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He still does not have the courage for it, when all is said and done; when he’s collapsed to his knees after watching Dismas taking the last final, fatal shot; shoulder coming up and arm perfectly angular like he has done a thousand times and training a practised aim right between the eyes of the amalgamation of monster and man – and when his ears ring with the squelching masses of blood and gore falling at their feet in tumbling, ruinous waves underneath the shattering rock of a madman’s throne, and there is a split second before they all collapse on top of him, cheering, crying, and hugging each other so tight that he feels his knuckles turn white under his gauntlets.
Afterward, in the deafening silence, they decide to head back toward the inn: We shall celebrate one last time, Junia had said, tears streaked with tears, a brilliant smile from ear to ear, before we part ways .
And they do, in their own way: absconding to their own room he spreads Dismas out on the sheets, meticulous and careful despite his impatience; and takes him as slowly and as carefully as though they had all the time in the world. There would be no aftermath to think of, no burden of survival for these moments, just yet.
"Ye beautiful fuckin’ bastard,” Dismas says when they’re done, and cries. “You did it. We did it,” and Reynauld thinks I cannot bear the thought of you parting.
Instead, he grasps him at the waist, tight, as if to never let go. “Dismas —” Shaking, he presses his face into the scars at his neck, holding him tight to his chest like a precious and wonderful thing. “I’m glad to have had you by my side,” he says, quietly. Words for him, alone.
“Me too,” says Dismas, and brings a calloused hand to the back of Reynauld’s neck. It’s warm, gentle; gentler than he has ever been. Reynauld’s jaw clenches tight. He presses their foreheads together and, when he hears only the ragged breathing of Dismas into his shoulder as he falls asleep, he only embraces him tighter and thinks, I would ask you to stay with me.
Instead, he relinquishes him as they wake the next morning, watches as Dismas disentangles himself slowly and sits himself up in the baleful light of the post-apocalypse sun, stretches his limbs out like a dozing cat.
“‘M thinking of travelling,” he says, apropos of nothing, avoiding Reynauld’s gaze as though they were strangers; and Reynauld thinks, louder this time, stay with me. I could not bear it if I did not see you again.
“Okay.” He says, instead. “Okay.”
///
In the beginning, Dismas visits the farm close to every other day. Once, he returns with a bottle of aged whiskey: for old times’ sake , he had said. The nights pass sweating against each other, skin on skin, and still Reynauld cannot say it when Dismas kisses him hard enough to bruise and spends himself against Reynauld’s thighs in desperate, erratic motions. The days lengthen. Despite the space, Dismas never stays: a surety he wakes to alongside the dewdrop mornings and cold sheets. Time passes. He breaks his fast while the sun is low, dense breads of rye with dried berries, and afterwards he labours the soil: long, thin grooves that snake over the hillside of his small plot. Self-sufficiency and discipline rewards him with a croft overflowing with tiny shoots, sapling-green of a shade he had resigned to extinction. Hours of toiling stretch into days, into weeks.
Summer comes: a dry, burning heat. The sun hangs stiff, tallow-white and burning in a cloudless sky; sears the sinewed skin at the back of Reynauld’s neck into roughened, tanned lines as he sows seeds of barley, rye, and wheat. Dismas visits, helps construct trellises for the coming autumn. Sweltering nights are spent pressed up underneath his skin, suntanned and flushed red from stolen moonshine; and as Dismas straddles his back and kisses gently the smattering of juvenile freckles at his shoulders he thinks you are the one who saved me.
“Dismas,” is what he says instead. “‘Tis too hot for such things.”
Dismas laughs. They fall asleep with their bare legs entwined, roots from the same soil. In the morning he is gone again.
The days continue. Blisters peel the skin of his hands, new ones grow in their place. At the peak of solstice he watches the sun carve its preordained path across the sky: as he had the day before, and the day before then, he breaks his fast with breads and fruit, carries water for his crops. Turns the soil of his fields, every exacting inch, meticulous. He carries to his bed the notches stiff in his spine and the atrophy of muscle that slowly rounds his form. The weeds grow.
