Archive of Our Own

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Prologue
It had been Murphy’s idea to go into town. As— a thought as ostensibly exhausting would never have occurred him on its own.They’d been working like pack animals for two weeks straight fixing the decayed water system on the farm. And in such foul temper the entire time, yelling at each other until they were hoarse with it—because hadn’t he said, had he not fucken said, for a month now, that the fucken pipes were a procrastination waiting to explode in their faces—that when their Da had finally bellowed ”Get the fuck out of my sight! neither of them had paused to argue.And despite being the cause of his stress, when Murphy had suggested that what they sorely needed was to go into town on a bender, “Like in the old days,” his fervent “Aye,” had come out before he knew it.Marching into the stone shed that served as a bathroom for him and Murphy, he’d picked up a pair of scissors, snapping hard at the air in testing them, also without thought.Three years of this shite. Three years of Murph being so on him that the only way he breathed was when Murphy let him. Found a measure of relief, only when Murphy let up on pouring his raw emotions into him like rainwater down a storm drain.They should have gone back to their part of Ireland. Aye, he did understand that small County Sligo would have been too easy a place for a hideout to be swiftly located, still he didn’t believe that the Irish authorities were all that keen on catching American vigilantes, so-called, who made sport of eradicating evil men. Foreign ones at that, as all that had happened in Boston was like a film to the Irish press and public. Neither did he believe that anyone in Ireland was particularly interested in doing the work of the FBI, full stop.Yet for Murphy’s sake, for their Ma’s sake, he wished they had gone home instead of coming here, wherever here was. Stranded and fighting the feeling that the world had gone away and the two of them was all that remained. Leaving him with a near constant tremble all over at the possibility that such a thing was fact. Easy to contest at six months of exile, twelve months, even at two years. At three years, it was no longer a contest; you were losing the argument.Before the scratched and scored mirror, he got to work.Snippets of wiry, godforsaken hair rained from his chin into the washbasin. The faster he snipped the lighter he felt, breathing smoother, faster. More easily. Glancing up in the mirror, it was to find Murphy staring at him from the doorway. Murph then turned and stomped away, a minute later returning with a pair of garden shears.He sat still on the tall stool and let Murphy chop his overgrown mane with obvious pleasure, uttering not a word as his hair fell in chunks to the floor. Done with the shears, Murphy let them drop with a hard chink to the stone floor and picked up the black-painted steel scissors from inside the washbasin and resumed his butcherin’. Yanking on his hair with, typically, too much violence, sending his eyes closing as his body heated, as it ever did whenever Murph got too physical. Murphy’s unique caress. Finished, Murphy picked up and handed him the shears, shoving him off the stool and taking his place, and held quite still while he returned the favor.Within the hour they were clean-shaven except for light moustaches and goatees; their hair in slaughtered, short-cropped spikes—his blond and going up, Murph’s dark and going down. Instinctually, in automatic unison, they smoothed their fingers through their hair. Then stood back from the basin, they stared into the mirror.“We look good,” he said.“Da’ll be pissed,” Murphy replied softly.“Can’t be helped. Plus, it’s hair, it’ll grow back. We looked too much the part with it anyway, like fucken escapees.”“Not stallions?” came Murphy’s quiet inquiry.“Not fucken stallions. Down with tha’ fucken era.”Dropping the scissors into the washbasin, he snatched their rosaries from the hooks next to it, tossing Murphy his. Carefully, in a single motion, they brought the beads down over their heads.“Come on,” he said, shortly, turned and heading for the exit. Murphy hastened after.1He was pissing in an alley near the pub he’d been told to frequent when the first of the two lads came up to him.This was the fair one. The one with the confident air about his person. The one who had been cutting him looks all night inside the pub. Now the lad simply walked up, leaning sideways, and peered as bold as you please into his face. He hadn’t much of a clue what the Irish were truly about, but this he wasn’t used to. The lad was also speaking, words to him, none of which he paid any attention until he was done and shaking off. Tucked back in, he turned to the lad.“What?” he bit out questioningly.The blond lad’s eyes were enlarged, staring at him as though at a true and valid miracle.“I said, you look just like my brother Murph.”“I’m happy for you,” he replied, feeling a flare at his nostrils.This young man had to be touched in the head to come following a stranger—and one looking like him at that, whom he knew, from merely looking into the mirror, and simple world experience, that most men wouldn’t follow into a dark corner were they being paid—for the purposes of saying such asinine words.Without a single thought spared about it, he walked around the lad, who turned and followed his progressed out of the alley. At its entrance, he found another, this one dark-haired, with slits for eyes, and staring hard at him. Neither lad could have but just hit thirty. And could hardly be mistaken for brothers.Turning back towards the fair one, still coming out of the alley behind him, he extended a finger at the one next to him.“This your brother?”“Aye.”“That’s him, standing right there. Why’d you feel the need to go looking for another one?”The fair brother blushed. Even in the darkness he could see it. And for a flash, the lad looked utterly confused. Not having let his guard down for even a second, he also sensed it to be the exact moment in which the dark one tensed. A force of feeling from the entrance of the alley ward like a push to his chest.He looked from one brother to the next.“You lad here to take my wallet, are yah?”The fair one pulled back in visible surprise.Taking his eyes off that brother, he turned to the one at the entrance. “You can’t be that daft.”“We’re not fucken daft,” the dark one quietly, steely said, now subtly on the balls of his feet, like one ready to pounce.All escalating so suddenly, and with such intensity, that he too was starting to feel surprise. And, as oddly, as though he were the one trespassing.Passing a glance between the two, he was unable to keep his eyes from narrowing, particularly at the transfixed manner in which the fair one stared at him. Yet returning the lad’s stare only seemed to further agitate, drawing from the lad what seemed soft, helpless sounds. As though half-formed thoughts escaped a confused mind.Baffling it was, but no concern of his—certainly not to show that his attention had been ensnared. He merely waited expectantly, to see just how physical these two intended the situation to become.But as quickly as it had begun, all the tension seemed to deflate; the dark-haired one seem to empty of fight. Backing down, lips tightening, the lad darted an inexplicable look, first for him, then at his brother.“Conn’s sorry he bothered ya,” the lad said, not looking at him. “So we’ll be leavin’ now.”He sent his glance down the alleyway. Where the fair one started as though shoved awake. “Aye,” the lad said, looking confused and sounding befuddled. And in quick steps, came rushing past him, apparently out of his daze and unable to get away fast enough. And at the entrance, “Come, Murph. Da’ll be worried.”The dark one followed his fleeing brother more slowly, turning away on hesitant feet, while sending a last, lingering look over his shoulder at him. A look that clung to him.He watched them retreat into the night, his thoughts spinning.From his last worksite he had left no job unfinished, and owed no man money. The denim on his legs were his own, as was the work shirt on his back, and his fortune, good or bad, he wore in slim silver ‘round his neck in the form of his mother’s St. Jude’s. He could think of no reason for those two, or anyone else, to come looking to him for trouble.He had merely two weeks in the town, to find work and then leave for wherever within the county that took him. In that time, he intended to partake of no one else’s problems.His eyes staying motionless in the dark mater following the departure of the two brothers, he hoped his good fortune would hold out accordingly.2He’d noticed the man straightaway. In the pub, first time Murphy had called for next rounds. But he hadn’t wanted a closeted look. He truly hadn’t.The way the hair on the back of his neck had risen even before he’d gotten a better look. The way his heart had then done a free fall into his stomach long before he’d so much as understood what he was seeing. The manner in which his body had responded to the siren memory of a type of gaze, the promise of a type of touch, even the heat of a type breath against his skin, all happening amid the minuscule course of their pitches arriving, of raising his glass to his face, had been warning enough.Maybe it was the deep hollow of man’s black eyes, the set of his mouth, or the turn of his head. Maybe it was his quiet, intense demeanor throughout the evening. Or perhaps it had simply all culminated into something he wanted to see. But when he and stranger had locked eyes . . . He still lost his breath merely thinking of it.But he shouldn’t have gone into the alley to talk to him. Responding like some starry-eyed lad at the first strike of lust, taking it instead for some special make of Cupid’s arrow.For up close, it had been wore.The man had well and truly been Murphy’s double. Close up, the man’s presence had vibrated him to the core, like a roaring engine suddenly cranked on busted mounts. Only in speaking had the illusion been shattered, as besides a cloudy blur of a Welsh accent, the stranger’s was a deeper, more sharp-edged voice, lacking the soft danger of Murph’s sweet challenges. But in ten years or so, even those differences might not be so distinct.Sinking farther the truck’s passenger seat, his shins against the dash, his fingers trailing weakly across his forehead as Murphy drove them home, he was staring out at the passing night sky. At the slow, moving stars.He had no idea why he was entranced.3Da was livid, no question about it. The following morning, the old, long-termer, ex-convict took one look at their missing manes and beards and if a man had ever blown a gasket and not shown it, it was their Da in that moment. But their Da watched silently through dark, slitted eyes as they slung their rifles across their backs in preparation of riding out for the day. So much as a word their father never uttered. But there would be consequences.Frankly, he couldn’t have cared less.He was being haunted by a face. Earlier, he’d given Murphy several overly-delayed responses before having to own up to himself what he hadn’t wanted to even consider—that he had to go back into town and look for the man. The thought clawed at him, and he’d pushed back, again and again, until after breakfast when he had given up. Against common sense and family preservation, he would go back into town.Were there not need for medicines for the sheep and supplies for them, and relationships to maintain besides.Convincing Da of it, however, was no mean feat. They knew better than to be running around like this, to be returning to town more than once in a month like this; there were ways of handling restlessness, on and on. Aye, he answered, he supposed. But he felt a need to go nonetheless — townsfolk knew they’d taken up residence on the farm several years ago, with most knowing better than to ask the hithertos and wherefores. But local discretion notwithstanding, were it not better than they still show their faces more often than not, so as not to seem entirely out of place? Isolation for being new to the county seeming excusable in year-one, and even two. But finishing up a third year? A little more progression in socializing appeared more natural.If Da bought any of it, it was shaky nonsense at best, the old man gave no indication. Only after an extended moment giving permission, telling him to watch himself at the puds. He said that he would.Da, of course, hadn’t been who he needed to worry about.Murphy had long since turned hot, interested eye on him. And had follow up questions. And with him by the truck, stutterin’ and falterin’, soon also had suspicions. Still, he wouldn’t tell his brother why he was returning to town. And when Murphy simply and correctly pointed out that they were in fact running low on neither medicine nor supplies, so he needn’t go into town to chat up some supplier, his response came out much sharper than he intended.