How The Light Gets In - 13. Chapter 13

The drive from the hospital had been a long and silent one, though at least the fog had lifted and the road was good. At first, Matt had tried to talk to Luc, hoping to distract him from the pain in his hand. He soon realized, however, that talk, even quiet talk, was more than the Quebecois boy could manage. Luc sat stiffly in the passenger seat, his splinted left hand pressed across his stomach. Though he clutched his silver iPod in his right fist, he did not turn it on.

Every bump in the road drew a small, involuntary gasp. Tears collected unshed in the curve of black lashes. White teeth chewed on the soft swell of lower lip.

By the time they’d reached the condo, Matt could see that Luc was at the limit of his endurance. He hadn’t even the strength to object to Matt’s assistance. Not only did he allow Matt to undo his seatbelt, hold the door, and carry his shoulder bag, but he seemed so disconnected, so oblivious, it was as if the pain had dulled his recognition that Matt was even there. He followed Matt upstairs and into the condo as if in a daze, allowing Matt to slip his jacket off his shoulders, over the splint. He closed his eyes as he swallowed the pain tablet. When Matt’s fingers grazed his on the glass, he didn’t draw away.

Finally, Matt had left him at the door to his room. “If you need anything, call me, ok? I’ll leave my door open.”

Luc didn’t seem to have heard him. Matt rested a hand on his shoulder. He felt a trembling beneath his fingers. Not a good trembling. An I’m-barely-holding-on-here trembling. Matt gave the shoulder what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

“Luc,” he said, waiting for the Quebecois boy to look up, meet his eyes.

“I mean it. If you need anything, call me. Especially if you’re in pain. The bottle says you can have another in four hours if you need it. Leave your door open a little so I can hear if you call.”

Matt spoke slowly and clearly, as if to a small child, holding Luc’s exhausted gaze until the dark head nodded. Only then did Matt drop his hand from Luc’s shoulder and make his way to his own room. He looked back to see that Luc had, indeed, left the door slightly open.

Now, alone in the dark and listening to increasingly restless murmurs coming from Luc’s room, Matt wondered if he should go in to him. Luc hadn’t called out; he was, Matt was sure, still asleep. But it was almost three, and five hours had passed since he’d swallowed the pain tablet with closed eyes. Matt had read the dosages carefully; he could have had another an hour ago. The small, restless whimpers had to mean that the tablet was wearing off.

The irony of the situation was not lost on Matt. He knew exactly how clichéd this was, him lying here alone in bed and restless, listening to the sounds made by the boy across the hall.

He could have written this scenario… Hell, he HAD written it. A dozen times, for sundry timid boys and men who’d followed him home and then said ‘no’ at the last minute. Timid boys and men he’d respond to with soothing words and chaste kisses, before leaving them alone in his bed with their fears and their desires. Knowing they would not pass the night alone.

He’d retreat to the sofa, sometimes for a few minutes, never more than an hour, and listen patiently to them toss and turn, some of them weeping quietly. He’d listen, alone in the dark, waiting for tiny, sad sounds to invite him back one more time, to offer them one more chance.

One more chance… and then…

Oh, fuck!

Kieran.

He remembered who Kieran was.

Kieran before Matt had sucked him off in the ski lift – twice.

Kieran, shy and sweet and scared, half naked and trembling in Matt’s bed as Matt had softly kissed his cheek and then his bare left shoulder.

Kieran when Matt had left him there alone.

Matt closed his eyes in the dark, and remembered.

***

It was his first winter in Banff, early December. He’d given Kieran a private lesson that afternoon. Kieran had specifically asked for him, and Matt had a pretty good idea what that meant – especially since Kieran was an experienced skier – a competitive racer, in fact – and had absolutely no need of a lesson from Matt. Well, at least not a lesson in skiing. But Matt’s ski queen reputation was already well established in a certain…group, and Kieran clearly knew what it was. He was sweet and shy and nervous as hell – but he knew.

And he knew that Matt knew he knew.

Matt was sharing an apartment with two other guys, both of whom were out that night. He brought Kieran home with him. Kieran had that quality that appealed to much to Matt, that sweet, sweet mixture of total innocence and boldness fuelled by a couple of years of internet-enhanced fantasy. Fantasy he wanted Matt to bring to life.

