The Book of the Blue House

“Have you been staring at me?” Matteo murmured, his voice a whisper and his eyes dreamy.

“Do you mind?” Conn asked.

“Ask me again.”

“Do you mind?”

“I can’t quite hear you. Come closer.”

Conn grinned and said, “Do you mind—?”

But Matteo had taken him by the back of his head and kissed his mouth.

“No,” Matteo said, grinning and pulling him back to kiss him again. “I do not mind at all.”

He sighed and Conn lay on his side in the bed beside Matteo who said, “Do you know, I don’t mind if we never ever leave this bed?”

He grinned and laughed suddenly.

“I was so shy.”

Conn grinned and brushed back Matteo’s wavy brown hair.

“You weren’t that shy for that long.”

“And sha’n’t be so shy again,” Matteo promised.

“I never realized,” Conn began, “how very much you look like Quinton.”

“I don’t look a damn like Quinton,” Matteo growled in his rough voice, “but I thank you for saying that, and it proves that you love me.”

“I do love you, Matteo, but you do resemble him. You the tall and he the short, but you have the same cheekbones, same nose. I want to thank him. For putting us together. I was too afraid to think of it, Matt.”

“As was I.”

“And grateful, so grateful that it happened.”

“You act as if it will never happen again.”

“You and Quinton have a life. He loves you. I cannot come to you every night.”

“No, some nights you will come to Derek. And anyway, time is made of more than nights. There are twenty four hours in each day, and Quinton is not as Derek.”

“How do you mean?”

“Do not pretend that Derek would, of his free will, tell you to stay with me for the night. Or even welcome me into bed with the two of you.”

“He did not mind Lorne.”

“But he did not welcome it either. Quinton would gladly invite you to bed with both of us. He is full of affection for you.”

“In this house I don’t know up from down or who is right and who is wrong.”

“It’s not a question of right and wrong,” Matteo said, smiling lightly. “It it a question of love, surely. But I think it is also a question of nature, and we are all here to find ours.”

Conn nodded, and Matteo’s long, large hand was in his hair.

“What is your nature, Conn?”

The depth returned to his voice.

“I feel for you the way I feel for my very best friend, for that is what you are,” Conn said, his eyes lowered as he spoke into Matteo’s ear, “and yet I feel for you something far stronger.”

“Stay with me again tonight?”

“Yes.”

Conn thought that whatever force brought so many people to Lorne’s room so that everyone forgot it was Lorne’s room was the same force that kept it almost a constant mess. His first few days in the temple, he had cleaned here constantly, but even in the first week he’d given up on that and decided to simply amend the damage as best he could, making the large room bearable more than clean.

Tonight no one could sleep, and they all sat around in the great room in various states of dress, Conn in the night robe and night tunic Nialla had gotten him for Wheelturn, and Derek in his blue hooded robe. They sat on the edge of the bed that Lorne had turned around in after, wrapping himself in a great quilt, gone to sleep. That bed was a jumble of blankets that seemed to never be made these days, though the sheets were cleaned twice a week. Cal was, for once, in his blue robe, sitting beneath on the floor with Gabriel and now, out of the kitchen, Quinton limped with a trouble that said his leg hurt more than usual tonight. Matt, sitting at the desk near the kitchen door, noticed and gestured for Quinton to join him. And Obala had come in and out, and perhaps was now gone to bed.

Theo, Sara’s brother, had been with them for some time but had gone to bed as well. Jon and Nialla could be heard back in Derek’s room where the light was still on and they were talking, then coming in and out of the little conversations taking place here, and Brian and the other first years had fallen to dozing and no one said, “Why don’t you go to bed,” because they were all filled with anxiety thinking of the war. Down south in Clarville, there had been riots when Prince Cedd had spoken of drafting the commonfolk. A third of the city had gone up in flames. All hell had broken loose when the Essail troops had crossed the Westrial border and demanded quarter in the town of Gemond.

Cal’s eyes were strange tonight, and they had been strange for the last few nights and now he, who was lying on the floor, sat up, and the light shone in the springs of his bronze curls.

“Friends, I’m leaving you,” he said.

No one said anything. They just looked at him, and at last it was Lorne who turned over, not asleep at all, and said, “To go to bed?”