“We’re always fucken runnin’ low on supplies, because apparently, between the two of us, we present too fucken low on the competency scale to do a simple check until it’s too late.”Startled, close on his heels, Murphy faltered and appeared nervous. Looking, for all the world to see, in no state for a fight. Yet he didn’t see, or didn’t wish to. Meaning, as he would come to learn too late to avoid deeply hurting his bother, that Murphy too by then had begun feeling things differently. That Boston, and their twenties, and their teenage years, not to talk of their childhood, were far, far gone.That they were young men who had already grown into themselves. That by then, they should have been well and truly seeking themselves.For then, Murphy looked sensitive, injured. “What’s a’matter, Conn? Are we fightin’?”“Nothin’s the matter,” he said tightly, rapidly. “But could ye just, for once, find it possible to allow me the space to take a leak without me having to share the pot with ye?”At a complete stop, Murphy simply blinked. “Connor, what the fuck—?”But even Murph stopped. And swallowing against a dust-dry throat, he couldn’t fathom where to start answering, the words having flown from him without chance for consideration. Murphy’s startled eyes simply filled his vision.Then, a softly projected voice interrupted their impasse.“Laddies . . .”They both turned to see their Da standing on the threshold of the main farmhouse—a long, bony finger steadily tapping the wooden jamb. When sure he had their undivided attention, their father quietly spoke—informing them that they were not to go into town together again. Under any circumstance.“At least, not for time being. One or the other,” their Da said. “But not both of you.”Consequences. There they had it.But it settled the matter. And swinging open the truck door, he climbed in, managing to do a fine job of avoiding his brother’s bewilderedly hurt gaze.—

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4He found the stranger in the same pub, holed up in the same corner, and took a seat opposite him. The man looked up as he settled in, his dark eyes warily but merely following. Neither of them seemed deathly startled by each other’s presence.Comfortably seated, he reached for the ashtray and pulled out a cigarette. When no words still appeared forthcoming from his subject of interest, he asked.“Are ye not surprised t’ see me?”“How’s a’?” the man immediately replied, his deep voice billowing like sails that pulled on his vowels. “Ta see ya ‘gen inna poub? Wou’n’t make meh too fuckun brigh’ na, woud ‘et?”Pursing his lips, he sucked on his smoke, slowly blowing out a long, long plume. And after a moment, told him.“I have no idea what th’ fuck you just fucken said.”The stranger stared thin slits into him. His heart, wakened, pounded. He could take neither eyes nor attention off the man. It was, without question, the most excitement he had ever experienced outside of Murphy’s presence. Staring at this doppelgänger of his brother, he’d simply never felt anything like it. Nothing even close. He’d been right and nowhere wrong in returning. He’d been one hundred percent right in seeking to know more of this man who was Murphy, but from so different an angle.Tapping cigarette ash into the tray, he asked, “What’s yer name?”“Brice.”“What are ye, Brice?”“Welsh.”For a split second he nearly tripped over his words, so eager was he to quip in reply, but had to stop and check whether the joke was on him. “Really?” he remarked, upon seeing that Brice meant it without a scrap of humour. “Welsh? Wit’ that hot accent’a yours, my first guess would’a been Canadian.”Brice seemed to not get the joke. Or perhaps the man really wasn’t one for much humour. “What I meant was,” he clarified, gently. “What’d ye do for a livin’?”Brice merely stared at him. “What’s it to yew?”“Nothin’ a’tall,” he said, and slowly sat back. Then, letting out a soft breath. “Will ye take a pint?”Brice’s eyes continued burning holes into him, and he almost couldn’t take it. His heart deepening its pounding, seeking to burrow harder into him for both safety and in response to a more primal pleasure. It was all so familiar, yet so intensely different.Wetting his dry lips, while waiting for a seemingly heavy answer to a question so straightforward, he watched as Brice’s hand slowly encircled, then tipped his glass, and then as Brice sat there looking into its emptiness as though searching for a reply. To such an extent that he had to remind himself just what he had asked—which was simply whether the man would take a fresh pint.“I will,” Brice finally said.“Be back in a few,” he replied, pushing up from the chair. Then remained standing where he was, staring down at the hollowed, shadowed features, at the dark head. Brice didn’t look up, only kept staring at the wood tabletop.“Somethin’ amiss, boyo?” Brice asked.“Connor,” he replied softly. “The name’s Connor. And don’t you go anywhere.”5For unknown reasons, he and the lad connected. He hadn’t seen that coming. But hardly more than a pint in, it was fact. They seemed to think in facile harmony, and their conversation was light and easy.Yet he remained tense the entire time. Helplessly strained, still waiting to discover why the lad was so interested in him. Whether he’d been marked for a robbery after all, a stranger in town, what better mark—or whether he was about to find out that he had indeed crossed a man somewhere in his trails.But all Connor did was talk and smoke, tap ash into his ashtray, drink his whiskey. And make love eyes at him.He didn’t think the lad was aware of doing it. He himself was caught completely unawares by it. But it were as though Connor were immersed in another conversation entirely, though one taking place simultaneously. So that, ever so often, as he spoke in response to the never ending questions, Connor would pull away his cigarette, slowly wet his lips, purse them, then sit quite still as though pondering that other conversation. Then his lashes would slowly bat, the conclusions they’re apparently very much to this liking.Yet a quick roll was plainly not what this lad would fancy, as that would have made for many less pints.So he watched.“You never told me what you do for a livin’.”Connor had a quiet, low but hurried manner about his speech—not done with one thing and on to the next. At first, he’d concluded he’d been right that first night: daft. But soon he realized that it was in actuality the workings of a mind far too sharp for its own good. Connor could say much, thus do much damage, before a man was done hearing his first words.Connor still awaited a response. “Mostly construction,” he answered.“Mowwstly?” Connor repeated, doing a fine enough imitation of his speech, which should have annoyed him, but he heard no ridicule in it. “Is that why ye are in here so often?”“It is,” he answered, looking around at the local colour. “A pub’s as good a place as any to meet those in need of labour.”“Indeed. So what do ye do the rest of the time?”He gave it some thought, then decided he wished to move this dance along. So fastening his eyes on Connor, he waited until they had each other’s full attention.“Do you still mean for a livin’?” he asked.Connor began talking but no words came out. So he waited.And there came the tongue again. Wetter, much slower this time.“Ye look so much like Murph,” Connor said in a thick, faraway voice. “He-he’s my brother.”“So you’ve said.”Another trail over the lips. And Connor appeared to be blushing.It wouldn’t be his first time with a male. He’d not be sitting there on the receiving end of such a display were that the case. Connor was a pretty lad, a rugged, thin-faced farm lad, hard to take eyes off once glanced at. But he did wonder what this song was all about, and why the resemblance to the brother seemed the refrain.6They were about to leave when he brushed fingers with Brice.It happened just like that—having extracted their wallets, they dropped money on the table, grazing fingers, and sparks flew.Pulling his hand back, he actually checked his fingers for a burn, before shoving his wallet back into his jeans, and nearly tripping over is feet making for the back exit. Brice was fast on his heels, following down the dark hallway lined with rates and mop buckets, close as he pushed open the back doors, stumbling out into the back alley where they had first met. This time terminating his rush at the very dark, back.Brice was still there, though approaching more slowly, and on reaching, grabbed the lapel of his wool coat and slowly began pushing until he was against the cold brick wall.And everything came to a slow, complete stop.Brice stared at him, and he held still. Eyes dark and narrowed, hard and eagle-like, Brice’s face was so in shadow that for hard moments he trembled with the need to call him by the wrong name. And there lucidity came and fought with the surreal moment, asking him what he thought he was doing, what he hoped to accomplish by such a thing. Pretending one man for another.But it was like being drugged, seeing him this close up. Murphy in a decade and half, calm and together. Freed.But up against the wall, struck deep and hard by that nameless arrow, it was pure lust for this beauty of a man that kept him there. So placing a hand on Brice’s shoulder, he slowly kneaded the muscles there, waiting. Praying that they had indeed been strumming the same instrument all night.Brice glanced down at the hand on his shoulder. And was not there yet. His interest was too keen, seeming suspicious because it still seemed without context. As if their night of slow talk had not been enough. He was near dying. Upon no further action from Brice, though, he relaxed against the wall—what choice did he have—and stared passively at the man through half-lidded eyes. Showing that he was no threat, but rather a willing supplicant; sliding his hand up his warm neck, clutching his hair, massaging pliantly. Brice flushed deeply, everywhere. But only continued to stare at him.“Is this what yew wanted?”He nodded, slowly, deliberately, giving his stranger time enough to witness his sincerity.Brice’s hand twisted in his jersey, unhurriedly, indecisively, caught in the last filaments of a mind clearing, whether for yea or nay, making him close his eyes, against behaviour hardly different than his brother’s. Then he was being pressed, fist at the center of his chest, into the wall, and the body against his was heavy, dense, smothering— And then they were taking turns tasting whiskey and cigarette smoke from each other’s mouths.It was breathtaking.He was reading too much into it, he pleaded with himself, yet when Brice broke the kiss, he was trembling, panting hard and quietly as though gut punched. Brice’s fist was still on him, still unsure of freeing him, keeping him pinned to the brick wall . . . while Brice’s free hand was unzipping and yanking aside his jeans. When Brice’s hand plunged inside, he felt his heart burst. Murphy, in all ways.Clawing at the back of Brice’s head, but held fast by the fist pushed into his chest, he trembled not to thrust, not to move too fast or too hard, not even to say a word. Not to risk anything at all cutting short his perfect fantasy before he had a chance to fully live inside it.And he did so want to live inside it—to know aspects of this fantasy when he had never even known the possibility existed.But he had been stone-hard from inside the pub, long before Brice’s rough hand had entered his jeans, and he felt his climax rushing him like a thrashing his body craved; a type of physical pain that might distract him from the deeper one.In piety, he unzipped the stranger, wishing to do any good for Heaven to extend the moment, and sliding his hand inside, he palmed Brice . . . and had to stop when his hand came upon a hot, fat cock.Losing whatever train of thought he’d been on, he stared down, and it took him, Connor, long moments to find words. “Jaysus,” he breathed. “They make ‘em differently in Wales, now, don’t they?”In answer, Brice pushed into him, closing what space was left between them, hot breaths bursting against his ear, and then . . . the hand at his chest finally falling away.And he watched Brice’s downcast, dark eyes.