Reynauld is in the front yard when Dismas next visits, three days after the solstice. He’s chopping wood, slants of timber for building out his house — a room, a front porch. He looks up as he hears Dismas approaching, splashing sounds of vegetation quashed under boot heels in an ambling, familiar gait.
“Dismas.” His voice is calm, despite the heat. “You’ve returned.”
The heft and hew of an axe coming down that splinters in Dismas’s ears. He brings a hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Aye.” Grunting, he toes gingerly the corner of a log at its split surface and smiles, an unspoken question.
Last night, I dreamt of you , Reynauld thinks, fingers uncurling loose around the handle of his axe as he sets it down. His eyes wander across Dismas — the shoulders of his jacket have finally filled out, his skin a healthy tan brown and eyes flecked with caramel in a kaleidoscoping sunlight. You were cold and starved, and I could not abide it .
He says, instead, “I had thought to add another room to the house,” in lieu of an explanation, and Dismas does not press it – instead he asks how he has been doing, because he does not know Reynauld thinks of him every day, set into his motions in the same way he wakes, breaks fast, toils, and sleeps.
I would dream of kissing you awake each morning , Reynauld thinks. Instead he says, “the crops have been growing well,” and Dismas beams, with such affection that it makes Reynauld lightheaded, eyes squinting against the sun. The clarion call of ducks flying overhead, headed south, as he shifts his weight and leans back on his heels.
“Yer gonna hafta be careful,” Dismas chuckles, turning his face away to hide a precocious wetness at his eyes. “Some brigands’ll come rob yer blind in the middle of the night if y’ain’t careful.”
Reynauld thinks, only if it’s you . Instead he twists his shoulders at the rotator cuff and cranes his neck to one side. “They shan’t get by me.”
“Is that a challenge?” Behind him, a wave of gold. Sheafs of wheat waving gently in the warm breeze.
No. An invitation, only for you. “I have not wasted away completely just yet, Dismas.”
A huff that hides a tickle of laughter. “Who’ve ye been crusadin’ against now? The magpies?” He’s circled around the log pile, falling in comfortably beside Reynauld and turning to look out onto the fields. As though he had never left his side.
“Mm. Fiendish things.” Reynauld steals a sideways glance at him before quickly turning away.
“Poor bastards. They’re bloody quakin’ in their feathers.”
“As they should.” Reynauld nods solemnly, the corner of his mouth turning down for a moment, as it occurs to him, I —
A pause. “Is there something wrong?” Dismas asks.
— I would have you like this, every day. “Nothing.” He squints into the sun. “A passing fancy.”
“Okay,” says Dismas. “Okay.”
///
The dovetailing of the summer into cooler days of fall brings with it the slow prelude to a wet season; a viscosity that seeps through the atmosphere across the jewel-blue satin of morning sky. Soon enough, Reynauld learns the press of humidity as he would a second skin: the drop of temperature before a sunshower burst; the drum-pattern of raindrops on the fresh timber deck as he ducks inside, arm raised over his head to shield himself from the sudden downpour. More often than not, they pass quickly: he watches, leaning in the timber frame of his front door.
Sometimes, however – sometimes, when he wakes to rain lashing the walls of his home, needling bursts wrapping around the eaves of the roof and buffeting the glass panes of his windows – when he comes to stand in the doorway of his home to peer out onto his fields and watch the winds compress the grasses of wheat and barley to the ground; there materialises a familiar desperate figure on the horizon: a fur-lined collar, a slash of red about the neck. Against his better judgement, Reynauld looks forward to these days: the days he is greeted from the doorway by a harried splashing that brings with it Dismas, bedraggled, sopping wet and sloping up the stairs like a stray, rivulets of water plastering dark spikes of hair to his scalp as he leaks egregiously all over the timber floors.
“Why’s yer damned door open? Bloody hell.” He’s scowling, always, when it rains, standing in the doorway and peeling off his jacket and boots onto the floor.
