Swordcrossed

by Freya Marske

He could still feel his panic, the wound-up watch of his worry, but he shoved it away into a recess of his mind: its own small, dark velvet bag. It would be safe enough there. It would last until tomorrow. Matti’s ability to worry was shatterproof. For now, he was going to drink.

Matti’s hands, which were still tingling to be placed against the vulnerability of Piere’s pale throat, now began to take on an edge of interest in the hair instead. About how it might feel for them to be buried in it. About how ideal that length was for pulling.

“Well, there’s no need to worry,” Luca said. “I’ll stand beside you at your wedding, Mattinesh Jay. And I’ll win.”

Being himself was a failed experiment. Luca had learned that lesson already.

Jay looked uncomfortable. Luca thought about how careful, how quietly hungry, and how ashamed of that hunger the man had been about the sheer prospect of indulging in sword lessons when he didn’t need them. Luca would have wagered that the swallowed segment of that sentence was: I don’t do many things as myself.

“Maya. No matter how tight money is, there’s always enough for Maya to have her morning pot. Mama calls it the murder-prevention tax.”

Stories were fun, being entertaining was fun, but people never really wanted to hear about you, especially if the alternative was talking about themselves.

“I know what you meant,” said Matti. “I do a bit of everything. My father is the Guildmaster here,” he added, with painstaking pride. “He can’t be expected to oversee our House’s doings as minutely as he used to.” Matti’s voice firmed even further. “I’m glad that he trusts me with it.” There it was: the puzzle piece. Guildmasters were politicians; if one was also Head of a House, their elected term was a busy few years for the rest of their family. Doing a bit of everything, in that context, meant that the man in front of Luca—who dressed himself and held himself as though embarrassed by his own size, and who had yet to raise his voice beyond a mild conversational volume—was likely to be single-handedly managing the business affairs of one of the most prominent Houses in Thesper’s wool trade. He wasn’t a minor member of Jay House. He was the Head in everything but name. He was the heir.

“Indeed,” said Sofia grimly. “Believe me, there’s nothing romantic about someone who hears the word no and translates it through three books of love poems and his own daydreams so that it means please keep chasing me.”

Luca didn’t know if he was envious of or annoyed by the way Matti held himself: calm and still, as though he were waiting with unconscious ease for the attention in the room to centre upon him, knowing he wouldn’t have to lift a finger. And he didn’t. They could have been in a packed Guildhall, or the busiest market in Glassport, and Luca wouldn’t have wanted to look at anything else.

The skin of Luca’s throat warmed at the intent way Matti’s gaze travelled over his body. He knew what it was to be looked at, and he did know the difference between looks and looks. He felt his tongue flick out and wet his lips.

Matti had to breathe through a sudden, absurd impulse to reach out and touch Luca’s hair. He didn’t even know what the motion would indicate. Gratitude? Praise? Apology? Or was it just that he’d wanted to do it since the instant he first laid eyes on the man, and this was the first moment it had seemed anything other than unsafe?

He had to remember the sword, balanced on Matti’s fingers. Upsetting the balance they’d hammered out for themselves would be risky. Someone might end up bleeding.

But was this an opportunity to behave himself, or an opportunity for action? You want to believe the latter, a voice in him whispered. You want something to give to Matti Jay. You want him to owe you something, or at least for you to owe him less. Another voice, softer and more thrilling, added: You want to lay a gift at his feet. You want to see if he will smile at you.

A best man who Matti wanted with a slow, awful burn of hunger, which he was ignoring as he ignored hunger when he worked through lunch, or when he needed to make Merri smile by sliding oil-dipped bread off his own dinner plate and onto hers. It wasn’t the hunger of the truly desperate; it couldn’t hold a candle to the hunger of the beggars who sat on the bridges by day and curled themselves into doorways by night. It was bearable. It would pass.

Matti was a man in a trance. Two of his fingers slid over Luca’s lower lip, into the wide mouth, up to the knuckle. All he could think was that he would search out the words in Luca’s mouth, hook them out into the air.

