Page 49 of Brave Truth

“The Penelopes talk about it. We see some awful stuff sometimes. I’ve never been able to decide if the senseless awful is any better than the things someone meant to do.” Claudio took a breath, let it out, the sort where Matty was sure it was to some count. “We talk a bit about what helps. We keep an eye on each other. And you were out by yourself, no one to do that for you. No one here who understands some of it. Didn’t have some of the magic that helps, like the calming potions. Doesn’t fix it, but does let you get a grip on the problem better. Just whatever you do when it hits. The water’s smart.”

There was a sort of particular distance in Claudio’s voice that made Matty twist, bringing himself a little closer. “What do you do when it’s bad?”

“Well, you know how I was up all hours working on that warding problem? That sort of thing, usually. Nothing I can’t check later, when I’m—” His voice caught. “Saner. If that’s the word. In my right head again. Orion doesn’t have this bit as badly. He just goes and sets up the duelling dummies and tears them to pieces. Cammie goes after rabbits, mostly. Rabbits are more of a challenge than rats or mice, and it can be harder to find a snake.”

“Hypatia?” Matty cupped the mug, feeling the warmth seep into him. Then he added, “It’s the guilt, especially. That I’m here, they’re not. The people in the paperwork. That there’s nothing I can do for them, there never was anything I could do.”

He felt that couldn’t possibly explain enough, but Claudio nodded. Still looking at the fireplace, he said, “I don’t know about Hypatia, honestly. The bits she was doing when I was around, they were less direct. Sending her magic off to do things, but with us to help keep things secure. Maybe she got through with a bit less damage? Gods, I hope so. Someone should. I’ll double check with her when I get a minute. Should have long since.”

He swallowed, then said more softly. “The problem of going on is going to take a long time to sort out. For all of us. Even the ones of us who admit there’s a problem. We who flail about trying to figure out anything that helps rather than stuffing it all down and refusing to admit any of it.”

Matty stared into his mug for a good bit. A dozen breaths, maybe. Claudio didn’t rush him. “Spoiled the evening.”

“No. May I touch you? Hand on your knee?” There was an exquisite courtesy there, some note of something complex and wanting in Claudio’s voice, but also restrained. Every time Claudio did something like that, Matty fell for him a bit more. Knew it was safe to, that was the part he’d have to find words for sometime. That no matter the risks they were taking for so many parts of both of their lives, he couldn’t turn away from that. Now, he couldn’t make the words go, but he could nod.

A second later, there was Claudio’s hand, fingers spread, warm and steady. The weight was a help, as if Matty had been floating and the hand told him where down was and ought to be. “We’ll have more evenings. If they have some bumps, well. I’d rather have that than not have the evenings. Or eventually, other times too, maybe. If you put up with me and my horrific schedule.”

Matty rested the mug on his other knee and let himself slowly lean against the back of the sofa. “If— when?” He made it a query, felt Claudio’s fingers jerk slightly, and didn’t press the point, “You’re successful in the Challenge. What does that do to your schedule?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. Gabe gets fewer of the long-term problems that are somewhere remote now. Probably the same, being able to get back if I need to. Some people have very regular schedules. Mother, for example, but it’s not as if she’s ever done fieldwork. Mind, if she gets the chance, she’ll be in her own lab for days.” There was a hesitation, then Claudio added. “In all fairness, she’d probably be a happier person if she had a more reliable schedule for that. I’m not the person who can suggest it though. Not right now.”

There was a slightly odd note in his voice, enough to make Matty gesture with the mug, have it taken from his hand and set aside. He couldn’t quite find words for it, though, and so there was a silence that grew and became more awkward.

Into it, just as precisely, Claudio said, “Don’t answer if it hurts to. But can I ask why you stayed at Nuremberg? Doing that work after most of the British folks had left?”

Matty had thought about that a great deal over sleepless nights. He did actually have an answer for it. Some of an answer, anyway, even if he’d never said it out loud. “Because doing the work right mattered. Bearing witness. Finding what scraps of justice might exist. Because I could help the other staff there, doing those things, seeing and hearing about those horrors. I didn’t want to leave them behind to keep going alone.”

“You said,” now Claudio’s voice was raw with earnest insistence, “that I must have been a good captain. You didn’t get the title, but you had that too. It burns, and it aches, and it’s broken in ways that will never heal right. But doing that work, doing it well, matters. Thing is, it also matters that you step back when what you touch becomes poison, rather than anything that holds justice or hope or whatever goodness we’re reaching for.”

Matty shuddered once. “Is that what I did wrong? Not stop soon enough? I only came back because everything was changing. Staying on would have been even harder.”

