Scrap Metal (23 page)

He’d hung the blade of seagrass from a nail in his room, still in its circle. It was the first thing he saw in the morning, the last before he closed his eyes at night. Everything would be fine. He groaned out my name, surged passionately up onto his hands and knees and clutched at the blanket while he came, and I kept my pace—deep, fast, riding easy on the lube and his frantic willingness to let me in—until he was quite done, only then throwing my head back and shouting my own completion to the echoing hills.

I took him to the Machrie stone-circle site, where poor mainlanders who thought one mysterious ring was a wonder came to be astounded speechless at the twelve or more scattered like raindrops on a pond across the vast moor. Like most island men I had mixed feelings about tourists, but I’d always enjoyed meeting them en route down from Machrie, their eyes wide and dazed, guidebooks crumpled in their hands because no description could hope to come close to the reality.

I’d intended my trip there with Cam only to be a walk, a chance to show him one of the wonders of his new home. But as well as the circles there were monoliths, great silent towers commanding attention from miles around, and we walked for miles to stand before the tallest of all, gazing up at its great red sandstone shaft and rounded head, until Cam swallowed in a way I recognised as a desperate attempt to hold back laughter, and I said in hushed tones, as if conveying a deep archaeological secret, “Some people say it looks like a great giant cock,” and watched in pleasure as he doubled up. And somehow—power of suggestion, power of the stones, which out here continued their silent injunction to the children of their builders that they dance, weave the strands of life and death into circles, connect themselves with earth and sky through the blood-hot medium of one another’s bodies—we ended up entwined in its shadow.

We ended up at last in my bed. It was a chance we shouldn’t have taken, but Harry was back on his feet again and had gone off grumbling with his dogs to see what kind of a mess we had been making of the farm while he was ill. He wouldn’t have much to complain about, I reckoned.

I’d been up in my room getting into a fresh set of coveralls when Cam tapped on my door. I’d ruined the first set showing him the delicate art of the sheep dip, and was about to spend the afternoon teaching him how to shear. We were eight hours into what would probably be a sixteen-hour day. The barns were clean, the livestock all where they should be, the fences in good repair. I called to him to come in, and he entered diffidently, as if we hadn’t kissed each other breathless in the porch five minutes before. He’d only been in my room once before, on the night the birds had scared him, though I wandered freely in and out of his. It was as though he regarded mine as some kind of sanctum.

“You okay?” I asked, hitching up my coveralls. I hadn’t yet shrugged into the top half. It was too warm a day for a vest underneath and I paused, letting a slow smile start. I loved the way he looked when something about me had caught his attention. Intent and focussed, as if nothing else mattered to him and I was the only serious business in his world. “Aren’t you going to get changed? It’s not that the smell of Econo-Dip isn’t a huge turn-on, but…”

“I stopped to look at the post.”

“Oh, God.” I was facing up to bank statements these days instead of shoving into a drawer, but a business envelope still could make me shudder. “Something bad?”

“No. No, actually—not bad at all. The farming grant I applied for came through, but…”

“Did it? Wow.” I took the sheaf of papers he was holding out to me. “That’s amazing. And we don’t have to pay this one back?”

“No. They want to keep you in business, not pull you under. That’s why you only get to spend it on agri products from the other businesses they sponsor. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” He came a few steps farther into the room then stopped, as if he wasn’t sure of his welcome. As if I wouldn’t happily have made my bed his for as long as he cared to stay in it. “You remember when you told me Harry still owned the land at the Board of Forestry plantation?”

“Yes.” I did vaguely remember, though most of that day was a blur of sleep in my head. “What about it?”

“I just thought it couldn’t be right, that the Board was growing timber there and paying nothing to their landlord other than the rent for the ground. I mean, they make a huge profit, and the land’s never the same afterwards. It’d cost a fortune to convert it back for grazing or whatever. So I made some enquiries, and—yes, the landlord gets ten percent of all timber-yield proceeds. It’s written into the lease.”

It was hard for me to work up indignation. I didn’t yet know ten percent of what, and I was so pleased with my agri grant that I felt quite well off. Still, Cam had been to a lot of trouble, and I had a duty to protect my granddad’s interests if I could. “What, so…they’re in breach? They just haven’t been paying it?”