But like so many boys, when it came right down to it, the reality was just a little more than he could handle all at once. When Matt led him into the bedroom and started to remove the last bit of clothing between them, Kieran froze.

And Matt stopped.

He kissed him sweetly.

Then he left the room slowly, smoothly, knowing the boy in his bed was watching every confident movement of his naked body.

Because Matt knew he had a very, very good body, lean and muscular and elegant, with a gorgeous ass, smooth golden skin, fine golden hair. Kieran would not resist the temptation for long. Yes, a beautiful body…

And a hard heart that had understood and delighted in temptation.

Kieran didn’t have a chance, because Matt knew exactly how much of a show to put on for the curious but timid boy he was leaving alone in his bed. He knew exactly what it would take to make the boy come to him.

He left the bedroom door open just a little that night too, and when he settled himself on the sofa, he could hear the Kieran’s soft, uncertain weeping. And lying there in the moonlight, watching the shadows, Matt waited.

Eventually, as he knew it would, he heard the door squeak open…he gentle pad of naked feet…the rustle as the boy knelt beside him…

And then the soft, tentative touch of Kieran’s hand on his shoulder…

Kieran’s warm breath against his cheek…

Kieran’s whispered voice in his ear…

“Matt?”

Matt smiled in the moonlight as he took that hand in his, pressed a kiss into its palm, a sweet, soft, tempting, daring kiss…

Kieran sobbed, and his hand shook against Matt’s lips.

Matt could afford to be noble, now that the end was inevitable. He offered him one more chance.

“Go back to bed, Kieran,” he said.

And waited.

Kieran did not move.

Matt watched the bowed head for a moment, the graceful line of neck, the curve of shoulder. God, he was beautiful, this boy on the edge of manhood. Matt drew Kieran’s palm once more to his lips, offered one more kiss, swift and soft.

Kieran shuddered, and still he did not pull away.

Matt dared a quick, calculated taste. Just the tip of his tongue, barely touching the damp and trembling palm, gliding along the lifeline…

Kieran gasped, a sob so filled with need that Matt felt himself harden and rise.

He smiled in the dark.

And still he waited.

The silence was long, and not quite complete, infused with the sounds of Kieran’s breathing, his desire, his uncertainty.

And then, finally, that sweet, sweet moment of victory.

“Matt?”

“Mmm?”

Another kiss against his palm.

Another taste.

Another shudder from the boy kneeling beside him.

“I don’t want to be in there alone.”

Matt rose then, slowly, from the sofa. He pulled Kieran to his feet and into his arms, held him for awhile. Just held him, rubbing soothing circles against his naked back. Finally the blonde head had dropped to rest on his bare shoulder, and the slender body relaxed against him. Knowing that this was the first time Kieran had stood like that, skin to skin with another guy, was almost enough to carry Matt over the edge.

Almost.

But Matt knew how to control the familiar urge. He bowed his head, licked Kieran’s ear, blew gently.

“You sure, baby?” he whispered. “Cause I don’t want to take you anywhere you don’t want to be.”

Kieran’s entire body trembled with the wanting.

Matt pressed him closer, slid his hands down from the small of his back to curve of his ass, pressed his fingers deep, drew him in. He did it slowly, carefully, until they were cock to cock, separated only by Kieran’s boxers. Only then did Matt slip a hand around, reach down between their close-pressed bodies, cup the boy gently.

Kieran cried out, sobs and groans that were almost delirious… desperate, needy.

“Sure?” Matt asked again.

“Yes,” Kieran whispered into the curve of Matt’s neck. “Please, God, yes.”

And then he raised his head from Matt’s shoulder and offered Matt his mouth.

And Matt took it.

Took it, and took it, and took it…

And with Kieran clinging and begging, he led one more boy back into the bedroom ,one more boy across the boundary into another world, from which there could be no denial, and no return.

Another innocent over the edge.