“Evidently,” he said softly to his stranger, with a twist of his lips, unable to resist his nature to bask in victory. “I passed the test. And just in time, I might add. As even the Irish could die out here in the cold waitin’ for some attention.”Brice was wordless for a long minute, eyes down.“Yew ar’a pretty lad,” Brice breathed, his breaths rough, his hand squeezing, and pulling. “All of yew.”Augh, this was difficult. “Aye,” he breathed, feeling no less than Connor, yet eyes glazed and staring down at the hand squeezing the air out of him. “I believe ye.”Leaning into him, Brice kissed up the side of his face, then began scraping his teeth upward, closing them on the skin at his temple. Shuddering, at the unusual and expected caress, he held onto Brice, wanting to pray for all good things for this man—even as Brice . . . kissed his neck . . . on his tattoo of the Blessed Mother— and inhaling quietly, his words simply cut off. At what was no more a coincide than the very lessons of life itself.But slowly pulling back, Brice was unaware of any turmoil happening inside him, with eyes screwed into him, the hand on him continuing to do terrible things to him. Somehow charging then ebbing his climax, only to send it rushing forward again, and as he gasped and tried to reach for his stranger, receding it once more; until he didn’t know earth from sky. All that was missing, he thought as his hips began moving in slow pushes into the hand inside his jeans, since he already had the big, dense body, were slumbering sheep, a canopy of stars, and the helplessly stricken squint that would inevitably rise to hover over him.Scraping his fingers through Brice’s hair, his eyes were on the dark ones watching him . . . until it dawned that Brice meant to watch him come.For whatever reason, the thought frightened him as naught much had in three years. And for long difficult moments, he didn’t know what to do, wanting to tell his stranger to look away. But on his own, Brice appeared to change his mind, looking down instead at the cock he was fondling. Seeming as glad and as pleased in the sight as all of him, toes to nipples to hair follicles, felt.Then Brice was shifting off his body and lowering himself to his knees.After which, it was all a Welsh blur.Warm lips slid wetly, over and then slowly under his shaft . . . then was mashing him against his own stomach . . . again, then once more, from root to shaft . . . taking in his head with lavish swirls . . . to an accompaniment of the softest, most velvety sounds which could not possibly belong to the stranger . . . but which hit his ears like booming explosions. But that would merely be his heart.Then Brice’s fingers tightly gripped either side of his jeans, holding him still— a sensation so familiar— it hit like a crack of lightning. Thrusting, gripping, swearing . . . calling out to Mother Mary . . . he gasped into the the dark, empty alleyway. Into the most freeing darkness . . . and clutching, climbing with his knee and leg, pushing . . . he rode his stranger to sparkling new heights . . . until the world itself stopped. And that was all he remembered.Until, with a simpering sigh, he remained clutched to Brice’s hair as he began floating down . . . until, at last, too soon, it was ending . . .Brice took his time licking him, cleaning up after himself like some public school boy in a dining hall, while his vision remained blurred. And still mesmerized by his stranger’s dark head, his thoughts popped and began running in a hundred different directions at once. This was Murphy—this was what he could have—this was good— Until he stopped this thoughts. Stopped them cold.Rising, Brice wrapped an arm around his shoulder, and without words, began tangling their tongues. And turning, he let in the tongue already inside his open mouth. And once more he found Brice’s cock and began properly returning the finest favor he had had in a long while. Brice began thrusting in his hand, hard to hold onto to but he was a gifted child, and he surely learned fast, widening and closing his grip, then, seeming to like that, coming closer, against his stomach, before turning fully to him to take him by the hips, and was breathing and thrusting into all of him. Pinning him to the brick wall, shifting his hand off him so his cock could take over the work, Brice held him immobile, began climaxing, grinding, and pushing hard, short spurts into him. Coming like a broken fountain.Mother Mary, he moaned, his arms on Brice’s shoulders, his wrists draped on his back, his hands too weak to do much more than trace their rhythm.Then Brice slowed, and slowed, until Brice stopped, dropping his head to his shoulder, breathing—aye, harshly against his neck in the manner he all too knew, like it was night in Ireland—night on the plains, having their vigil while tasked with looking after the herd. Harsh breathing which would eventually give way to gentler, quieter versions.Coincidences, which, had he not manipulated both brother and father to be there, he would have convinced himself were entirely of his own making.They stayed like that for a while, until Brice slowly pulled back.Immediately, he made eye contact. He was of the mind that all it would take was eye contact—that they would some how lock gazes and the spell would be broken. That he would see no enchantments in the strangers gaze, and Brice would think of him as nothing more than a over-eager rube of a farm boy, in town looking for some unaccountable action.Maintaining eye contact in the hopes that, need fulfilled, his fixation would be gone. A release from all this.No such luck.Brice stared into his eyes, like a proper lover ought.Then, dipping his head, Brice softly kissed his lips. Tasting more than of whiskey and cigarettes now. Brice broke the kiss as softly, gazing flint dark eyes into him.“Yew’ll be back for more?”Without a moment’s hesitation, he nodded, And tried not to think of anything beyond that.7Something about Connor was different.Stripping his shirt, Connor tossed it into a corner and headed for the stone shed that held their bathroom without a word, while he observed in silence.On returning that first night from town, Connor had been closed off and distant. Never mind that the point of going into town alone had been for Connor to catch some kind of break his brother felt he needed.But each night watching Connor undress, it was plain that thoughts remained locked inside. Yet, Connor seemed more . . . relaxed. So on balance, the results were good.Night after night, good.Returning in the same mental condition—distant . . . yet relaxed.His assumption was that in thus going out nightly, Connor was having himself a good time, for which he was glad. Merely seeing the healthy flush on Connor’s skin was like food to his gut. Even if whenever he so much as hinted at joining, he got his head nearly snapped off.Startling each time, leaving him unable to respond.Lying in bed now, on the seventh day, in the darkness, he still didn’t know what was happening between them.Connor didn’t pick fights with him, just had a mouth on him; it was in fact generally vice versa. And at no time prior to Connor leaving the farm to head into town did they have any arguments past the normal ones they got into every fucken day on this farm. In fact, before declaring his intension to go into town alone on that first evening, Connor hadn’t even shown any indication of being upset by anything in particular he might have done.Since then, till that very night as he laid there, Connor had simply, all but topped talking to him.Not sniping, no longer cutting, just altogether stopped talking to him. Such things didn’t happen between them. But the farm had proven weird, and he had hoped, given full says, it would pass. But it hadn’t. And there in the darkness, mindlessly scraping his knuckles against his teeth, he was in a bad place.He was confused because he didn’t feel anger rising like it should have. Connor’s selfish behaviour in going into town without him having cleared a plain to the horizon on which to unleash justified fury. He should have been hard at the opportunity. A legit chance to put some well deserved bruises on Connor. Down payments, arrears, interest, all of that.But he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even breathing.He missed his bother—Connor’s touch being like a salve to a rising madness of need.He was in pitch darkness, fighting against the thought that it was finally happening. The one thing he couldn’t imagine, the one thing that made him sore beyond existence, to the point of breathlessness. The one thing that drowned out everything else, yet to which Connor had been speaking since practically the day they had arrived on the farm.Separation.That Connor might, at last, be rejecting his constant presence.It was impossible. Unthinkable.Why wouldn’t Connor want to be together at all times, like at any other time in their lives? Why, indeed, since their arrival, had Connor not been burning up with need like him, want like him? Why was it suddenly only him feeling the tug of their love, like a fishhook in his heart, pulling in whichever direction Connor went?Growing up, everyone had said their bond wouldn’t outlast childhood—that maturing, getting jobs, and getting families of their own would long dissolve their bond. And growing up, they had ignored everyone. You didn’t grow up and start shedding organs like a fucken salamander. They could not have lost each other no less than they could have lost their hearts. The sheer stupidly of most people had never so much as broken into their world.It was unthinkable. Yet it seemed the sole explanation for all that came from Connor’s lips in these days. That being when Connor actually bothered talking to him, instead of perpetually demanding that he back off. Stop behavin’ like the world was made of just the two of them now—but hadn’t it always?—and for him to go back to how he used to be in Boston. Aye, he’d love to.But for life of him, he couldn’t remember what that was. A thing seeming impossible to recall, in this new expanse that left him at sea and without memory of the conception of land.Turning, he punched his pillow. Then puling it close, he buried his face in it, and felt no relief at all.Soon, the heavy wood door creaked, and as with every night, Connor came back from their stone bedroom in silence. And without looking at him, climbed into his own bed across the cold room.Chewing on the pad of his thumb, turned with eyes unseeing at the wall on his side, he waited for Connor to say something. G’night, Murph; No need to wake me for a shower in the morning; anything.Connor said nothing. And soon, Connor was asleep.Waiting a little longer, the delay was all that he could bear. Until he simply got out of bed, and quietly, crossed the stone flags.Connor didn’t wake as the mattress dipped beneath his weight, nor as it righted when he crawled in. Pressed up to Connor, he carefully pulled up the blankets, before slowly shifting closer. Now on his side, his chest against Connor’s back, he felt that his beating heart would wake Connor. Felt so, even as he pushed his face into the warm hollow of his twin’s neck.Connor stirred. But didn’t wake; with moments passing. Then Connor arched against with a warm groan. Mewling, he instinctually contracted his arm around Connor’s body, then braced for an elbow to the ribs. It didn’t come. Instead, Connor reached all the way behind and pulled his arm even tighter around himself.Mewling openly now, softly kissing Connor’s neck, he wished that Connor would wake and smile at him, chide him for being so foolish, and promise that all would be well. Connor didn’t.Burying his face in Connor’s shoulder, he bore into him until he couldn’t breathe, and held tight enough to hurt him—kissing him, and kissing him, until he fell asleep.8The following evening however, when he asked Connor if he could join him into town and fuck what Da said, Connor exploded.“No, Murph, ye fucken can’t! Ye can’t come with me! Jaysus, fuck! How th’ fuck did’ja ever manage in Boston!”Stunned, he stared, then put his fingers to his temple, but losing his battle, he too was suddenly yelling. “What the fuck, Connor!” he shouted. “What th’ fuck is up with ya? It’s just a fucken bar!”