Sleep was slow to come. Kyle had been expecting the sleep paralysis, but he hadn’t expected to feel so at ease with Dev lying beside him. He trusted him, beyond sense, beyond reason. Perversely, it unnerved him, kept him wakeful.
Or maybe it was the memory of having Dev inside him that made it impossible to quieten his thoughts. The sex tonight had been different from the previous occasions. Less urgent. Less like scratching a desperate, mutual itch.
More like making love.
Dev had been so gentle, so careful not to hurt as he’d stretched Kyle, readied him to take his cock. All the while he’d murmured filthy endearments, and Kyle had floated on a sea of Fuck, yeah, so tight, so fucking gorgeous, can’t wait to have you.
And when Dev entered him . . . It had been almost too much. Too close, too intimate. Kyle had felt enveloped by him, surrounded by Dev’s scent, his heat. When he finally bottomed out, it was as if they really had become one, as if Kyle had been made to take him. And afterwards, he’d shown so much consideration for Kyle’s feelings, as he lay there paralysed.
A knife twisted in his chest. It was going to hurt so much when Dev left.
This couldn’t go on.
But Kyle knew he wouldn’t be able to stop it. Not until Dev, inevitably, did.
It was almost comforting to wake some time later from a familiar nightmare.
“Y’orright?” Dev muttered, still half-asleep.
“I’m fine. Go back to sleep.” Dev did so with enviable ease. Kyle kissed him and got out of bed to go and watch TV in the living room with the sound turned down.
Kyle woke up on the sofa to find Dev had sat down next to him and was kissing him on the cheek. “Is it morning?” he asked, and felt like an idiot when he registered the light streaming in through the thin living room curtains. God, he must look a sight, sprawled on the sofa and rumpled from sleep. He only hoped he hadn’t drooled.
Dev gave him a smile to match the sunshine outside. “Eight o’clock. You sleep all right? Sorry. Shit question. See any good telly last night?”
Kyle slid his arm around Dev and pulled him in tight. “You really need an answer to that?”
“Hey, I seen some good documentaries when I’ve got home too pissed to go to bed, sometimes. There’s this woman, Mary something, she does all this Roman stuff. Really gets into it, and she’s not all posy and pretentious like some of the blokes are. You know what they’re like.” Dev put on a heavy, ponderous voice: “‘And it was on that day that the fate of the Ottoman Empire was sealed.’ That sort of stuff. Bores the crap out of me. ’S what gives history a bad name. If Mary What’sherface had been my history teacher, I’d definitely have passed my GCSE.”
Kyle was arrested by the idea of Dev watching history documentaries. He really should learn not to judge by appearances. “Sorry. All I’ve got here is Freeview. I have to make do with teleshopping and Heir Hunters.”
Dev grimaced. “You wanna set up iPlayer before you go to bed. Or get in some DVDs. I mean, if you know you’re gonna wake up a lot, it’s gotta be worth it, right?”
Kyle wasn’t sure. It felt like giving in to it. “Breakfast?” he said instead of starting a debate he really wasn’t awake enough for.
“Fuck, yeah. Need to keep me energy levels up, don’t I?”
He seemed to have plenty of energy already. Kyle followed wearily as Dev fairly bounced into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Great—you got bacon. Want eggs? Or bacon butties—uh, you got bread, right?”
Dev didn’t wait for an answer, just opened the correct cupboard without hesitating and pulled out the half loaf of wholemeal Kyle had stored there. “Brill. This’ll do.” He switched on the grill and started laying out bacon slices in a careful top-to-toe pattern.
“Bit OCD, that, isn’t it?” Kyle teased.
“Maximum crispiness, man. Very important.” Dev looked up and grinned. There was something endearingly puppyish about him this morning.
Kyle should make the most of it while it lasted, shouldn’t he? It was a bitter thought. He turned to get out plates and cutlery, not wanting Dev to read his expression. There was no point spoiling both their moods.
“Hey, you got ketchup?”
“Ketchup? In bacon sandwiches? Philistine.” Kyle got out ketchup for Dev, and brown sauce for himself.
“Ain’t my fault. I had a deprived childhood. Sometimes ketchup was the best bit of the meal.”
Was it a straight line for a joke? Was Kyle supposed to say, Ketchup? You had ketchup? I used to dream of ketchup? But given how different their childhoods had been, the words stuck in his throat.
Dev didn’t seem to notice his silence. “Right, you want butter on your bread? Me mate Mal’s got this idea bacon butties should only have bread and bacon in ’em, but I like a bit of butter.”
It wasn’t really butter, just low-cholesterol spread from the fridge that Kyle had bought in a fit of self-loathing, but Dev didn’t seem to mind. He spread it on the bread in a slapdash fashion at odds with his precision with the bacon.
Feeling something of a spare part, Kyle was relieved to see the bacon needed turning over.
“Cheers, mate,” Dev threw over his shoulder, as if he were the host and not Kyle.
If he hadn’t already known about Dev’s childhood, Kyle would have been willing to believe it deprived just from the amount of ketchup Dev squeezed onto his bacon once the sandwiches were prepared. Was he still, at twenty-four, making up for years of never quite getting as much as he wanted?