Another innocent…

***

Now Matt sighed into the darkness, thinking of Kieran not as he had been then, but Kieran as he was now. No wonder he hadn’t recognized him. The Kieran he’d spent that weekend with was a high school ski racer, slight but strong, wiry, with golden blonde hair and white eyelashes. The Kieran he met with Stevie was a delicately pretty emo boy with dyed black hair almost blue against his pale skin, and careful black eyeliner almost blue against his pale cheeks. He’d looked at Matt with knowingly innocent fuck-me eyes and a coy and confident fuck-me smile. When he ran his fingers across the back of Matt’s hand, the gesture was at once endearingly shy and suggestively possessive.

No wonder Bran had thought they’d been – more to each other.

Matt sighed again.

It was done, he told himself. Over. He’d had enough of luring frightened boys to confront their own sexuality.

Been there.

Done that.

Had the t-shirt.

Hell, he had the whole fucking t-shirt concession.

He would never do that again.

And he could certainly never do that to Luc.

He hadn’t been awakened by the small sounds coming from Luc’s room. Sleep was an elusive thing this night, and he’d been tossing and turning for hours, unable to relax amid the crumpled sheets. Luc’s murmurs had started perhaps half an hour ago. As soon as he heard them, Matt realized that, on some level, he’d been waiting for them.

But not waiting his chance, the way he’d waited for the other boys, the way he had waited for Kieran.

Not like that at all.

He wasn’t even attracted to the boy in the other room, he told himself firmly. Luc was pretty enough, with those silvery blue eyes and the fine crescent of black lashes against his pale cheeks. But his narrow, fine-boned prettiness did not seize him the way that Joshua’s beauty did. No one and nothing could ever touch him the way Joshua did. Dozens of encounters with scared, pretty boys had finally convinced him of that.

And besides, Luc just seemed altogether too young.

Yes, he was nineteen, a year older that Kieran had been. But Luc seemed younger somehow – or perhaps just so much more innocent. Kieran – and all those other boys – though without actual experience, had had at least some fragile sense what it was they wanted. They’d come to Matt with wide, timid eyes, searching for their boundaries, wanting. Matt had simply lured them over the edge – hating himself for it afterwards, but unable to resist the ride.

Well, he could resist Luc.

He had to.

There was so much hurt in the boy, and Matt had already inflicted enough damage on the innocent. And if he’d learned one thing from therapy, it was to keep away from wounded boys. He had enough healing of his own to do, and he wasn’t going to get there by damaging yet another confused kid.

Besides, he’d had no sense of that deep need to challenge sexual boundaries from Luc. That’s what Kieran had offered – what all those boys had offered. They wanted it, wanted him. They’d all known about that boundary, somewhere down deep in their secret hearts. Even the closeted married men he sometimes took home, so sad, so frightened. How many of them had wept in his arms afterwards? Wept for what they knew they needed, for the essential reality of themselves that they had chosen to deny.

But Luc…

Luc seemed not so much hiding from his sexuality as detached from it. Even when he watched Scott, Matt sensed that Luc’s longing was not physical. Or not just physical. It was something else, something more.

Something Matt could never hope to offer.

Joshua had made that only too clear. A guy like Matt could never have anything more to offer than the emptiness of a little physical pleasure.

And hadn’t Scott said pretty much the same thing, warning him that Luc was strictly off limits?

Well, Matt didn’t need the memory of Joshua’s disgust, and he didn’t need Scott’s warning. He had no hidden agenda to seduce the boy, to slip between the sheets with him. He didn’t want to. And even though listening here in the dark was clichéd, at least he had the comfort of knowing that for once there was nothing clichéd about his motivation.

Because as much as Scott’s holier-than-thou self righteousness had pissed him off, Matt knew he was right. Matt had been selfish – and it was Luc, murmuring in his sleep as the pain tablet wore off, who was still paying the price. Just thinking of it made Matt feel unworthy. Trapped. Altogether sick of himself.

So why was he lying here, questioning his motivation, reluctant to take that long walk across the hall? Luc was not another Kieran. And the sounds coming from his room were not the sounds he’d heard from all those timid boys, sounds of fear that were more than drowned out by curiosity and by desire.

These were the sounds of pain breaking through sleep. Real pain. Physical pain. Pain that Matt could do something about.

The fact that Luc was also hurt beneath and beyond the physical pain, hurt somehow the way Joshua had been hurt, well, that was something else altogether.