“Is it?” Connor asked, smoothly, then yanking open the door, was climbing into the truck. “Fine, then come if ye like. But not in this truck, and not to the same fucken bar.”Then Connor slammed the door and cranked the ignition, and he was stepping away and giving Connor both his middle fingers as Connor put the truck in gear, and without another look or word at him, floored the truck away.9Seeing him again was easy. Easy on the eyes, easy on the mind. He was so beautiful. So— right.They spoke of nothing in particular, merely eyefucking until they could do the real thing.Brice had a rented trailer located at the town limits, and there they took their wants when they had talked enough for the night.Or perhaps, the nightly hours-long delay was because Brice still didn’t seem fully convinced of his true desires. Because try as he might, he wasn’t doing a good enough job of not staring half the time. Of not watching the words fall from the man’s lips like one never having seen another speak. But inevitably, they would end at Brice’s trailer.And then they would be having sex.And it was unbelievable.It was so good, it was almost romantic.On his back, on his side, up on his knees arched with his hand in Brice’s hair, they fucked like lovers. Giving and taking of each other, as freely, and as much as they wanted. Groping and sending each other into such highs of pure ecstasy which with— which would otherwise unleashed a torrent of heartache in him.Right then on him back, his feet against working Welsh shoulders, he stared at the man, basking in the absence of all that.Brice stared his hot, twin, black holes back into him, his black hair falling over his face. Then hand gripping him by the hip held him down as his cock and balls got played with. Breathing through the dizzying heat of it, he watched Brice’s tongue slide out and slide up the side of his mouth, spellbound, as it went precisely where Murphy’s mole would be. Hearing the sounds he was making, the way his breathing shuddered like he was dying, he hoped Brice had enough sense not to ask questions about why he sounded so stupid when they fucked.It was Murphy without the pressure. He could no more hide from such simple truth than he could then tell Brice to stop. Murphy without the pain, without the deep, wild, anguish. Nothing pulling at his heart while he and his partner did their finest to consume each other. He was free to want and be wanted without being needed. To look into eyes he seemed to have been born staring into . . . looking across a baby crib into, not at their Ma’s, nor their Da’s, but his baby brother’s dark eyes staring existence into him.Now the eyes staring down at him contained no such complexity. No fear at all. Life? Death? Exile? Separation? What were those? Yet eyes that were all but his brother’s.He was free to just be Connor again.Curling his ankles, he brought Brice closer, sliding along those shoulders until they were hooked beneath his knees. Then gripping by the thighs, while Brice pushed into him, he writhed into Brice’s touch. Getting himself into position for a deep, leisurely fuck. Making wonderful soft sounds of appreciation, working class man that he was, Brice speed his hard fingers into his groin, digging into the hollows there. Breathing, he shut his eyes, planning on living inside this moment of unhindered pleasure forever. Only to immediately open them, upon realizing that he had no desire to take his eyes off the dark, lovely head above him. Opening them just in time to watch Brice kiss the inside of his knee, before his evocative hands slid under his knees, pushing up his legs. Giving him just enough time to adjust himself as Brice smoothly pushed in.No wail or cry from his heart accompanied Brice’s action. Yet he heard it.Soft and clear, moving deep throughout his body—an elemental call he’d been born hearing. Waves of tight pleasure grappled for, and sank him, tugging on his heart so hard, and washing his head so hotly, that it clouded his vision, hardly allowing for the sight of the dark head above him, panting over him—the open mouth with the missing mole he could nonetheless see.They collided arms reaching for each other, gripping forearms to pull each other closer. With his free hand, he gripped the edge of the mattress as Brice leaned over and began slamming into him, his breaths hot and sweet against his face; the silver St. Jude’s swinging from around his neck and brushing his skin like the beads of a rosary. Just like a rosary. It had his cock leaking all over his stomach. Closing his eyes, turning against the back of the sofa, he sank into its cushions, helpless to fight it any longer.“Give it to me, Murph,” he slurred.Then rolled his lips tight. Flushed everywhere with embarrassment.And it was long, pleasure-filled, spiraling moments before he could so much as flutter open his eyes.Brice’s black eyes were pinned on him, narrowed and missing nothing. He had no idea what was on the man’s mind, what Brice thought he had heard. But groin fastened to his ass, hips rotating harder, Brice’s cock burrowed deeper, almost helplessly, and now a fine sheen of sweat had broken out over his skin, gleaming under the bright, florescent lights. Slowly, the dark eyes blinked in pleasure at him. And he was gone.Taking him as deeply as he could, he let himself go. Never fearing that they would set the world on fire, let it burn, and not care about finding their way back.—

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10Connor’s shite attitude carried on for eight additional nights. Two weeks and counting. On each, Connor continued going into town without extending him so much as an invitation for a shot of whiskey, and always returned reeking of it.Reeking of something.Smarting badly, at the repeated rejection, at himself for giving a shit, sweating, while threshing hay in the misty morning sunshine, sweating though it was hardly eight o’clock, he at first tried ignoring Connor to piss him off. But Connor wouldn’t even make eye contact to give him the satisfaction.After which he resolved to ignore what he was feeling, seeing no need to even get to a point of needing to ignore Connor in the first place, for being, after all, in the fucken right. But his wishes, trailing Connor around the field like a dumb puppy, paid him no more heed than Connor did.So he threshed and stacked and seethed in infuriated silence. Angry at him instead of the one deserving of it. Stoking the fight waiting to break out of him. Just waiting.Until day’s end on the sixteenth day. Inside the barn. putting away equipment, then seeing Connor strip off his gloves and pick up a shower kit he hadn’t even suspected Connor had stashed now for a direct line to the shower shed—the fight finally erupted from him.“What th’ fuck, Conn!” he cried loudly to no one in particular. “You can’t keep goin’ into town. You’re jeopardizing our fucken situation. We’re on the fucken lam, in case you hadn’t noticed. Es-a-fucken-matter-of-life-and-death,” he mocked, unsurprised to feel Conner’s words from nigh on six months ago still burning. “Es-et nah,” he jeered, throwing tiring-ass metal equipment into silos. “Ya dumb-fuck med’cin, an’ feeds an’ all that fucken nonsense. Da’s worried as fuck, cuz all of fucken Ireland’s probably aware of our location by now!”“It’s not jeopardizin’ our situation. It-it’s not. We do need fucken medicine, we do need fucken feed. And— an’ I’m being extra careful. Trust me on it.”He felt a moment’s confusion, hearing, but being incapable of processing Connor’s uncharacteristic, simpering, conciliatory tone. What the fuck was this? So he ignored it.“That’s not the fucken point! You need to stop this!”“Murph, I swear ta ya, it’s okay.”“What th’ fuck is goin’ on with ya, anyway? You know you’re being reckless?”“I-I’m not being reckless,” Conner replied, fucken stuttering, for the first time he could ever remember, while apparently only capable of repeating whatever he’d just fucken said. “I-I promise ye, I’m not, I just— need ye— to not—”But Connor stopped talking, his light eyes flitting about the barn in the late afternoon sunshine like a bluebird in captivity. Then Connor’s complexion began reddening a shade. And then several, and to his atonement, he realized that Connor was . . . embarrassed. Like, actually embarrassed.“I just need ye to not ask . . . ” Connor finished weakly.But he wasn’t hearing. Wasn’t listening to words.What the fuck was he looking at? Even besides the stunning stuttering, when was the last time fucken exhibitionist Connor felt embarrassed about anything?And in a cold snap, clarity dawned on him. The floating moments suddenly locking into place. Watching Connor’s continually darting eyes, he wondered why it had taken him this long.Though he supposed, he’d known all along.“It’s about that man, isn’t it?”Connor’s darting eyes flew straight to him. Frightened. Holy shit.“I just— need ye to back away from me just now, Murph. Just— gimme some fucken space. Alright?”“Back away from ya?” he asked quietly, disbelievingly, whatever tenuous hold on his temper frizzing on the live wire he was faithfully holding inside him. Neither he nor Connor had ever abided stupidity, and that now Connor spoke to him with it. Pushing from the wooden slats of the barn wall, he straightened all the way to face his twin. “Back away, ya say? So you can go fuck a man who looks just like me?”Connor whipped a look at him. Boy, was he fucked glad for it. He was going to reconstruct Connor’s face better than he could ever any failing shite system on this godforsaken farm. He didn’t give a single shit about the farm. But Connor? Neither would he need readying. He just needed Connor within striking distance, and he would send Connor face-first into the nearest wall. Perhaps it would even force some clarity into both their heads.But whipped at him, Connor’s eyes were wide— not with fury, not even with simple resistance, but with shock. Over apparent words he . . . barely recalled, for having been such basic truths at the time of utterance. Neither had Connor’s shade of embarrassment gone anywhere, merely seeming brighter with awareness, perhaps of not being as clever as he thought.“D’ya think I’m a fucken retard, Conn?” he asked, awaited by the shelves, by the mere force of their unspoken dynamic. “Not able to see ya . . . stupid . . . fucken . . . plans, wrought for so obvious a reason. Fucken med’cine, an’ shit? When all you’re fucken wantin’ is some cock?”“Murph—!”“Why not just fucken say it, Conn? Say whatcha doin’, and why you’re fucken doin’ it. Runnin’ into town every chance ya get, like a fucken whore on the clock.”“I swear ta fucken Christ, Murph—!”“Just say it!” he cried. “‘Stead’a playing yer dumb games, and telling your dumb stupid lies, that could get us both in hot water.”Then it was inside him, risen—since unheeded, frustrated and frightened; unloved, and every other thing tearing aware inside him on this utterly fucked farm—and unable to stamp it, he let loose. Worse than he had in years. Pushing forward once more from beneath the wooden shelves, from the wooden wall, he squinted derisively at his bother.Hurt, insulted, that after thirty plus years, Connor was acting dumber, sillier than him.“Do ya loooove him, Conner? Do ya fucken loooove him.”“Murph!”Ignoring Connor’s warning tones, he continued regarding his brother with utter disgust. “Do ya fucken come when he’s inside ya? Do ya call ma’ fucken name when he’s fucking ya sideways, crwthin’ Muuurph, oh Murphy, like a dyin' bitch.”Connor was on him before he knew what had happened.Had him up in a corner beneath an angled beam, head banging before he knew what had happened. The pain came and went, fast. But Connor was suddenly frozen against him with fist clenched, a punch ready to his throat that would have hampered him, it he were lucky, not merely in speech and breathing, but until at least the next morning.But seeming contented with the bang to his head, and to have put some fright in him, Connor, blinking his light eyes, confusion all over his face, pulled back his hand, which Connor then lowered, and did nothing else.Just held him so tight, he could barely so much as twitch.“Watch what ye fucken say, Murph,” Connor whispered, in a tone he’d only ever heard his brother use on those utterly unfortunate enough to truly cross his wild, but truly lovely brother. “Watch what the fuck ye say.”He could barely remember exactly the fuck he’d said. Of what importance was it, compared to how Connor was treating him.“Or what?” he jeered, leaning forward until he was sure Connor could taste his disgust. It was one thing to go anyone, it was another entirely to jeopardize their entire existence over it. Especially following the talking-to Connor had spent the last three years giving him.