Dev noticed him watching, and held up the sandwich. “Fancy a bite? Go on. You’ll love it.”
“I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the pleasure,” Kyle said politely. “And there’s ketchup dripping on your sleeve.”
“Ah shit. Not my day for that. Don’t s’pose you know where there’s a launderette round here?”
“A launderette? You’re standing three feet away from a washing machine.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to, you know, assume or nothing. That all right, then, if I bring my stuff round? This is my only clean pair of jeans and all.” Dev looked down. “Ah shit. Was.”
Kyle didn’t laugh at the red splodge that had appeared on Dev’s jeans leg. He wanted to eat his bacon butty while it was hot, not succumb to a cataplexy attack and drop it on the floor. “I doubt any of my jeans would fit you.” Or that Dev would be seen dead in them, for that matter. He favoured the sort of ultra-skinny jeans that Kyle would have felt ridiculously self-conscious wearing. “But I could lend you some jogging bottoms and a T-shirt if you like. Let’s go eat for now.”
They sat at the dining table, looking out over the sea as they ate. The bacon really did seem exceptionally crispy this morning, and the sun was glinting off water as blue as Kyle had ever seen it. Porthkennack was beginning to feel like home, Kyle realised. It was an odd feeling, and a little troubling.
“I gotta bring Tasha here someday,” Dev said out of nowhere. “Don’t think she’s ever been anywhere like this.”
He didn’t know? Then again, he hadn’t known her all her life, had he? Not like Kyle and his sister. It must be so strange, to go and live with people as if they were your family, when you didn’t know them at all. But it seemed to have worked out well—at least, for Dev and Tasha’s relationship. Kyle hesitated. “You told me Tasha’s your foster sister, but you never talk about your foster parents.”
Dev shrugged. “Not a lot to tell. They fostered a lot of kids. Think they were glad to see the back of me and Tasha when we turned eighteen.”
That was . . . horrifying. “They just left you to fend for yourselves after that? Is that how it works?” When Kyle had been eighteen he’d only left home to go to university. He’d still brought his washing home every other weekend, for God’s sake. And his mum had never let him go back there without a food parcel.
“Varies. I mean, some families, if they like you, they stay in touch and that. Mine never liked me being into blokes—it was all, ‘You can do what you like when you leave here, but while you live in this house, you play it straight.’ And Tasha . . . She took a while to get her head on properly after the last place she’d been. Don’t think they knew how to handle her. She was always pushing, you know? Testing the limits.”
“Breaking the rules, staying out too late?”
“Sort of.”
Kyle gave him a questioning look.
Dev sighed. “Ah, shit. There was this bloke where she used to live, he messed around with her, all right? You know. Like that. So she used to do stuff. Like, flirt. Come downstairs in just a towel, or just a T-shirt and knickers. Sit really close to Andy—that was our foster dad. See if he was gonna be like that too. He didn’t know how to handle it. He used to get really mad at her, ’specially when he’d had a few.” Dev looked Kyle right in the eye. “It was just a test, all right? She wasn’t asking for it. She never asked for it.”
Kyle nodded, a bad taste in his mouth. “Inappropriately sexualised behaviour. I’ve read about it.” There had been an article about it in one of the Sunday papers. He’d found it psychologically interesting, if rather appalling, and he’d been glad he’d never had to deal with a case involving child abuse.
It was a lot more appalling when the victim was connected to someone he cared about. “Didn’t she get any help, after it happened?”
“Dunno. She never wanted to talk about it, much. I wasn’t gonna ask.” Dev stared out of the window. “She just came out with it, one day. I mean, I asked her why she was pissing Andy about, and she just said something like, ‘It’s what they all want, innit?’ Then she said that was why she liked me. ’Cos she felt safe with me.”
“Because you’re gay?” As he said it, Kyle realised it was the first time he’d asked if Dev was gay or bi, and held his breath for the answer.
He got a twisted smile. “Nah, it’s just my natural trustworthiness, innit? Hey, you wanna head out for a bit? Could do with blowing away a few cobwebs and all that.”
Discussion over, then. Kyle matched Dev’s crooked smile with one of his own. “Fine. Where do you want to go?”
Dev shrugged. “I dunno. Into town, maybe? I still ain’t seen that mosque yet. That’s s’posed to be a thing, innit?”
“A thing?”
“You know. One of the things you come and see while you’re here. Me mate Jamal was saying it’s, like, historically important? First purpose-built mosque in England? Or Cornwall, maybe. Something like that. Hey, do they do that call to prayer thing here?”
“If they do, I’ve never heard it.” Kyle heard the St. Ia’s church bells sometimes on a Sunday morning, or a Saturday when there was a wedding, if the wind was blowing from the west.
“Shame. S’pose not, though. Jamal gets his prayer times from the Balham one by text message.”
“Even deities have to move with the times, I suppose.”
“Yeah, sorry to break it to you, mate, but it’s a messaging service that sends them, not Allah.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Kyle realised as he said it that it could possibly be seen as offensive. “Um, are you Muslim?” Lack of adherence to dietary rules didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“Me? Not really anything, to tell the truth. You?”
