drew him down to sit cross-legged in front of me. I could see all of him in daylight at last, from his tumble of black curls to his long bony feet. They had high arches, like a dancer’s. The tip of his shoulder bore a bruise where I’d failed to resist the urge to bite it. One day I hoped to learn to read the distances in his eyes as easily as I could interpret the rise of his cock, half-hard again already as he reached for me. I put my hand into the hair at his nape, gently tugging and squeezing. He heaved a great sigh—weariness, relief and that odd rasp of yearning again—and rested his brow against mine.

* * * * *

We spent most of our next two days on the spread-out sleeping bags. From time to time one or the other of us would stumble off to pee, put the kettle on or open a tin and eat enough to fortify flesh for another round, but that was as far as our excursions went. I’d never imagined I could want a man so much that seeing him vanish into another room could give me a double-hit heartache and hard-on, had never had to stop myself from crushing his ribs and making an arse of myself with joy upon his return. I didn’t want to scare him or sicken him of me.

There didn’t seem any chance of either. He returned my greetings full measure, came diving back into our rumpled mess of a nest with every indication that he wanted me to peel him straight back out of whatever garment he’d put on. He wouldn’t let me fuck him—lay on his back and shuddered with drawn-out pleasure when I sucked him off and eased two fingers deep inside him, but breathlessly begged me to stop when I curled up round his back, my shaft erect and hungry for target. There was no way I could feel deprived. He took me again and again, like a young god discovering his capacities. A second day faded into night for me as he held my hips in his lap, thrusting at me so gentle and deep I lost all sense of time except for the slow formation of ice across the kitchen window, ecstatic fronds and whorls that mixed with my undoing, my final sobbing climax in his arms. I stayed awake until he’d withdrawn from me, stretched out spent and sweat-soaked by my side, but after that I was gone. Not even his glowing eyes, his soft laughter at my shagged-out condition, could keep me there with him, and I kissed what I could reach of him and dived.

The shore I woke on was lonely without him. I put out a hand to the place where his skinny frame now belonged and found it empty.

I listened to the dark. It was full of sounds that had become familiar to me—the feathery rustle of the fire, the occasional skitter of God alone knew what little feet up in the rafters. Weaving through and beneath this night song was a low, irregular scrape.

Somebody struggling to breathe. I sat bolt upright, lurched onto my hands and knees. “Viv?”

“I’m okay. It’s nothing. Go…go back to sleep.”

I grabbed the torch. In the first pass of the beam I thought the room was empty, but I’d aimed too high. Sweeping back, I found him. He was huddled on the far end of the sofa, naked, his face in his hands. His ribs stood out starkly as he inhaled, and he broke into a fit of coughing that sounded as if it would tear him apart.

I snatched up the cleanest of the two sleeping bags on the floor. Sitting beside him, I bundled it around him, held him to shock absorb. “Jesus, Viv. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I must’ve caught flu.”

“How have you managed that out here?”

“I don’t know, but—” He broke off with a sound like a half-drowned swimmer surfacing. “Let me go.”

He jerked upright. His run for the bathroom ended in a stumble over something unseen on the floor, so I grabbed him and hoisted him over to the kitchen sink instead. I held his head with one hand and shone the torch with the other. He was coughing up water. I’d feared blood, from his anguished sounds. There was a hell of a lot of it, though. In the days after Alice’s and Oskar’s deaths I’d had dreams of pulling them out of the sea, trying to squeeze their lungs clear. I was still only half awake, and a crawling nightmare sense of closing circles seized me, as if my friends’ benign spirits, twisted and vengeful in the afterlife, had come to try and pull Viv down with them. He was clutching the edge of the sink.

I abandoned him for long enough to fetch the sleeping bag, then propped him up again and wrapped it round his shoulders. “Viv, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He shuddered under another expulsive effort. “Damn,” he choked, slamming the heel of one hand against the cracked ceramic. “I don’t want this. No!”

“What don’t you want?”

“It’s okay. I can breathe again now.”

“Well, that’s a bloody start.”

“Yes. I’m better.” As if to prove it he straightened up, shakily wiping his mouth. His knees buckled, and I caught him before he could hit the floor. “I’ve decided something, Mallory.”

Getting him back to the sofa was going to be too hard. He was snatching great lungfuls of air, but his limbs were heavy and slack in my arms, as if he’d run out of some essential driving force.

I held him close. “What?”

“It’s different now.”

Did he have a fever? His brow was cool as marble to my touch. “Make sense for me. What is?”

“Everything. Loving you…it’s given me a sense of the future.”

I held my breath. What had I said to him, in one bright flicker of our passion—that I loved him as he was? The words could have been a commonplace, a joke. They hadn’t been. I’d meant them, and I’d steeled myself against his lack of response. I stroked his hair back. “All right. What’s the decision?”

“If people feel like this about each other, it’s a kind of immortality, isn’t it?”

“I dunno about that. But it’s very…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It’s very nice.”

“You were right, when you lost your temper with me back at Spindrift. Until you came along, my experiments with cold fusion
were
a kind of game to me, a toy. But now I need to tell someone else about them. I have to pass the method on.”

I didn’t know what I’d been expecting. Not this. “Okay,” I said uncertainly. “You want to write some stuff down? I’ll take notes for you if you like.”

He chuckled. “You’re bright as a star. Sharp as a tack. But it would take me a week to show you how to express the first equation.”

“All right, smart-arse. Bloody write them down yourself, then.”

“It’s too complex. I need to show someone. The time’s coming when I’ll have to.”

“What, because you’re…” My voice failed me. Rags and scraps of the things he’d said began to fly in from all directions, to form a hideous, unwanted whole. I let my mind rip them apart again, scattered them to the winds. “I tell you what—you may not be a typical bloke in most respects, but you are when it comes to being ill. This is just some kind of virus, right? Not the Black Death.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

I couldn’t let him. We had far more important concerns. I had to get him off the floor, for one thing, and he valiantly assisted my lift. He could walk now. He was fine. I deposited him on the sofa and stood in front of him with folded arms, trying not to hold myself or sway. “But you said it was too dangerous to tell anybody yet. About the cold fusion, I mean. And I know I was a bastard to you about…about not saving the planet when I thought you could, or you should, but…” I shook my head. “Fuck that. You matter to me more than anything. The rest of the world can go hang.”

Too much. I’d said too much to him, pushed at his limits too hard. He withdrew from me—I saw it, like the gentle closing of a gilded Calder Castle door in my face. He looked as haughty and distant as the moment when I’d first laid eyes on him. “I’m not explaining well,” he said, drawing the sleeping bag around his shoulders like an ancestral cloak. “You wanted me to save the Spindrift land as well as the planet, and I told you I couldn’t because my father didn’t leave the land to me.”

“I’ve said I was sorry. I had no right to pry about you and your dad.”

“He left it all away from me for a good reason. I have something called Drescher’s disease. It’s genetic and incurable. When I was diagnosed with it, my father and I agreed that I should spend whatever time I had left in completing my work, not being bothered by the cares of a huge estate.”

I took a step backward. It was involuntary, and so was the next, a kind of falling away from him, as if he’d shoved me off a cliff. I only stopped when the stove began to singe my backside. “No,” I said flatly, an animal at bay, denying everything. The dogs, the gun, the huntsman, the lot. “No.”