There was a long silence now, Claudio’s hand steady on his knee, the weight of it reassuring him that something was real here. Finally, Claudio said, “I don’t have Alexander’s knack for reading oaths and the way they can tangle and shatter. But I think you were close to it. This side of the line, not the far side. But if you’d stayed?” His arm shifted, a tiny shrug, carried through to the fingers on Matty’s knee. “I don’t think you’d have had much longer without breaking. And probably making things worse, not just for you, but for everyone around you. Better you came back. Better to figure out how some of those bits can scab up and heal. Certainly, there are things tangled in the Ministry where it’d help people to get them better sorted.”

Matty swallowed hard against that. It felt now like it had earlier, when all he’d been able to do was flee. But this time, he didn’t want to flee. He took a breath, and it wasn’t all bile and panic and his heart racing. Another, and things stayed steady enough. “Are you risking that, making a Challenge?”

It got a sharp bark of laughter from Claudio. “Oh, probably. But probably not tremendously more than being a Penelope? Or being the kind of Penelope I am, anyway. There are variations. It might be a different flavour, but not a different magnitude. Maybe that’s the way to put it. I trust Gabe about that. Orion. My own observations.”

“Suppose that helps,” Matty agreed. Whatever else, Claudio was going in with far more understanding of how the Council changed people than anyone else had. Matty would not argue with that hard-won expertise. It made him go back to something. “You said you weren’t the right person to suggest things to your mother. What sort of person might be?”

He focused on Claudio now, saw his eyes go wider. There was something joyful and free and tremendously complicated there, all at once, like taking a microscope to a few drops of water and realising it was teeming with near-invisible life. A sudden shift, something that should have been startling and unsettling, but instead had Matty’s heart lifting to meet it.

“Mmm. We’re back to the conversation about sex.” Claudio shifted his hand, fingers edging a bit more to the inside of Matty’s thigh, a little higher on the leg. Nothing entirely indecorous, compared to a bit of what they’d already done, but absolutely suggestive. “I wonder what sort of person I might be if I could surrender. Not let things wash over me, gods, I’ve got experience at that. Not be resolute in the face of foolishness. But not—” He twisted slightly to face Matty better. “Not guard myself. Give myself over to the sensation without holding back. Are any of these words making any sense at all?”

Matty grunted because a number of them were, it turned out, entirely relevant to his interests. “So.” He tried to keep his voice even, the voice he used in meetings when he was taking things a step at a time but wanted to be encouraging of an idea. “You’re saying you might be interested in me?—”

He had to stop and breathe, because he’d suddenly had a vision of it. Claudio, spread out on the bed, all that skin there to touch. Lying there, waiting for Matty to press inside and take him as hard and fast as either of them could stand. No holding back, no restraining his impulses. All the Boarish desire and passion and urgency flooding out. If, that was, he could make it last more than two or three strokes. There were charms for that. He’d learn them.

Claudio must have realised some of it, because the hand slipped further up, not quite groping at Matty’s now recovered cock. “Mmm. Tell me that?”

“You. Bed. Not right now.” That was an urgent clarification. “When we’ve time. When I’ve had time to get you ready to take me, not the first time we do that. If you’re up for this.” It was entirely possible Claudio had the usual run of hangups about who did what in bed or up against a wall, or wherever they were. Most people did. “Spreading you out on the bed, and taking you hard and fast, rough as you could take it.” He twisted then, bringing his fingers up to brush Claudio’s cheek. “And you’re strong, you know your body, you do impossible things before breakfast on the regular. You could take a lot, couldn’t you?”

He was rewarded with an absolutely shattering gasp, felt the way Claudio shivered against his hand. Right at that moment, the alarm in the bedroom went off. Claudio waved a hand at it incoherently, a pulse of magic that made it shut off immediately. Matty hadn’t known anyone could do that from across a room. Claudio said, his voice a growl. “Set that thing for an hour from now. Let’s go to bed so you can tell me more about your ideas. Want to get my hands on you. May I do that?”

“Oh, oh, yes.” Matty wasn’t sure for a second he could stand, but then Claudio was getting up, and there was every reason to follow. He left the light on, the mug abandoned on the side table, and was in the bedroom a step after this man who kept surprising him. They did manage to set the alarm again. It turned out there could be so much talking and touching and kissing and two rounds of shuddering pleasure in that time. When Claudio left, Matty was a puddle on the bed who would sleep soundly, no matter what his brain wanted to try. Tonight, at least.

Chapter 33

Thursday, June 15th