“Or . . . fucken . . . what?”Their tension held. And Connor stood there, pressed into him, doing absolutely nothing.Then Connor’s dropped. “Brice—”His heard his breathing snag.Having never felt such emotions at the sound of a stranger’s name, he nearly passed out from a lack of breath.But he was going to live through it, or die.“Brice what?” he sneered, viciously. Wishing with all his heart that the angels would come and take the hoarseness, the had at his throat, the difficulty of speech away. “Brice— fucken . . . what?”Connor said nothing, so reddened, light eyes so dark and downcast, he wanted to cry. Where was his strong brother?And suddenly he was tried as fuck. But on foreground, angry and unavenged. His heart on fire.“Is it better, Connor? Is it easier to feel nothing, than to feel, to hurt? It’s what you’d like, isn’t it? What you’ve been saying since we got here. To fuck me without having to have me inside your head. To love me without having to hear my part. To have it all. Fuck’s sake, does he even know you’re doin’ it?”Connor slammed his palm into the side of the barn, beside his head. “Shut it, Murph! Shut the fuck up!” But it was an empty threat. And Connor banged him bodily against the wooden wall, hard enough to rattle his teeth.Before Connor, as simply, just as suddenly, let him go. Straightening from him.Righting himself no less, it was to find his hold on himself oddly intact. Odd, because he was so doused in righteous, vicious fire, that the air in the hay, the wooden beams, the air itself in the barm seemed to shimmer with heat. He licked his dry lips, flicked a look at Connor’s blushing face.“Ya keep sayin’ I should go back to the way I was in Boston. That things would be better that way. But you’re wrong about that. And count yourself lucky for it. Otherwise, I woulda long since pulverized ya head.”“Go on and give it a shot, Murph.”But he threw a hand up in disgust instead, blocking Connor’s eyes. “Who fucken cares,” he said, uncaring of his own hoarseness. “Yer nothin’ but a fucking . . . lyin’ bitch these days anyway.”“Oh, who’s the fucken bitch. Huh, Murph? Who’s been actin’ like certified, grade-A cling moss since we got here? You, that’s who. It’s a fucken wonder I can breathe with ye on my neck all night an’ fucken day. Oh, Connor, Connor! Connor this, and Conner fucken that. So just— just ye fucken remember that when ye start tossing blame around, like some retarded wanna firefighter with a fucken retarded hose. Look’a ye! Ye— ye used to be— a fucken panther. Now looka ye!”“Couldn’t give a fuck, Conn.” And spreading his arms, he let Connor see by his expression just what he thought of Connor’s stupid thoughts.“Not here ta be ya fucken panther. Just wanna know why you’re acting like I don’t understand yer needs, is all.”“Just— don’t! Don’t talk about what you don’t know.” And after a hot, tight moment, “Don’t talk about the things I need.” Then . . . “I’m not having this conversation with ye. We’ve— both been arses. Let’s just leave it at that.”Already back away from him, already feet away, at this point, both he and Connor should have been grabbling for each other. Even if still hitting, still frustrated and pushing and shoving, they should have been clawing and hugging while doing doing it. Hugging and kissing and slapping, clawing, even if still trying to rattle some sene into each other. They never fought and maintained distance from each other.They never fought and felt that the rules had changed. That the world was ending.But everything was different now.Too urgent. To life or death.And he was not equipped to know what to do.Connor was by then at the barn’s exit, turned. And paused, at the doors, Connor held the beam, and called over his shoulder. “Stay the fuck out of my bed from now on, by the way. We’re not six anymore.”“Aw, fuck you!” he hollered. “I’ll sleep wherever the fuck I want! I’ll sleep right fucken here if I want! An’ you stay livin’ right the fuck in ya fairyland. I hope you live happily ever after playin’ hide and seek with ya fucken self!”The great barn doors banged as Connor existed, and he found himself alone.11Late the following afternoon, their Da was sitting on the farmhouse porch, waiting on him for his now daily post-chores run into town.Murphy was in the doorway behind Da, leaned against the door jamb and staring a black hole into him. Turning in confusion from the black gaze, it was to the feeling that he was about to escape it . . . only to go get more of it. It was wildly confusing.But he was ready to go.“Laddie,” their Da softly called, his velvet voice sheathing the iron beam underneath. “What on earth do ya think yer doin’?”“All’s quiet, and nothin’ out of the ordinary, Da.”“Answer the fucken question,” Murphy called softly.“Stay the fuck out of this,” he shouted immediately, stabbing a finger in his bother’s direction. Murphy’s eyes narrowed, and it was as if—Mother Mary help him, he thought, blinking and lowering his gaze. A hot sweat broke over his skin, and he didn’t even know who he was angry at anymore—at himself, for playing what Murphy so right called a game, or what. He didn’t know and didn’t care. All he wanted was to be in town fucking Brice with his eyes open. It was that simple.“It’s nothin’ Da,” he insisted. “Promise ye, it’s nothing. I just need to take care of a few things and it’ll soon be over.”“What’ll be over?” Murphy sneered. “Yer lyin’ ways?”Glacially, their father’s head turned, eyes drifting to where Murphy stood mouthing off. Aware he’d crossed a line with their father’s patience, Murphy mercifully clamped up.When their Da faced forward again, nonetheless, it wasn’t to look at him. But slowly turning his head, until he staring silently into the distance, in the direction of town, the old man seemingly contemplating whatever he imagined his son might be doing down there.Their father sat like a rock for an extended period, meaning all three of them did, suspended inside the patience of a twenty-five-year US federal prison survivor.“Where d’ye live, laddies?”“In Ireland,” they answered in unison.Not in Boston, nor in any land of fantasy inside their heads. But in cold, hard reality The first set of words their father had spoke to them upon their arrival.Their Da slowly stood up from the wooden porch chair. “Sort yourselves, lads. I’ll hear no more of this.” And returning into the house, passed where Murphy stood staring viciously at him.12Turning from the entrance, he followed into the house after Da, but only after making sure he’d given Connor the shittiest look of all time over his shoulder. Then he shut the house door behind him.Connor could go fuck himself with his ever high and mighty attitude, now made unbearable by his precious, fucken papal indulgence of a tormented soul. Jaysus, fuck, had he thought Connor’s lifelong know-it-all-ness had been testing. Now Connor was a nonstop font of idiocy. Had Connor really been talking shit about not being the same as in Boston? Boston, every fucken day, like some mantra that would reset the world? So who the fuck was this person? Certainly not the same mouthy Connor.He wasn’t losing his shit just because things were rough on the farm. Just because their lives, once so brilliant with excitement and nigh on perfection—made wonderful by how his brother used to be: his Sirius, his North Wind, his Hannibal of Carthage, the most exciting force he had ever encountered—had now deteriorated to sheep shearin’ and shit shoveling, and fucken wrist wringing. But was he losin’ his shit over it? Of course not.In spite of Connor’s cold threats in the barn, he should have beaten some sense into his brother. Made him take Da’s concerns to heart, not to mention getting some release for his tension along the way.Stopped by the parlour window, he found himself staring outside through the lace curtains—the house was Da’s, with their stone shack not fifty meters down the way, but garnished everywhere still with baby-boy blue lace curtains that spoke unquestioningly of Da missing Ma—and gazing at where Connor was still standing. Not having moved so much as an inch from where he and Da had left him.Stilled with eyes downcast, Connor’s mind appeared stuck fast. Connor appeared literally frozen. Reveling in the sight, he was glad to see that something had penetrated Connor’s mind about needing a real adjustment to his shite attitude.But outside, Connor turned his gaze in the direction of town. Staring longingly, yet patiently. Thoughtfully, as Connor ever was; so he wouldn’t have to be. Much like their Da. As he had always been like their Ma, wanting to get a kick in first and explanations later.And like Da had, Connor was now also looking toward town as if seeing what he could not.Unaware that he was watching, Connor hid nothing. While he was getting a clear look at what was happening on his brother’s face.The sight was a swift, hard kick to his stomach.Something was wrong.Connor looked neither angry, nor frustrated, nor impatient—the core emotions he’d spent the last three years dealing with from Connor, especially in the last two weeks. And not to mention during their dumbfuck fight in the barn.Instead, Connor appeared . . . confused. Like a fully stripped down, naked version of their argument in the barn.This was simply not Connor.His hold on the porch railing relaxed, Connor’s form was equally so, from the turn of his head to his stance in his work boots. Yet in Connor’s eyes remained an echo of that odd moment when Da had queried about his clockwork outings and he had chimed in, fully expectant of Connor to strike back—seeking to defend his hungry pub crawls for that man’s attentions. Instead, Connor had faltered, virtually tripping to a halt over his own words. A near impossibility for verbally gifted, silver-tongued Connor.Now, Connor looked back from even the direction of town.Remaining where he was by the window, he tried to understand what he was seeing. From the day he was born, he had never needed eyes to see what his brother felt. Yet here, in this terrible exile, even with eyes, he couldn’t see it.The sight outside seemed to want to bend toward what he ought to be seeing, what he was used to seeing, but it wasn’t. Standing out there, he had thought that in ignoring his eyes, Connor was being intentionally mean from their arguments. Trying to make his point about Boston and whatever the fuck. But he had been angry, and confused, and had ignored the fact that Connor didn’t have a mean bone in his body.Nor had faltering uncertainty, confusion . . . this look in Connor’s eyes . . . ever been a by-product of any argument they’d ever had.Confusion, in either of them, was utterly new.And here, Connor looked to town, to their Da’s empty chair, to the shut door, then to the railing he held, like a man in search of answers.And he was floored.What, in God’s name, could the questions be?—