“That’s just it. The guy I spoke to at the Board was quite offended. Your brother opened a separate deposit account just for that payment, and it’s been going in all the time.”

“I don’t get this. I wasn’t paying much attention when the whole probate thing went through, but Alistair didn’t leave a will. Wouldn’t any accounts of his have been made over to Harry?”

“It’s not Alistair’s account. He opened it in your name.”

“In mine?”

“Yeah. I don’t know—maybe he was more worried about the farm going under than he let on, and he thought he could keep the fund from bankruptcy proceedings that way. Or…” Cam paused. I could almost see the cogs of his benign cunning whirring around. “Much more likely, I bet he was trying to provide you with a bit of a cushion if the worst came to the worst. Anyway, here’s a letter from them. They didn’t mind dealing with me to a certain extent as your, er, financial manager, but they said they’d send the details of the account and what’s in it straight to you.”

I sat down on the bed. Cam handed me the envelope, and I began absently to rip it open.
A bit of a cushion…
The only likely thing around here was Cam’s attempt to sell me that version of events. I thought about Al, cheerfully materialistic, shunting debts around like engines on his old train-set tracks. He’d told me, when I’d decided to stay on at Edinburgh uni for my doctorate, not to expect any support from him or the farm. There’d been no malice in it, just a complete incomprehension. I hadn’t asked for help, so we’d parted peacefully enough, and during term times I’d waited tables at the local TGI Friday’s and taken on odd interpreting jobs to pay my rent. He wasn’t the cushioning type. I could certainly buy that he’d set me up as a tax dodge, though. He’d once hidden stolen cartridges for Harry’s air rifle in my pushchair, my ma had told me, so he could load up and have a go when her back was turned. Smiling over the memory, I read the couple of paragraphs the Board had written to me.

I looked up at Cam. Whatever linguistic gifts I had seemed to have been extracted from my ability to deal with numbers. I really did struggle, even with simple things like ten-percent amounts, and anyway I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “Cam, these guys made a hundred and twenty grand off the timber last year. That means…”

“That means there’s twelve grand in the account,” he prompted me kindly. “They’re set to make about the same this year, and they pay out every six months, so in June…”

“Another six grand. That’s… That’s eighteen.”

“That’s right, Stephen Hawking.”

I fell back on the bed. I stared up unseeing at the ceiling. “My God. I can pay off the Midlothian completely. I can pay a whole lot of our debts, or… No, wait. I can offer Kenzie his job back.”

“Kenzie?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know he was an arsehole, but he’s all right as long as he’s working, and we didn’t act fair by him, turning him off the way we did.” I waved the unbelievable letter at Cam, instantly reading the shadows that had filled his eyes. “And I can start paying my overworked, brilliant, gorgeous volunteer.” I held out my arms, and he came shyly to kneel over me, his sweet grin starting. “What?” I demanded, pulling him down into a kiss. “You think I only need
one
farmhand around this place? How about an advance right now?”

“I’d love one.” My cock was lifting. He put down a hand to me, his breath catching softly in his throat. “We can’t, though. Not here.”

“Why not? There’s no law says we can’t do it with a roof over our heads.”

“Not this one. Not your bedroom.”

“What? It’s just a room.”

“It’s yours.”

I held his face between my hands. I was trying to work out his objections, but there were depths in those eyes that would never be open to me. I told myself I accepted this. I had so much of him it didn’t matter. “I’m not some kind of…hallowed ground, you know,” I whispered. “Not something special, or sacred, or—”

“You are to me. Oh, God, Nichol, you are to me.”

I stripped him carefully. I kissed each part of him as it appeared, indulging in a little worship of my own. Maybe he was right—maybe there was some kind of sanctity in the air of this ordinary room where I’d spent so many nights of my life I couldn’t remember the start of them. If so, it came from both of us. It was
because
of both of us. It sprang up from the places where our bodies touched, where our minds lit up with desire. He was part of it, part of whatever it was he revered. I couldn’t find the words to tell him. I skinned out of my coveralls, and I drew him down with me onto our sacred bed.