Reynauld knows from habit that it is smarter not to say anything when Dismas gets in these moods. They blow over quickly enough, anyway, after Reynauld makes for him some stew and he falls asleep, catnapping, in front of the warm hearth.
Rarely – and these are the occasions Reynauld looks forward to the most – Dismas will fall asleep in Reynauld’s bed, relieved of his clothes and bundled warmly under thick blankets; and Reynauld will slip in beside him. More often than not, they end up with Dismas’s thighs pressed open under Reynauld’s weight as they fuck lazily, Dismas panting into Reynauld’s mouth – or Dismas on his side, backside and thighs arching into Reynauld, hips bumping together as Reynauld pushes into him, his name falling from Dismas’s mouth in a way that upends his breathing completely — or, when Dismas chases his kisses with a desperation that short-circuits his entire body and makes him think your absence will be the death of me, they simply end up with Dismas on top, grinding against him with a ferocity that makes the bedframe protest loudly underneath them.
“I hate feelin’ like I owe ye,” he had griped once, his head turned away, the barest form of some half-apology when Reynauld had simply told him to shelter for the night. “You know me.” And Reynauld, who cannot rid from his mind the thought of you are so beautiful I would take you as you are for the rest of my days, simply nods.
When Dismas absconds on the heels of the clearing rain — because he always did, eventually — Reynauld is equally busying himself, mostly inconsequential: the thrice-over of his kitchen table, rearranging clean laundry, sweeping a polished floor. He keeps his hands busy as Dismas slowly dresses again, squares his shoulders and hesitates, turned toward the front door. “Reynauld.”
“Yes?” This time he’s tying and retying the handle-rope of a ladle, refusing to look up from his shaking hands. ”What is it?”
The squeak of twine in the silence between them. “I’ll be back, alright? I promise.”
Reynauld swallows thickly. He keeps his head down, watches his hands as though he’s terrified they will up and do something horrible if he takes his eyes off of them for a single second — I promise you everything, as long as you come back to me . When he can only nod in response, Dismas leaves without another word.
Slowly, the rains begin to cool and solidify. Winds rise, biting and howling like wolves; mud turns to slush, and slush to ice. The weeds grow taller, bolstered by terminal rains and mud-water, and Reynauld finds he spends more time wrangling them than on his crops, the cooler days only prolonging his working hours. He stockpiles for winter: reaps and hangs and preserves what he can, enough for himself and one other, and dries everything else.
He does not see Dismas once, for the entirety of the winter while the snow falls thick and oppressive. Inside, he has only an empty bed for company.
///
It feels an eternity before the days begin to grow warm again, even longer for the sleet to seep fully back into stolid ground and for the water-table to reset.
Reynauld prepares for the next harvest. The collection of seeds, the preparation of bread, the tilling of the fields. Edges of a watercolour sun solidifies and brings with it warm breezes and green foliage, flowering fruits and orchards of species he had long forgotten. His circadian rhythm resets. Once more, he wakes with the rising of the sun, and breaks fast, and toils, and sleeps, and dreams of Dismas.
The first week of spring, he’s visited one morning in the field by Junia, hitching a ride on the back of an agricultural wagon from the nearest town, the horses ash-grey and trundling up the dirt path to his house. As they draw near he sets down his plough.
“Sister Junia.” Despite minimal use, his voice is warm at the sight of her, healthy and radiant. “‘Tis good to see you.”
“Light bless you, Reynauld.” She’s positively beaming as she hops off of the wagon, brushing down hastily the front of her habit. “How wonderful it is to see you well –” she begins, before the corner of her mouth turns down slightly. “Dismas is not here?” She grasps a small packet to her chest, tight.
“No.”
“Ah – well.” She clears her throat awkwardly. “Perhaps you may like these, all the same.” She smiles suddenly, apologetically, and hands over her parcel. It’s small and light, wrapped in wax paper; and when Reynauld unwraps it and shakes the contents into his palm he finds himself staring down at a handful of seeds, airy and hollow. “Flowers are quite romantic, after all, are they not?”