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13He thought and thought about it, weighing potential consequences against hoped-for results, and when he was convinced it was the right thing to do, on a day with Da and Connor elsewhere on the farm, he went into town to see Brice.At the pub, he was directed to a back room, and there found our lovely Brice talking to a man he knew to be a local foreman. Leaned against the doorjamb, he waited his turn for an audience with his royal fucken majesty. He wanted to be cool, but already he wasn’t. He didn’t like the look of the man. Never had. All that chatter Connor had done that first night about how much they looked alike—whatever the fuck that meant. Connor looked more like him than this suspicious-looking character.The foreman finished and came by the doorway, nodding to him. Stepping aside, he let the foreman through, then turned to Brice.14It took a moment to figure who the lad by the door was and why he was staring so viciously at him. Then it came to him. This was Connor’s brother, the one he was supposed to look like. Name of Murphy. He was surprised to see the lad. Not so surprised however at how it instantly physically affected him. Beautiful, the two were. Even though the look on the lad’s face asked him to prepare for some unpleasantness.And then Murphy began to speak.Ready as he’d been to hear condemnation for sleeping with his brother—the Irish were belligerent about everything—he was instead standing there being bombarded with a pained sort of whine. To go mess around with someone else and to “stay away” from his brother, to “stay the fuck away from Connor!”You could have knocked him over with a soft breeze.He didn’t think the lad knew how he was coming off.Not sure what to think, given no reason forthcoming for the scarlet-faced tirade, he let the lad finish. By then, having begun walking, he was already at the doorway, where he first glanced into the hallway to make sure they weren’t about to be overheard, before turning back to the lad. There was room in the doorway, but it was a much closer encounter than that first night in the alley. Like that time, he noted again that the lad seemed inexplicably angry at hm. Also that despite how close he now stood, Murphy hadn’t shifted a millimetre.So he stood in the doorway, facing him. “Listen boyo,” he said kindly. “First off, this isn’t any of your business. What happens between me and your brother happens between me and your brother. If you don’t like it, there’s nothing I can do.”Eyes narrowed, and on him like watching a grass snake, Murphy fell dead silent. While he couldn’t shift his own eyes from the lad’s mouth, in the moment feeling a bit like Connor staring in his direction that first night in the pub and every night since in his caravan. He couldn’t take his eyes off the beauty mark on the lad’s mouth.“Second,” he continued, watching Murphy’s expression slowly building back up to something. “fearing your brother’s a poofter is a foolish thing to worry about. We’re grown men, we do as we please.”Finished, he stopped talking, watching Murphy’s expression cover much territory and finally end on disbelief.“No wonder Conn likes ya,” Murphy said, incredulity rising his voice. “You two are the fucken same.” Then Murphy paused, tightening everywhere. “Now you fucken listen, ya Welsh sheepfucker. I don’t give a shit what you think about anything. And you can feel free to do whatever Connor’ll let ya. Couldn’t care less.” — And it was plain to see that this was not true. — “But I have my eye on ya, and you take extreme caution with Connor. Do anything to hurt him, so much as take advantage of him, and so help me, I’ll fucken kill ya.” Now Murphy looked straight into his eyes, and it was plain to see that this was true.He stayed silent. It was astounding, the lad not making any effort to hide the pain in his eyes; bloodshot they were, with lips pressed near painfully, Murphy stared hard at him as though nothing at all was out of the ordinary about coming to the rescue of a grown man’s virtue.It was plain to see that he had fallen into the middle of something. Though for the life of him, he couldn’t say what.He calmly reminded Murphy that Connor was the one who carried a gun. “If anyone ought to be afraid, should it not be me?”“A word is enough for the wise,” Murphy said, pushing from the jamb, near brushing him with his shoulder as he left. “Have a nice fucken day.”He watched over his shoulder until the lad was gone, through the back door leading into the alley where they all three had met so many nights ago, and had to admit he was intrigued.15The next time Connor was draped on his caravan’s couch, leg over the back, gleaming black piece on the coffee table, arm over his thigh, smoking a fag, looking as sexy as any man had the right to be, he told him about the visit from his brother. Connor didn’t say anything while listening, seeming unsurprised.“So angry at the mere possibility of your being hurt,” he told Connor. “He truly loves you.” Connor’s lips twisted, in an apparent effort to suppress a sardonic smile. It was somehow the loveliest and most obnoxious thing he had ever seen. It made a man feel obtuse.“It’s like a burnin’, it’s so intense,” he went on, hoping for some engagement. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it.” He paused, then added, “Can it be because yew’re twins?”“Fuckifiknow.”He sat back and breathed. Then giving the tension enough time to pass, he stood up and went to the couch. Bending over, he took the fag from Connor’s fingers, without protest, put it out in the ashtray, and turned back to his prize. Touching a corner of Connor’s moustache, it was on the spot where the bother’s beauty mark would be, which had Connor lifting pale blue eyes at him, before he continued on with tracing Connor’s goatee, gently rubbing the back of his finger against the soft growing in shade of beard.“You farm lads are a bit confusing,” he said softly. “I’ll tell you that much.” Connor didn't respond. And he debated whether to say it, then decided that he should, as things were tense enough without more secrets. “And are you and your brother. . .” he let his words trail off. Connor again, slowly, lifted his eyes to him. Then laid there watching him.“Are me and my brother what?”The question was lightly presented, a simple request to go on. But no man’s fool was he. Straightening, he grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and stripped it off, tossing it to the floor. Then with one knee on the couch next to Connor’s hip, he waited, watching Connor appraise first the ridges of his stomach, then the more prominent one trapped beneath the denim against his thigh. And expected it was reply enough. After all the talk of him and his brother, he hoped Connor got a clue as to what was going on in his mind. It was only natural. Connor’s eyes however barely lowered past his stomach. But Connor was smirking all the same.Then he chose to say the other thing he’d gotten out of the meeting with the brother. “He’s a lovely lad,” he said, and meant it.Connor slowly stretched, raising a hand to leisurely trail his fingers through his spiky blond hair, while bestowing on him a smile that was still part smirk but all satisfaction.Reaching for his belt, he never took his eyes off Connor’s smile. Getting the feeling that when it came to things of this nature, Connor very much knew what he was doing.16“Ye went and paid him a visit.”Seated on the bed of the truck and staring out at the sunset across the fields, Murphy didn’t stir as he came upon him. “Girlfriend come cryin’ to ya?” Murphy said in a thick voice. Rounding the back of the truck, it was to see Murphy’s glistening, still wet, and blinking eyes.Stopped while still paces away, he showed his intent to move no closer. It isn’t aggression he wished to convey.“I got a good look at him, Connor,” Murphy said after a while. “A real close look.” Then Murphy fell involuntarily silent. Confirming that having seen what he himself saw in Brice, Murphy could no longer deny the validity of the attraction. Just as he himself could just barely face it.Then in a voice cracking over every other word, Murphy at last spoke to him.“I know what it is I do to ya, Connor. I know it’s me, Murph, driving ya crazy, always and forever. But isn’t this the way it’s always been? No matter how fucken painful, isn’t this what we are? Fucked. But always together.” His voice stopping altogether, it took some struggle before Murphy managed to ask. “So why the fuck are ya leaving me now?”“Ah, Murph. . .”“You’re a fucken asshole, Connor. You’re an asshole and a coward for making me be the bad guy. Makin’ me have to say the things we’re both feelin’.”Turning away, he felt unable to speak. Not in the face of truth as plain as that. That it was him, Connor, driving Murphy crazy. Always and forever. In dismay, kept his eyes away.“If you wanna go, fucken go. If ya can’t take the pressure, get the fuck out. Da and I’ll be fine.”“Murph,” he said sadly, glancing at his brother, so drained of resistance he could barely stand there and talk. “This isn’t real. It’s just something I’m going through. Why don’t ye just let it go? Why don’t ye not think about it?”Murphy kept his head lowered, his lips pulled so tight the skin showed white. “That’s an asinine thing to say, Connor,” Murphy said in a wet rasp, “and you know it.”His own eyes began to sting, staring as they were at his twin’s red and distressed ones. Sniffing and pushing his nose into his shirtsleeve, Murphy then stood up, rounded the truck and started back toward the house.He himself didn’t move for a long time.17That evening, he left the farm one last time in search of Brice.When he reached him, Brice was packing up to leave town, having found work a couple towns over and heading out by morning. He stood at the caravan’s entrance and watched the rugged, beautiful Welshman stuff clothes into a duffle. Brice glanced over at him, his eyes lingering, glinting with that appreciation that had kept him coming back for more—the twin of what he used to see in this brother’s eyes—before lowering back to his task.“Have yew not had yur fill?”About to reply, he stalled, then realizing what Brice was asking, smiled instead. “Not of ye, no,” he replied. “But I do understand what yer askin’, and the answer is yes. I’ve had my fill.”Brice continued packing, and at first didn’t reply. Then he said, “I don’t understand it and I don’ envy yew. But I also don’ wish to get in the way of it.”He nodded slowly, scrubbing the stubble on his jaw. “Aye, I hear ye. Though . . . it’s a wee more complicated than that.”Brice glanced up at him. He stepped inside.—

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

18He’d told Murphy to meet him at the abandoned barn at the edge of their property, but Murph had given him no indication one way or another whether he’d come. It was with relief that he saw Murphy approaching in the chill night air.At the barn’s entrance, he moved aside so Murphy could enter, then turned around to see what Murphy would do upon seeing who was inside.Murphy walked forward a few feet, saw where Brice stood in the corner, beneath the loft where he’d laid blankets over the hay, and threw up a hand.“Not fucken interested,” Murphy said, and turned back around.But his arm was stretched across the barn’s entrance, blocking Murphy’s exit. Murphy looked at him, staring knives. Behind Murphy, he saw Brice lower his eyes to the floor. Brice had opined earlier that it was likely an untenable situation, and were that the case he would simply leave, taking no further appeals. But Brice hadn’t dropped his eyes fast enough, and he had seen the acute disappointment in them.As for his brother, well, he knew Murphy perfectly well.“Have a seat, Murph,” he invited gently, lifting his chin toward Brice’s location.“With ya fucken pervert?” Murphy softly said.He put his plea in his eyes. “Come on, Murph. Please.” After a long moment of hesitation, Murphy turned around and stomped all the way over to where Brice stood. Still some feet away, Murphy stopped, tense, eyeing, while Brice extended a hand.“Don’t believe’s wey’ve ben prow’ply introwduced," Brice said.Fully turning a half-disgusted sneer of a look over his shoulder at him, Murphy snorted. “Fucken queer as shit accent.”Hurrying over, he stopped between them, on Brice’s right and Murphy’s left—but now with both on either side of him, he utterly failed at not simply swiveling his head from one to the other.Enthralled, he took in the near identical planes and angles of their faces, even seeing that Murphy’s animosity seemed somehow a mirror of Brice’s fascination. If he thought being with Brice had been a perfect fantasy, he was about to injure himself in that barn.“Murph,” he said, around a hoarse throat. “I’d like for ye to be formally introduced to Brice, from Wales. Brice, this is my brother Murphy.”“Nice to make your acquaintance,” Brice said slowly, in an obvious effort at accommodating enunciation. The needless effort made him flatten unexpected amusement.“It’s fucken lovely to meet ya,” Murphy said, brattishly — needless, had he not said — tipping his head to make sure that Brice could see from every angle that it was not; in case his uncivilized attitude didn’t do the job, he supposed. Naturally, he’d prepared Brice for the worst, which didn’t include physical violence, which in matters of sex Murphy did not do. But Brice, being an adult, was easily able to treat them accordingly, and he’d not needed to tell Brice it would take some patience.Slowly, Brice lifted a hand, which Murphy’s eyes refused to dignify by following, and very touching Murphy’s jaw, gently lifted it. Brice was larger than both of them, could hardly be mistaken for anything other than a working mason, and it was clear that Murphy hadn’t expected the tender, unaggressive move. Murphy seemed robbed of any immediate reaction, so just stood there giving Brice a dark look.“Your brother’s been tellin’ me I’ve been treadin’ on your turf,” Brice said, which had Murphy’s brow pulling, then his lips tightening. Looking like a little boy caught off guard, but one who would dearly love to tread his rival. “I didn’t mean to.”