After a moment, Iain collects him up, turning Harry towards him and embracing him. Harry relaxes, boneless, sinking into his warmth. They don’t say anything, just holding each other, until Harry feels something against his hip and realises that Iain is still hard. He slides down his lover’s thickly muscled body, down to where the dark hair begins to grow.
‘Harry, you don’t have to—’ Iain starts, but is silenced when Harry takes him in his mouth. Harry can feel how Iain’s entire body tenses as he starts to bob his head, starts to suck up and down Iain’s shaft, and he hums his pleasure at the power he has over Iain. He feels Iain’s hands bury themselves in his hair. Iain’s hips start to thrust shallowly, almost unconsciously, and he can taste the warm, salty precome leaking into his mouth.
Harry glances up at Iain. He’s looking down at him with a sort of amazed wonder, as if Harry is his own personal miracle.
Iain covers one of Harry’s hands with his own, and the other hand continues to caress the back of Harry’s head, petting him, combing through his hair. Harry sucks harder, running his tongue up and down Iain’s cock, and is rewarded by the hand in his hair tightening. The rhythm of Iain’s hips begins to stutter, and all too soon he is pulling Harry off him. He wraps his hand around his own cock and thrusts, once, twice, and then he’s coming over Harry’s face.
Iain all but collapses onto his back on the mossy rock. He pulls Harry down on top of him, throwing a leg over him to keep him there. ‘I think we missed dinner,’ Harry murmurs, snuggling his face into Iain’s neck.
‘All your fault,’ Iain mumbles back. ‘You’re distracting—’
A loud, echoing krak sounds across the pond, like ice breaking, or branches shattering.
Then it repeats, again and again.
It’s applause. Someone is clapping.
Harry pulls away from Iain, terror coursing through him, and looks up.
‘Bravo!’ a voice calls from the top of the bank. ‘Looks like we’ve found someone to hang after all.’
It’s Rabbie.
Rabbie’s grinning, and saying something about Alys de Morton, but Harry is distracted by a swift movement at his side. Iain is already moving forwards, blind fury on his face and dagger in his hand.
‘Iain, no!’ Harry yells, lunging for him, but Iain just tears out of his grasp and flings the dagger.
It embeds in a tree trunk, inches to the left of Rabbie’s ear.
‘You missed,’ Rabbie snarls.
‘It was a warning,’ Iain seethes. ‘If you try anything towards us, say a word to anyone, I will kill you and everyone you hold dear.’
Rabbie holds his hands up, a taunting smile on his face. ‘I’m the King’s Sheriff! I could ride in tomorrow and drag you out of Dartington by your hair and there is nothing any of you could do to stop me.’
‘But you won’t,’ Harry says, doing his best to project an authority he doesn’t feel. ‘Because Montagu holds your leash and he isn’t quite ready to let you slip yet. So run home to your master, you ugly dog, and bark at someone who cares.’
Iain grins evilly then, and barks at Ufford, a series of terrifying, barely human noises. When he finishes, he turns his back on Rabbie, dismissing him.
Ufford is crimson with anger, shaking with it, and he snatches Iain’s dagger out of the birch tree and flings it back at him. There’s a brief, heartstopping moment as the weapon flashes through the air, but then Iain sidesteps, neatly catching it as it flies past his shoulder.
Rabbie is pointing, jabbing his index finger at them as he tries to formulate a comeback. His lips twist in hatred. ‘There will be a reckoning,’ is all he manages to hiss before stomping off back towards his own lands.
Harry remains on guard until the crunch of Rabbie’s departing footsteps fades into silence, body tensed against attack, then once the birds begin to sing again he all but collapses against Iain.
‘I will kill him one day,’ Iain whispers into Harry’s hair.
Harry just shakes his head. Iain feels more than sees the motion. ‘Let’s go home,’ he says. ‘I’m tired.’
They put on a happy façade for the people of the manor. Over supper, Harry and Iain take turns describing their adventures at the tournaments. But Harry excuses them both as soon as is polite, claiming exhaustion.
He wants to tell Annie about Rabbie, about Montagu having a spy in the hall, but he doesn’t know how to do it. Annie will want to know why Rabbie threatened them. While Annie is probably aware what Iain means to Harry, he fears what might happen if he confirms to her that they are lovers. At least now, if Rabbie tries to spread rumours, Annie can deny them and it’s not lying.
He and Iain hold each other that night, up in the solar, and every night afterwards for two weeks, waiting for the hammer to fall.
But no bishop arrives. No mob, no men-at-arms darken their gates.
They almost come to believe that the incident with Rabbie will pass, when late into the night on the eve of Iain’s birthday, the screaming begins.
Their home is on fire.
It’s fitting, in a way. You burn a pig-boy for loving his friend by piling up hawthorn around him and throwing torches into it. You burn a lord for loving his friend by setting his manor alight.
Dartington is an old hall, thatch and wattle and daub, not the elegant stone of newer, more prosperous manors. It’s hard to light thatch, harder than people expect, to get the densely packed