Kyle shook his head, then felt a vague sense of guilt, leftover from confirmation classes at age twelve, that prompted him to say, “Church of England, I suppose. But not exactly practising. My parents are very involved in their local church, though.”
“Yeah? They all right about you being gay?” Dev gave him a sharp look, as if wondering whether this was the reason Kyle hadn’t been more open with them about his illness.
No. He had no excuse. “It honestly couldn’t have been less of an issue. Mum was already volunteering with an LGBT charity, and Dad’s never exactly been the old-fashioned sort. You know what they argued about the evening after I’d come out to them, after they thought I’d gone to bed? Dad was ranting about how absurd it was, in this day and age, that any child should feel the need to come out to their parents, and Mum was defending my right to make a statement of my identity if that was what I wanted to do.” The guilt returned. “I suppose it was rather different for you.”
Dev shrugged. “Yeah, well, I never really came out to my foster parents. They just sort of found out. So, we going to see this mosque, then?” He stretched, showing his midriff, then got up.
Kyle could take a hint. He stood up as well. “I’ll put the plates in the dishwasher and then we can go.”
The mosque, when they got there, seemed to fascinate Dev, with its walls inlaid with shells in intricate patterns. It was tiny, for a place of worship, and reminded Kyle strongly of fishermen’s churches he’d seen around the world, although their shape and religion were different. He mentioned this to Dev, who shrugged.
“S’pose they’d want a bit of extra prayer power when they were about to go out to sea on some rickety wooden boat, right?”
“And the sense of community for people who were far away from the land they were born in,” Kyle added, thinking of his parents.
“Yeah. S’pose so.” Dev’s voice was quiet.
Had that been part of what he’d been looking for, coming to find his birth mother in Porthkennack? That sense of belonging somewhere? Kyle wanted to put his arms around him.
It seemed a little disrespectful, though, while they were visiting a mosque. And once they were out in the sunshine again, Dev’s mood seemed to pick up instantly. “Want to head down to the prom? Think there’s s’posed to be something on today.”
There was some kind of event going on down on the seafront. There was bunting up—or rather, even more bunting than usual; Kyle wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the place entirely bunting-free. Folksy music played fuzzily from large speakers set up next to a small marquee. Kyle cast a wary eye around, but there didn’t appear to be any Morris dancers lurking in the vicinity. Lines of tables had been placed along the street, laden with handicrafts of varying sorts for sale, and several food stalls were filling the air with appetising aromas.
A banner informed them they were at the PEBBLE Fayre, and helpfully explained that PEBBLE stood for Porthkennack Enterprise and Business Benefiting the Local Environment.
“Fuck me, backronym much?” Dev muttered in a tone of disgust, making Kyle smile.
“Someone was probably paid a fortune to come up with that,” he murmured back.
There did, in fact, seem to be a certain amount of emphasis on recycling among the stalls on offer, so at least the organisation was making some attempt to live up to its last three letters. A slender, heavily tattooed man was selling tables, cupboards, and other pieces made from repurposed wood, his disreputable appearance at odds with his eco-friendly wares. He met Kyle’s gaze with a frank look that seemed to ask, Like what you see? For a moment, Kyle wasn’t sure if the man meant his wares or himself—then he was joined behind the stall by a striking redheaded woman who grabbed him by the arm with casual intimacy. Kyle shook his head at himself, amused, and quickened his pace over to a stall offering driftwood sculptures that had caught Dev’s attention. Dev was running his hands over the sea-smoothed surface of the wood of one of them, which had the vague form of a seal.
“Kinda like this one, but I’d never get it home on the bike in one piece,” he said as Kyle joined him, then turned over the price tag and gave a low whistle. “’Specially not at that price. Guess I’ll have to make do with a pet rock.” He nodded at the next stall along, while Kyle wondered if he could somehow manage to buy the thing without Dev noticing, and get it delivered.
Some chance. He didn’t even know Dev’s London address. It was a sobering thought.
A whistle of feedback made everyone turn to the small dais at one end of the Fayre, with an open-fronted tent set up to shield it from any inclement weather. An overweight man with a forgettable, if slightly red, face was standing there with a microphone, his business suit looking uncomfortable and out of place among all the shorts-clad holidaymakers. “I’d like to welcome everyone to this year’s PEBBLE Fayre. As I’m sure you’re all aware, PEBBLE was set up three years ago to promote local enterprise, and since then it’s gone from strength to strength . . .”
Kyle stopped listening. If the man couldn’t avoid a cliché in his opening words, there was little hope for the rest of the speech.
His attention was drawn back when a petite, pretty, dark-haired woman stepped up to join the man at the microphone. It was hard to judge her age—midthirties? Early forties? Surely no older than that—and for some reason, she looked familiar.
“And now, a few words from the chairwoman of PEBBLE, Bea Roscarrock.”
The name sank in even as he heard Dev whisper, “Fucking hell.” Kyle grasped his arm, not knowing what to say. Should he ask if Dev was all right? How could he be all right? But Kyle had to say something.
Dev beat him to it. “That’s her,” he said, his voice wrecked. “That’s my mum.”