“What th’ fuck would you know about it?”“I know enough to say that yew’re wastin’ your anger. At least, as spent on me.” And Brice turned his identically dark, but oh-so different look at him. And the small circle they had made shrank until it felt airless. “I enjoy being with your brother,” Brice said, to Murphy while looking a him. “Even as he thinks of naught save yew.” Turning back to Murphy, Brice returned look for look. “And that’s the long and short of it.”“Go fuck ya’self," Murphy said, breaking Brice’s touch with a flick of his head. But the words came hard, Murphy’s breath all but gone; Brice’s words having affected him deeply, unprepared as Murph must have been for them. And who could miss the flush of Murphy’s face.He placed a hand on Murphy’s arm. No matter Murphy’s degree of antagonism, this was what he had wanted Murphy to see—this first and most basic thing, that there was no hidden side to his time with Brice. It was from where they were going to reach where they were headed tonight. For tonight, he and his brother were going all the way, to the terminal point of whatever this fear was inside him. Inside them. After three years of it, of that, he’d had his fill.Glancing leftward, Murphy stole a look at him, and still standing as he’d joined them, placing one hand on Brice’s arm, he stroked Murphy’s hair. “Ye don’t believe yer all I think about, Murph?” he teased.Murphy’s eyes dropped further, to the hay-carpeted floor, lips tighter than ever, face aflame. “I ain’t sayin’ shit in front of some strange man,” Murphy muttered.He stroked his nape, rubbed his thumb along his warm skin. “He just came by to say no hard feelings,” he said to Murphy. “That was nice of him, was it not?”Murphy only flicked him another look, nipped whatever else he’d planned to add. But Murphy faintly nodded. Startled, he felt a smile. Breakthrough! The sun had peeked out from behind dark clouds!He slowly stepped closer and leaned into Murphy, kissing behind the ear his fingers had warmed. Murphy gave him the softest, smallest of sounds, turning toward him, and he pulled back just in time to see Murphy’s lashes drop, the vexed look warring with capitulation.Aye, his brother had been patient long enough with him.For three long, strange years, from the start of this whole mess, it had been he who was in the wrong. He who had been too afraid to even look in the direction of this unknown thing that had come to surround them. He who had let Murphy suffer. But no longer. At least, not alone. He’d had his time for running, and it was time to make amends. It was time to be the older brother he had always been. It was time to be Connor again.Holding onto Brice’s arm, leaning into Murphy, he softly whispered against his skin that he had missed him so much. Turning immediately to him, Murphy had grabbed his shirt before either of them were conscious of it happening. Then they were suddenly kissing.Neither of them were in control. Just grabbing each other, their arms locking around each other’s bodies and fusing themselves so tight, he felt suddenly vaporized. And as Murphy’s head buried itself in his nape, his breaths shook out of him. He had forgotten, totally forgotten, that he and Murphy hadn’t been together in nearly a month, the longest without each other’s physical love he could remember. So that when Murphy turned to him and their lips touched, their mouths opening so that in seconds they were deep kissing, someone seemed to have tossed lighter and fluid on them.Utterly forgetting their partner, they clutched each other’s hair and backs and consumed each other, licking and sinking their tongues, rediscovering a taste that had been gone too long.Holding so tight they were brushing each other, they kissed, and kissed, and kissed, until he was lifting and shoving his arms under Murphy’s jersey, locking them around Murphy’s waist, locking Murphy even harder to him. And Murphy slanted his head for an even deeper kiss, letting him have his tongue over and over, while their hearts beat, while they trembled with their everlasting fever.Until he slowly broke the kiss, continuing to breathe into Murphy’s open mouth, both of them gasping for air. Soon, taking Murphy by the arms, their foreheads pressing as they had not even done in so long, he gently kissed Murphy’s lips, whispering to him in Gaelic, their mother tongue, the only tongue that could convey their feelings. Loosening his embrace, softening to his hold, Murphy whispered back, nodding, accepting all his kissed and apologies.“Connor,” Murphy whispered, so quietly as to be mistaken for a thought. But he heard. “You not only look like Connor again, ya sound like Connor.” He sighed. Then kissed across to Murphy’s ear. “Aye, Murph, it’s Connor,” he whispered there, “and I could no more leave ye than I could leave myself,” then pressing a kiss in after, he sealed his words, sealed all his promises. Absorbing each other’s voices in the manner they had been since forming memories, their bodies began to calm, the madness slowing inside, melting the sharpened edge of their neglected need. It had been true madness to neglect their need.Even if, all over again, he could feel it happening as before, an ache and and a pain, easing back deep into his heart. But it was all right. Seeing it in Murphy’s dark eyes, he saw it as the trusting need which had found no refuge for three years. Tonight, he’d be seeing this pain through.Next to them, Brice was in total silence. The man hardly seemed to be breathing, having neither moved nor uttered a sound as they had entered their own world. Venturing a look, he saw Brice staring at them with a dark flush, jaw tightened hard and nostrils flaring. like a man at the end of a very short rope and very desperate to pull. Forehead against Murph’s temple, he sent Brice a wry smile from across Murphy’s nose. “Will ye be leavin’ us to our special brand of sin, now, friend? Or would ye still care to stay?”And he was pleased to note, Murphy offered no objection, nothing more hostile than a smirk. “Maybe in Wales they fuck sheep but not family.” Cutting off a breath, he rubbed his forehead slightly to Murphy’s temple. “Jaysus, Murph,” he said softly, going for a note of disapproval but coming up well short. Wanting to no more keep the man waiting, he reached for Brice. Brice didn’t need to be asked twice. Stepping closer, brice immediately closed the space.Opposite Brice, Murphy was staring at Brice in complete silence. Here was the moment of truth. Having gotten back what was his, would Murphy allow himself to enjoy what he could promise did not come around very often. Inside their small circle, the air was thick and laden with sounds and smells. All of which Brice eagerly inhaled Now close enough to feel both their bodies, Brice lifted and slowly brushed a finger across Murphy’s lips, his eyes a matching pair of black flint to Murphy’s.“Yew a’ra hot young thing,” Brice said, in his unadorned manner of paying compliments, his blurry voice heavy with all that was taking place in his jeans. Brice’s thumb replaced his finger. Then Murphy’s breaths began coming in slow and shallow, and he could have moaned with pleasure. Murphy’s antagonism, when finally displaced, never failed to transform into a roguish sex appeal.Then Brice’s hand disappeared into the back of Murphy’s head and Brice was puling Murphy in for a kiss. And, having gotten back what was his, Murphy let him.It didn’t appear, as he watched, that either Murphy or Brice knew what hit them as their bodies touched, and their tongues sought each other’s. For Brice, getting off on merely watching, the actuality of holding Murphy ran a slow, hard bolt of electricity through the man. Tensing Brice, with the same powerful excitement as their first time together in the alley.And for Murphy likewise—no forewarning. Not for the knee-weakening confidence with which Brice touched and conveyed his wants. Wishing seconds he was feeling the yield in Murphy’s body, which would be the opposite of the hard response he knew would be already forming between Murphy’s legs.Without breaking concentration, Brice curled his arm around his waist, pulling him in. He stumbled closer and immediately began licking the tongue Brice turned and offered. He could feel Murphy’s eyes boring holes into their faces. He could feel their laser heat, transfixed, missing nothing.Breaking their kiss, Brice slipped his arm around Murphy too, pulling until Murphy got the message, then turning to Murphy, began playing Murphy with his tongue, like a harp. Murphy panted, and so did he, as he felt at last Brice’s hand between their bodies, unzipping first Murphy’s, then his jeans.19The man was a fucken pervert, of that he had no doubt. As who but a pervert would want to fuck two brothers at the same time.But he was a hot fucken pervert.Brice, who’d knelt in a glorious nakedness, rubbing himself and blowin’ air through his mouth while watching him and Connor go at it like the Second Coming was tomorrow, was now between his spread his legs, sucking his cock, nice and hard, like the pervert he was. But behind him, Connor had him between his own legs, arms and legs wrapped around him, slowly scrubbing his fingers through his newly cropped hair. Holding, touching, kissing him like in the old day, like they were back in time with no worries. Like they were in Boston.And when he lifted his eyes from Brice’s mouth to look up at Connor, Connor was simply looking straight into his eyes. With his back to Connor’s chest, his arm wrapped around Connor’s thigh, he could feel Connor’s heartbeat, Connor’s pulse against his back, surrounding him. This was all he had ever wanted. All that ever felt right. For him there was nothing more. For him, this was all.Connor began whispering in his ear, asking whether Brice was doing a good job, and his toes began to curl. But just as before, when he was ready to pop, Brice slid his hot, wet mouth off his cock, rising, and spearing a burning gaze down at him as he passed to go push what he had from his mouth into Connor’s. Possessively, sinking his hand into the back of his head while he took Connor ‘round the waist. There Connor would take it, and Brice would lick Connor, telling him to taste his brother, and Connor would moan like a fucken girl.He could see what Connor was so taken by. Brice was fucken good at this. The man gave off no type of pressure whatsoever, just wanting to enjoy seeing a person to do as they pleased, seeming to take real pleasure in being a part of it. It was, admittedly, highly sensual.Which didn’t negate the fact that he was a fucken pervert. And no doubt fucked sheep.20Now here was an interesting thing.Spent, and slowly stoking himself back to life, he was rested comfortably against a bale of blanketed hay and watching the brothers.Murphy was atop Connor, one hand digging into Connor’s hip and the other pressed somewhat thoughtlessly into Connor’s shoulder for leverage, while, on his back, and seeming not to mind at all, Connor lifted his head to kiss and touch his brother’s chest as though it were holy. Both visibly trembled, gazing into each other’s eyes, their hands shaking to touch the other, shaking as they exchanged caresses, and he saw that they were gripped in a need that was not diminishing.In his most fevered picturing of it, he had not imagined this. Never close. He had long ago lost his breath, could not take his eyes off the sight before him. Though he had guessed at their relationship from Murphy’s despairing visit, his talk with Connor had left him presuming a simple occasional indiscretion between the two. Maybe a slightly deeper misery on Murphy’s part. But it was nothing like that. Nothing so small.And what was going on with Connor was what struck him as truly remarkable. For truth be told, he had never quite bought the “you look so much like my brother” bit as being the rationale for Connor’s deep-seated attraction to him, a thing that had proved so powerful that even when making love with a stranger it throbbed greatly from him. But now he thought he understood it.It was clear that Connor’s heart beat only when his brother touched him. That what Murphy so recklessly wore on his sleeve, Connor buried deep inside him. Yet it remained Connor’s propulsion from the start of his day to the finish. He saw now that Murphy truly need not have worried, for the intensity of feeling that Connor carried for him was all that there was.And he saw that it frightened Connor.And when he did, he felt