I’d never seen him stark naked by daylight. I left the duvet folded back, the better to enjoy the lovely shock of it. He no longer ate like a starving wolf cub, and his weight gain had levelled off at that delicious stage where he looked strong and fine but I could still see every detail of his framework, of how he was made. To touch these details with my fingers wasn’t enough. I leaned over him and brushed my open mouth across his collarbones, pressed my tongue into the notch between. His ribs were still clearly marked—I kissed them too, each one, until he was moaning and arching up for more. I dwelt for a teasing while on his nipples, giving each my thoughtful attention, catching the taut nubs between my teeth for a delicate bite. His hand was on the back of my head, the gentleness of his caress not hiding its urgency. A less polite young man would have been pushing me south.

Chuckling, I set off of my own accord, licking and kissing my way down his median line, where silky hair the shade of bitter chocolate made me think of a time when he wouldn’t have to peroxide away his identity in our chilly bathroom. Maybe sooner than he thought, if all these grants and wonderful payments meant I could get the farm back on its feet. It would be my castle then, and I’d show all hostile comers how an island chieftain defended his realm…

“Nichol, please,” he ground out, recalling me to my present duties. I cradled his balls against my palm, lifted, pressed them against his body until I could feel the waiting throb of life in them, a vibration like a powerful car being revved on its handbrake. Then, when he was sobbing and tenderly calling me every kind of bastard under the sun, I took him into my mouth.

It was easy. I’d remembered how, and I was much more relaxed without the possibility of Craig and his trail of sightseers breaking my stride. Oh, yes—I shifted to kneel between Cam’s thighs, opened my throat and sucked him down. His cock head filled my airway, but I didn’t panic—tucked my hands under his arse to restrain the panicked recoil he was trying to make on my behalf, and breathed through my nose, not fighting my gag reflex but letting it roll up and crush him.

He held out through ten seconds of this then came in a great stormy rush, half drowning me, thighs convulsing as he thrust up into my throat. “Jesus, Nichol! Jesus!”

I released him, coughing. He was sitting up for me already, holding out his arms. I collapsed into his embrace, grinding my hips against his until he was thoroughly done. “It’s okay,” I croaked. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“Me too, you great soft…” Words and breath failed him and he hung on to me, chest heaving. Then he got hold of my jaw and guided me in for a kiss, swollen mouth, fresh come and all. He was robust about body fluids, I’d discovered, and we’d enjoyed a few sublimely messy exchanges. “That was fantastic. But be careful, will you? It’s not an audition for the bloody circus.”

I snorted with laughter. “Thanks. Seriously. I’m grand.”

“Good. Glad to hear it. Now get yourself lubed up and fuck me.”

“What? Are you sure you want me, so soon after…”

“Yes. Completely. I can feel you properly then, concentrate on you. It doesn’t even feel like sex, just like being
with
you in the best way I…” He rolled away from me, tugging open the bedside drawer. “I can’t explain. Please just do it.”

I curled up around his back. His hair was in a damp tangle—I buried my mouth in it, tasting his salt. He was reaching around blindly in the drawer. I knew where the KY was, and I snaked an arm past him to grab it. “Okay. Nothing I want better, sweetheart. But I hope it feels a
little
bit like sex.”

He shook with silent laughter. I uncapped the tube and spread so much on both of us I almost slithered off him. Too much felt like almost enough. I could handle a rough dry fuck myself but nothing would have made me go at Cam that way. Early afternoon light was spilling in through the window. Archie would have closed the curtains, even though there was nothing out there to see us but the ravens.

Cam rested his cheek in the crook of my arm and groaned as I entered him, the sun turning his fine skin translucent. He was flushed, his eyelashes sticking together with tears. He grabbed my hand and drew it to his mouth, sucking on my fingers while I found the hot depths of him. He curled over onto his belly, encouraging me, opening up. A seismic rush of love for him went through me, welded tight to orgasm. From ten miles out I could hear my own shattered cries, but I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t do anything but hang on to him and spill and spend myself into his flesh…

Didn’t stand a chance of hearing Harry’s footsteps on the stairs. Beneath me Cam jerked and tried to push up. The door creaked but I couldn’t make it mean anything. My head was full of lights and stars.