“My mother’s quite hopeful at the idea that I might be making a friend. It’s not something I’ve ever been very good at.” Luca gave that the dubious expression it deserved. Matti was so likeable. You could cut him in half like fresh bread and he’d be warm all the way through.

After some time he heard Matti say, quiet and distant as though through a wall, “What are you doing in my life, Luca Piere?” Making it more interesting, Luca said, or meant to. But he didn’t manage to say it aloud. Halfway between the thought and the action he was falling asleep.

“You are. You do,” Matti said, very soft. “You tangle me up.”

“You want to,” Luca said, letting the words catch his lips against Matti’s. “I want to. It’s not complicated.” “You’re such a liar, Luca Piere,” said Matti, with such helpless affection that the flare of Luca’s nerves was over almost before it began. Oh, yes, he felt on one level like he was drawing Matti into another deception, but nothing he was saying was untrue. It could be simple. The warm, lockpicked ache in Luca’s chest was his own business. “I’m not,” he lied.

“Well, look,” said Luca, once she was seated next to him again. “Now I’ve got nothing in my basket to show for all my hard work. It looks like I’ve done nothing at all. Are you trying to get me fired from this very important fake job which I will never show up to again, Mayanesh?”

“Have you done this before?” Matti’s brow creased. He sat up and looked at the jar in Luca’s hand. “Not … this part, with men.” Luca bit his lip so hard he endangered the skin. It was stupid for him to find that so blazingly, unbearably hot. Sex was many different things. Actions were arbitrary. But Luca was selfish; he liked things that were his, only his, and he was already looking forward to imprinting somewhere on his greedy, dye-hungry heart the memory of Matti’s face and the sounds that Matti would make.

“I talk too much.” “You talk like you’re not afraid of anything. Like you could say whatever you wanted and it wouldn’t matter.”

“Fuck,” Luca breathed. “I’m sorry. You deserve better. You deserve someone who can tell you the truth.” Matti took a deeper breath and shifted the angle of his jaw against the pillow on the exhale, but slept on. Selfish, selfish, Luca raged at himself; and answered himself, exhaustedly: Yes, I know. Selfish. Lazy. Liar. “But I’m not sorry enough to let you go,” he added, low enough now that he could barely hear his own words. “Not yet.”

I suggest you hold on to something”—a grin with claws to it—“sir.”

“You should get back in here with me,” Luca said at once. Matti opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. What changed his mind wasn’t anything so sensible as the truth, which was that here in the Coopers’ country house he didn’t have any deadlines to meet, or meetings to attend, or problems to clear from his desk. No. What pulled Matti back into the bed was the edge of resignation in Luca’s voice, as though he didn’t expect to be placed above any of the other priorities of Matti’s life.

Luca rubbed the wool between his fingers again and wondered with an aching pang if this was what it was like to be part of Matti’s family, where the language of love was these small personal details.

“No.” He wasn’t going to give Luca a chance to drop more lies into his ears. He lifted the hand again; Luca flinched. Still Matti’s body was responding, like a wheel set spinning and never told to stop, to the sensation of Luca stretched out beneath him. Still he wanted to drag Luca’s hand above his head by the wrist, with its capable tendons, and bite Luca’s mouth. Luca’s coloured cheeks and parted lips, the sound of his breath, the vulnerability of his fingers … somehow all of this now appeared, sickeningly, like a manipulation. And how very easily Matti had let himself be manipulated, even with his eyes wide open.

This is going to hurt, Matti told himself. Brace. But he’d never had any hope at all of protecting himself from Luca’s attacks. “You lied for them and you lied to them, and for what? So you could have a life so fucking boring and narrow that you had to pay someone to be your friend.”

How did you solve the slow surrender of yourself to another person, like a dwindling stack of coins at a card table, only to look up from your empty hands to see the cold triumph of your opponent?