“To go to the army,” Cal said. “I’m going to Rutupiae. I will go to Prince Anson.”

The night after Derek had come back from lying with the prince, he had spoken to Cal quietly for a long time and the following afternoon, Cal had ridden out to Rutupiae and not come back for two days. That was some days sense, and Derek was sure that, as he had, Cal had said his goodbyes to Prince Anson.

“Cal,” Derek said softly, “That’s very serious. He’s going to war. And besides, you have duties here.”

“Which someone else can take up and even take up better.”

Cal said. “I love the Prince. We all love the prince. We’d all go if we could.”

“I would not,” Lorne said. “And that’s a fact.”

“But I would and I will. Besides, do you not remember there was a time when Blues always went to battle and gave comfort and cheer to whoever needed it. That was our call, and still is our call.”

“Yes, and that was in a time and in a place where all respected us so we were safe,” Derek said. “But the Daumans are not like us. Hell, most Westrians are not like us. They do not have respect for the Old Faith, and if they catch you, you are a dead man.”

“Any man they catch is a dead man, Derek,” Cal said softly. “Brother, this is war and we have to do our part. I don’t know what your part is, just mine, and it is this.”

“Cal is right,” Gabriel said. He had been looking at the ground, thinking, this whole time. “And if he is going, then I am going too.”

“What?” Sara almost shouted. She had been looking at Cal while he talked, her face changing, but now this was too much.

“If the both of you leave then why am I here? Cal, you brought me to this temple. And Gabriel was my first friend, took us both into his rooms when we came. And now you would leave?”

“But Cal is right,” Gabriel said. “He is right and I feel that it is right for me to go as well.”

“Then it’s right for me to go too,” Sara stood up.

“No!” Cal’s voice was gentle, but his eyes were wide and serious.

“Because I am a woman?”

“Because you are my best friend. You became my friend when I was a punk on the streets, disrespected and used by all men, and it would be unfair to repay you by taking you to war.”

“Conn,” Cal turned to him, shocking him as he always did, “Look after her. I know you will.”

The whole time Matt’s often hard face went harder and harder and was drained of color so that it looked like old ivory.

“You were the first person I knew,” Matt said.

“Matt,” Cal said. “Matteo. You remember those first days you were here. You remember how we talked about the lives we had led. When I came to this temple, the first person to treat me with courtesy and grace, to look into my eye and see my wounds, not think of me as a series of slots to stick his cock in was Prince Anson. The first time I stood in his gaze I felt like I was someone, and I wasn’t even a priest yet, and so I must join him. You understand.”

Matt nodded, his face regaining color, but not joy, and Conn reached over and touched Matt’s long hand. He said to Cal, “I will look after him too.”

While Conn lay trying to sleep, he heard a tiptoeing from Derek’s room, the room Derek never slept in. It was four in the morning, at least, that time where everyone was asleep, and then whatever Jon or Nialla or Sara might have been doing in that room, it was rare they would come into this one.

But now Jon came, and he was naked, and he saw Conn and stood before him. He cracked the curtain so that moonlight was on him and he turned around so that Conn could see all of him. He turned slowly, and looked at Conn, whose mouth was dry, whose temples and loins were throbbing. What was Jon playing at? Conn’s heart thumped with lust and frustration, a humiliation because back home, boys had done this to him as well, this teasing, and Jon had, in the last few weeks, done it whenever he could. The lust it inspired in Conn he quenched in bed with others, but now here Jon was, hot and white as moonlight in the dark.

Conn got up out of the bed, picking up his night trousers and covering his erection.

“What are you doing?” his whispered.

Jon smiled.

“Looking at the moonlight.”

“Why are you doing this?” Conn hissed.

Jon pulled the trousers from Conn and looked frankly at him. His eyes stared down at Conn like black pools.

“Follow me,” he said.

Conn did not move while John went down the hall. and Conn realized he had gone into Derek’s little bathroom. He looked back to where Derek and Lorne were sleeping, and he had no intention of moving, but the throbbing in him needed to be relieved, the pumping of his heart, this confusion. He followed Jon and closed the bathroom door behind them. Jon went to his knees and began to suck Conn, taking his cock to the base of throat and Conn’s fingers touched the light switch to turn off the harsh yellow and massage Jon’s scalp as thirstily, greedily, Jon sucked him.