sorry for both of them.21This must have been what original sin felt like. The one that started it all. A nuclear fire, annihilating all.Behind him, locked bodily, Murphy was falling apart, face buried in his shoulder, arms sealed around his chest and stomach, wailing his name like a person on a lifelong quest at last having found salvation. His own grip locked in Murphy’s hair, he’d long since let go, his head fallen against Murphy’s to receive it all. Letting go. As he had done with Brice.Brice who was knelt before him, both hands on Murphy’s hard, slowly rotating hips, his dark head continually lowering down his body to take him in his mouth.Letting go, and listening to the sounds of Murphy coming back in. Gripped to his hair, he was turned and kissing Murphy’s temple, in all-out attempt at keeping his mind from unraveling. But he was coming undone.When Murphy kissed him, it was too hungrily, too desperately. Too much of an expression of their lives in these past years.And it was the cause of it happening all over again. A spark, as if after three years his soul was reignited. He welcomed it, in humility, feeling that it was right, like pressure against the ache of a sore muscle. Even as it hurt, it was his hurt to carry. They’d been born feeling this pain, this perpetual ache for each other. And they would die in it. It was as Murph said, it was right, always, because it was theirs.The unknown would be looked at. Though it was no less frightening than all the times before. And he was turned and looking at that unknown thing, and saw that it was an abyss, the abyss which had frightened and paralyzed him for three years. And now that he knew, he shuddered to look into and glimpse its bottom. But that too he would. Ready not only to see the face of his fear, but ready to live with it.He thought it even as he struggled, pushing back to save any part of himself, to not glimpse what he could not unsee. Only making him kiss Murphy harder, grip him tighter. Even as Murphy responded, wailing his name so plaintively and sending his heart shuddering to near bursting. But it was all right. Tonight it was happening. Tonight all their aches would come out, and would be accepted.Then he felt a hand sliding across his chest, touching his nipples, and bringing him back to the world. He opened his eyes, not realizing he had closed them, to see Brice staring at him. Seeing much more now in his state of vulnerability than even when he had been naked under him calling his brother’s name. And looking into Brice’s eyes, remembering how easy it had been with him, he was full of gratitude. Of how much he owed this man.Chest to chest with him, cock to cock, Brice gently stroked sweat-soaked strands from his forehead, then stroked down his throat, as if in pity. As if in a different state of existence which suspended the world.“Yew’re alright, lad,” Brice told him softly. “Yew’re all right.”And just like that, he understood everything. Because now he saw and recognized the face of his fear. And it wasn’t fear at all, but simply the face of the man before him — the face of Murphy in a decade and a half, safe and secure.When he realized it, the rest was easy.Why the things which had once made up a dangerous, blinding, platinum-bright life, had not fazed him. The things that had had them tearing through the back alleys and pool rooms and poker holes of South Boston, sending evil men to their makers, blowing out the brains of child rapists, wonton butchers and life shattering masochists—having them cowered on bloodied knees, knelt before them begging in the face of the eventual, inevitable, eternal separation of the MacManus twins—had threatened him no abyss.But now felt impossible, trailing up to the bright stars like fireworks, too fast to catch.He understood now why in America the deadly fire of their love had not frightened them, nor consumed them, when in exile it made them mental. In Boston they had been young, in love, and therefore invincible.And that was all it was.22Brice was pulling on jeans, T-shirt, and a wool coat. And seated against a haystack, his bent knees bridging Murphy’s crashed out sleeping form, he watched the small show like a well-fed cat. No day would he ever get enough of this Welshman.Finished dressing, Brice turned to him, nodding with narrowed eyes. “It were a real pleasure.”“Were it now?”Then, for the first time since he’d known the man, Brice smiled. A rather self-directed thing, as if unaccustomed to finding itself on that face. Then Brice nodded at his cigarette.“Yew’re sure yew should be doing that in here, now?”Sucking in a long, lungful of smoke, he tilted his head toward Murphy. “S’long as he’s here with me, we could both burn and it’d be alright.”Brice gave him a startled look, which he ignored. But he smiled. Not one for much humour in the first place, Brice at least knew he wasn’t joking. It was probably why he liked the man so much.Extricating himself, naked legs, mostly, from Murphy’s limbs, he found work jeans and a shearling jacket in getting to his feet. Then, dropping the butt of his cigarette to the floor, carefully squashed until it was the shadow of dust. Then, pulling the lined jacket around his chest, indicated with a rise of his hand that he meant to walk him to the barn door. And together, they slowly made their way over.There, Brice wrapped his arms around him, crushing him to his still warm body. And he of the eternal cynicism, with a twist of his lips, smiled, as genuine feeling pulsed from the man. Liking it even better as they began a final kiss. As Brice held him like a true love, like a thing unique, as their lovemaking had been ever wont. And returning the appreciation, he wrapped his arms around Brice’s head, with gratitude, kissing his taut line of a mouth—his brother older, stable, at peace. And Brice continued pouring abiding, comforting things into him. A warm, strong message from the future. True to form, a saint.As Brice pushed open the barn door, he realized he would always feel this way about this man. And as he touched Brice’s arm, and Brice turned and looked at him, they both seemed at an understanding about this one thing—what it was; how could it not be. And as if a boon, a final blessing, departing into the night, Brice turned and sent a smile over his shoulder at him. Aye, it really was love. For him and for the Welshman. Moments later, Brice was gone.23For a long time, he sat smoking a third cigarette, watching the untroubled slumber of his sweet brother. Half an hour or so after he’d returned from saying goodbye to Brice, Murphy finally stirred. Lifting his head and gazing about him like a woken baby.Rubbing his eyes, Murphy cleared his throat, and asked, thickly, “Is he fucken gone?”“Aye.”Rested once more against a covered bale of hay, he continued watching as his brother crawled out from beneath the tunnel of his tented legs, towards his left, then instinctually taking up an identical pose, but with Murphy’s feet against the bale, and his head propped on their shearling jackets. Only now, watching Murph scuff straw from his hair, feeling the prickly poking of the hay through both his jeans and the wool blanket. His precious baby arse was certainly going to need a warm soak and some tender care tonight, no mistakes about it.“How’ya feelin’?” he asked.“Fucken tired, man.”He nodded, absently. Listening to the silence between them, during which he said nothing.“So,” he eventually began. “What’d ye think was goin’ ta happen, Murph? I’d run off with a perfect stranger . . . just cuz he happened to look like ye?”To his everlasting credit, Murphy blushed.It was how crazy this life had made them, that Murph would seriously harbored such thoughts, and that he had run off the rails like he had.But their conversation, of course, was only beginning“Why’dja do it, Conn,” Murphy asked, quiet as you pleased. “Push me away like that.”His heart squeezed until he had to halt taking a drag, his open mouth his only means of taking in air, his shame so heavy on his heart. But he spoke around its weight. “I think we both know why. But I should have handled it better.”Then they both fell silent. Then in a voice so low he strained to hear, Murphy asked the question he’d been expecting for weeks.“What was it like?”It wasn’t an odd question. They’d both been with men and women, usually separately of course—people perpetually liked idea of being with twins, but they weren’t show monkeys—and once in a while asked afterward. But neither of them had ever become . . . emotional about it. No matter the form such emotion might take.Smoking for a bit, he thought about it. “It was . . .” Then he found he couldn’t say it. It was like freedom.Instead, tapping ash onto his jeans, he spoke another truth. “It was very nice indeed.” Pausing inside the silence, he listened to his choice of words, and felt that they were about right. Words that spoke the truth of every aspect of it. Maybe one day he might have enough right words to say more. To do justice to an experiencing so affecting. But evidently not that night. Meantime, no one, especially not his brother, need know that for once, Connor had not had the words, never mind the right ones.He glanced at this brother’s flushed face. “We haven’t really been actin’ much like ourselves lately, have we?”Murphy lifted a hand, indicating that he pass the cigarette. He handed it over. Murphy took a long, slow drag, blew out a long plume of smoke, and handed it back. “I’d say your arsehole tendencies have been consistent.”“Come to think of it,” he amended, not skipping a beat, “Ye did manage to stay as much of a vibrant pain in the arse through all of it.”Head shifting a little on the shearling, as if to get a better look at him, Murphy met his eyes and for the first time in what really felt like a lifetime, gave him one of his serenely blissful smiles. It was euphoric to see.“It’s not as easy as it looks, you know,” Murphy said, in his bast “American damsel” voice. Which for Murphy only got as far as Molly Ringwald. “But I do try, Connor.”He lowered his head and laughed under his breath for a good while. Then casting a slow look at his brother, he resumed their eye contact. “We must never fight like that again, Murph. Do ye understand?”Murphy nodded, hard.“No man can ever replace the feelings I have in ma’ heart for ye. I may be stupid sometimes, but I could never become that stupid. Do ye hear me, Murph?”Murphy’s smile widened into an even sweeter one, the one he always carried when he thought of his brother. Then looking up at the far beamed ceiling, Murphy nodded again, completely.And stripping himself from the wool blanket, he crawled forward and climbed atop Murphy, bent over, and kissed Murphy hard on the cheek. Then he did it again several more times, smacking ever louder. Murphy giggled. “Come on,” he whispered, he clamping his cigarette between his lips and swiftly arranging Murphy’s hips between his knees. “Give us a kiss, an’ then a nice roll in the hay.”Murphy instantly began struggling, laughing breathlessly. Quickly gripping Murphy’s wrist, he trapped it against Murphy’s hip, digging his knee harder. Murphy struggled, attempting to gain the upper hand, which only brought his other wrist within catching distance, which he did and repeated, then proceeded to smack Murphy’s head, doing it each time Murphy wriggled like a wild caged animal, until Murphy breathlessly moaned, “Unncle.”Then he sat back and plucked the cigarette from his lips, crushing it completely against the thicker stithies of his fly. Murphy chuckled in mirth. And gazing down at his brother’s dark, happy eyes, he said, “I think we should start sleeping in the same bed again.”Murphy lowered his eyes, rolling his lips tight, and only after an extended moment did Murphy shyly nod. Then raising hopeful eyes at him, Murphy quietly asked, “All is well, Connor?”Shifting, straddling him properly, he bent over until their noses were nearly touching and ran his hands through his brother’s soft, short-cut hair. “Aye, Murph,” he whispered, gently brushing noses. “All is well.”Then taking his lips, he began kissing Murphy, starting all over again.—
Epilogue
Later in the night, bright stars shining down as they trudged up to the farmhouse, it was to see their Da sitting out on the porch. Still as weathered stone in the cold night.If the old man knew, or could see that something was different about his boys, he gave no indication.Which was for the best. Seeing as they had work in the morning fixing the broken water pipes, and needed to get some rest.•
End