The Book of the Blue House

Above, in the warmth of their apartments, Conn drifted off to the fan turning in lazy circles, sending heat over him. Conn went to bed early that night, or at least he fell asleep on the great sofa almost as soon as he had come in from the cold. He wanted to sprawl and didn’t want to sprawl across Derek or Lorne or whoever else might climb inside the bed tonight, and so he took the couch. He knew he would be up in a little while.

Conn was surprised when he woke to the light of one small desk lamp, and though there was the noise of subdued life in Cal’s room, Derek lay dozing on the bed, and Lorne was cocooned in his usual corner. There was no Matteo. When Conn got up, Cal and Gabriel were in the kitchen and told him there were some hotballs leftover. Conn took a plate of them back to the room he shared with Derek and Lorne and sipped sweet juice while he burned his tongue on the hot peppers dipped in cheese and fried. He felt his tongue burn and then took another one, enjoying the pleasure before he got up and went down the little hall to Derek’s old room. But tonight he was surprised to see little, merry baldheaded Jon from Purplekirk, naked with his ass pointed in the air, spread over Nialla who was asleep. Jon was not quite asleep, and he blinked and saw Conn, but was not embarrassed. Instead he smiled conspiritorially and put a finger to his lips, then turned his head to the dark while Conn, admiring his form, gave the little man one last look and turned to undress and climb into bed beside Derek after he had turned out the light.

The next morning they all went up to breakfast on the seventh floor, Nialla and Sara and Jon as well as Conn, and close to them at their long table, Conn saw Matt sitting beside Quinton. Their heads were close together and both were blushing, and Matteo, when he saw Conn, jumped up and came to him, saying, “I’m sorry for never getting back upstairs last night.”

Conn looked knowingly at Quinton who looked, though he never seemed unhappy, happier than usual, and said, “It’s not my place to guess or ask, but I feel like you may have had more pressing business.”

Matt cleared his throat, and the young man with the wide apart eyes and the wolfish face looked momentarily shy, then said, “Well, yes.”

“Oh good,” Conn said beside Derek who was making a study of not caring.

“Shall we come to you all for lunch?” Matteo asked.

“Please do,” it was Derek who spoke now.

Matteo grinned and walked off, and Cal was watching him but saying nothing.

“Does this mean that Matteo’s going to take up the novitiate now?” Derek said.

“It means he slept with Quint, but does that necessarily mean he’s going to be a Blue?” Conn said. “I mean…” he let it hang in the air.

“But Matteo came as a postulant and the initiation for a postulant is to be with a Blue,” Derek said. “You didn’t come as a postulant. ”

Derek added, putting too much mustard on his salad, “I’m not your initation.”

“You’re sort of my initiation,” Conn noted.

As they ate, Conn asked, “Would you like to see me become a Blue?”

“No,” Derek’s mouth shut like a trap.

“What if it’s my call?”

“It’s not,” Derek said, simply.

A moment later, Derek said, “Connleth, are you teasing me?”

“Maybe. Maybe a little,” Conn said.

“If it is your call it’s your call and that’s between you and the Lord Himself, but…” Derek shook his head, “I don’t think it is.”

Conn could tell that Derek did not wish to discuss this.

But Derek’s mood was not the only thing on his mind. When Conn returned to the suite of rooms, giddy and dizzied by so many feelings, he sat on the large bed and looked around the room. In the late morning in early winter, the lamps off, with only him and piled clothes, it looked strangely bereft. He was lost in his non thoughts when he heard a bustling from Derek’s room and then he heard Jon calling, “Anyone here?”

“Yeah,” Conn’s voice was dry. He swallowed and tried again. “It’s me.”

Jon came down the hall with his usual merry smile.

“I was getting the last of my things before I head back to the Kirk,” he said.

“Will you be here for lunch?” Conn asked him, closing his thighs over the boner he was getting.

“Yeah,” Jon said. “Probably.”

Then, “I dunno. I haven’t shown my face there since last night.”

Jon was Sendic, blondish and the color of pale wood, blue eyed, his head shaven, his handsome face just a little monkeyish. Compact, he was even shorter than Nailla and now he slipped on his furlined jacket and pulled the grey skull cap over his head, He winked and gave Conn a thumb’s up, and turned to leave, going back down the hall toward Derek’s room again.

But as he did, almost non chalanlty, he hiked up his jacket, and lowered his trousers so that Conn could look once more on his fair ass, milky, smooth, round as two eggs. And then laughing, he pulled up his breeches and was gone.

But soon the new love or whatever it was between Matteo and Quinton, and Derek’s sudden onset of crabbiness not to mention the memory of Jon’s naked body linked with his sister, and the strange feelings it brought up in him all gave way to the whisper going through the whole Blue Temple, and at last coming from Gabriel and Cal to Derek and Conn and Nialla beside him.

“Ekkrebeth has come. Ekkrebeth is here. With the Abbot in the Blue Temple itself. And they say he is preparing for war!”