“Maybe we could poison Adrean,” said Maya. “Then Matti wouldn’t need one at all. And we can tell everyone that Luca Piere left town. Fell in a hole. Something.” “We don’t know what Luca’s going to be telling everyone,” Matti said suddenly. “If he wants to ruin Jay House, he could just let half the city know how badly off we are.” “We don’t know what he’ll do,” Sofia agreed. “Which means we can’t do anything about it, so let’s focus on what we can do.” “I can go to his boardinghouse and pull his liver out through his lying mouth,” said Maya. “I’ve got the address.” Sofia coughed and patted Maya’s hand. “And if he decides to go down the gossip route, I’ll be right there handing you the pincers. I’ve had enough of men starting talk about my personal life. But we can attack the Kesey House situation in the meantime, don’t you think?” Matti blinked at this swerve of topic.

For now, Matti smiled back at Corus. Matti knew how to do this too. He’d learned it far more thoroughly than he’d learned how to handle a sword: How to smile without meaning it. How to project calm control, when all he wanted was to throw plates to the ground and shout. The art of seeming. Perhaps there weren’t many decent people in the world at all.

Matti, I’m sorry I lied. I swear on Huna’s hands and my mother’s name that I never intended any harm to you, your family, or your House. I’m going to make it up to you. I’m still your best man. —Luca

As bargains went it was practically mythic, and nobody escaped intact from myth. The gods made sure you paid in the end.

“Morning mail’s due soon,” said Dinah. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything.” “Thank you.” “If you show me what’s in it.” “You are the worst gossip in this city, Dinah Vaunt.” Dinah’s smile was equal parts smug and sunny as she let herself out.

Luca was beginning to look like a trapped cat. It made Matti feel better.

Luca said, “I couldn’t bear the thought of never touching you again.” A growl came out of Matti’s throat. He kissed Luca again, burying his hands in Luca’s incredible hair, tasting raw salt along the line of Luca’s split lip. Luca’s mouth was hungry beneath his, and Luca made little whines of desperation that settled low in Matti’s stomach. I can’t lose this, Matti thought, I can’t,

“My name is Mattinesh Jay,” he said. “Tell me what you want.” Luca’s fingers stirred in his, then went still. All of him was still. It was strange enough that Matti felt like a man watching a card trick, afraid to blink. “My name is Lucastian Harte, and I want us not to have a time limit. I don’t want you to promise yourself to anyone but me.”

“Someone felt that I hadn’t put adequate effort into wrecking them.” Luca froze. He released Matti’s arms and pulled away, his eyes seeking Matti’s. “I’m not the cleverest man in Glassport, but I’m stubborn,” Matti went on. “I try hard, and I don’t stop.”

Settled, now, his weight gloriously resting on the tops of Matti’s thighs, his cock leaking onto Matti’s stomach. He took hold of Matti’s hands and moved them insistently to his own hips. “Fuck me,” Luca said: sharp and clear instruction. “Wreck me. Do it.”

“I thought I had simple tastes. I don’t care about pearls or silver. I don’t need silk. I can live without cherries and bottles of Diamond Blend.” Luca pressed up, incoherently wanting, and Matti obliged him with another bruising kiss. “But you,” Matti breathed. “You are the most exquisite thing in this city, and I want you, and I’m going to have you.”

“Fuck, you’re perfect,” Luca said, hoarse. “Look at you.” He got his hand into Matti’s hair again, his nails on Matti’s scalp. “How did nobody else get their claws into you?” Matti scraped the black stubble of his jaw back and forth, thoughtful, on the skin of Luca’s lower stomach. His hand was splayed on Luca’s thigh, his thumb maddeningly close to where it might do some good. “I wasn’t looking,” he said simply. Greedy: “I made you look at me.” “I could have been halfway down the aisle, and I would have looked at you,” Matti said. “I could have been halfway across the world.”

“I thought I’d start with the world,” Luca said, “and then see how you felt after that.”