And maybe that’s what Matt was afraid of: that other, deeper hurt that Matt knew he was not worthy to comfort.

God, it would have been so much easier if he had been awakened to hear the French boy weeping – or better yet, crying out in some dream. Then he would have had the excuse – no, the obligation – to go into there, to find out what was wrong, to comfort him.

But these little sounds, audible only because he was awake anyway, awake and listening...

Maybe he should just let Luc sleep.

Wait until he called out, asked for help.

But he wouldn’t, Matt realized with sudden clarity. Luc would not ask him for help. Not if he could avoid it. Not if he thought there was any way at all he could manage without it. He would not ask.

Matt flung back the covers, pulled on the t-shirt and pj pants he’d flung over the end of the bed, and made his way into the hall. He pushed Luc’s door open quietly. It was too dark to see him, but his restlessness was clearer now, the whimpers a little louder. Matt padded into the kitchen, shook a tablet from the bottle, poured a glass of milk, and made his way back to Luc’s room. He left the kitchen light on, letting it spill down the hall, enough light to allow him to help Luc, enough dark that perhaps the Quebecois boy wouldn’t wake fully, and could fall easily back into sleep.

***

It was cool in Luc’s room; a draft from the wall and the faint wind and ocean sounds telling Matt that he slept with a window slightly open despite the winter air. Matt shivered as he crossed the room to the bed. For a moment he just stood there, looking down at the boy in the bed.

Luc was on his right side, curled in a foetal ball. His left hand was still splinted and clutched to his chest, the right was under his head. Black curls spilled across the pillow. The duvet was pulled carelessly around him. He’d tossed it off so that it fallen around his waist, and Matt realized he’d gone to bed fully clothed.

Matt cursed himself silently. He should have known Luc was in too much pain to try to undress alone. He should have offered to help.

Luc was groaning softly in his sleep now, soft “ah” sounds filled with pain that were exhaled with every third or fourth breath. Each small sound drew Matt’s eyes to Luc’s mouth, to the swell of his lower lip. For a few moments Matt just watched, fascinated, as Luc’s lips parted just a little, quivered slightly with each quiet sound.

Finally, he set the glass carefully on the bedside table. His hand shook.

“Luc?” he called softly.

Luc shifted in his bed but did not wake. Matt reached out. He meant to touch his shoulder but somehow his hand went instead to the sleepy mass of curls, pushing them back gently from the sleeping boy’s forehead. Luc’s skin was warm.

“Luc?”

This time, Luc did more than stir. He moved his head, and the pale blue eyes fluttered open. Matt’s hand stilled against his hair.

“Papa?” said Luc softly, an edge of tears in his voice. “Ma main.” My hand.

Matt froze, his fingers still lying against the sleepy curls.

“It’s Matt,” he said. “I came to see if you’re ok. I heard you...”

He watched as the pale blue eyes widened, then pressed shut.

“Hurts,” he said finally.

The pain that drenched the single syllable made Matt want to weep. “I know,” he said. “I’ve brought you another pain tablet and some milk.”

“Merci,” said Luc.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Matt removed his hand from Luc’s forehead and turned to the side table. He heard Luc gasp softly as he shifted himself into a sitting position. Luc took the tablet and put it in his mouth. When he reached for the glass, his hand was shaking, so instead of taking the glass himself, he closed his fingers around Matt’s wrist, and they raised it together.

It was an oddly intimate gesture.

When he was done, they stayed like that – Matt holding the glass, Luc holding Matt’s wrist. It was only when Matt realized that Luc had begun to shiver that he gently pulled away and set the glass back on the bedside table.

For a moment, he considered asking if Luc needed help undressing, but decided against it. He should have offered earlier. Now, Luc needed to be warm, to sleep again. Matt put his hand on his shoulder.

“Lie down,” he said, pushing gently.

Luc did. But when Matt tried to remove his hand, he felt the long, slender fingers close around it.

Luc didn’t say a word. He just fell back, dark curls wild against the pillow, and for a moment his hand gripped Matt’s with surprising strength. It only took a few moments before the grasp loosened, and he fell back into sleep.

Matt stood there for a long, long time.

Watching the curve of black lashes against the pale cheek.

Watching him breathe.