Reynauld says nothing at first. He turns the seeds over in his palm, the shells a matte, dull grey in the sun, before pocketing them. “Perhaps. We shall see.”
But of course he plants them. He fills an entire plot with them, a vertical slip between the barley and the rye. The fatigue of labour is easier to face than his thoughts, his pleas; and so he lays them down, sows them and waters them with a single-minded determination, a daily ritual and prayer for Dismas to return to him, safe and sound.
And perhaps it does, because he visits a week before the sunflowers’ blooms, the navy of his fur-lined jacket stark against the premature yellow bulbs as he walks up the tired dirt path to Reynauld’s house.
“Sunflowers?” Seeing them up close, Dismas is stunned by them: the richness of the yellow petals, as if painted; the sweet floral of pollen over the acridity of fertile soil and grass. Smells that he had come to associate with Reynauld, and only Reynauld. The Reynauld that looks forward rather than back, that tills the soil in unwavering lines and warms against his skin like the sun.
“Yes,” Reynauld says, but he’s frowning at something; and when Dismas ventures, “What for?” only to receive silence in return his heart drops, because he knows what the answer is before he asks it.
“For – for you.”
“You did —,” and at this, Reynauld thinks, everything. I lived. “ — For me?” He’s watching Reynauld now, acutely aware of himself as his expression shifts minutely, incomprehensibly.
“Yes.” He can only hold Dismas’s gaze as he draws closer — it makes the acquiescence easier, as though his affection was simply some penance to admit to, to apologise afterward for. “Yes.”
“Why — what for?” As though he were undeserving, and the sound of boot-heels against grass, in an ambling, familiar gait.
“I—” I could not bear the thought of never seeing you again , is what Reynauld wants to say, but when he opens his mouth –
He still can’t say it. A coward, because even though the world had ended twice over and they had lived — no, he had chosen to live , chosen to doggedly continue his motions; to eat, to breathe, to sleep, to toil, and to hold to the hope of Dismas’s body pressed against his own again the way it was a year ago in some nameless city in some nameless inn and bed, as though it were a lifeline — he is still unable to say it, because he’s deathly terrified that one day Dismas will see something, something gross and stifling in him and leave, just as he had done, to cross the horizon and to never return.
Laid bare like this — it takes only a split second for his face to fall, the features of his face contorting brutishly before the first tear comes. “Dismas.” A sob chokes in his throat and his voice breaks: he can only cover his face with his hands, awkward as a child is, unfamiliar for so long. “Please —,” before the cocoon of his heart finally cracks, splinters and falls away and he weeps, openly, and Dismas can only pull him in to his chest and hold him close.
“Oh, Reynauld,” Dismas breathes, suddenly gentle as though he were a newborn babe. “What’s wrong, love?” A gloved hand that curls at the nape of his neck, gentle, gentler than he has ever been; and Reynauld can only fold his head into Dismas’s neck as he cries. Dismas repeats again, “Reynauld —,” but this time his voice shakes, and he only manages an “I’m sorry,” before his voice breaks, too. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “I was so lonely without you,” and finally, finally — hands calloused from years of unthanking labour, Reynauld pulls him close and whispers for him to stay, the words in his mouth familiar in a way like he’s repeated the question a thousand times over.
“Oh, Reynauld,” Dismas repeats, smiling softly, tear-streaks staining his cheeks as he slowly pulls away and cups Reynauld’s jaw in his gloved hand, its crimson leather faded and weary. “Why didn’t you ask me sooner?”
///
The sunflowers bloom beautifully, ten days later. Standing in the field flooded with sunlight, Dismas turns back to look at him, the cotton of his shirt stark against the deep green of sunflower stems, the familiar slash of his red neckerchief absent from his neck. Reynauld watches him from the doorway, eyes squinting against the sun.
You look so happy , he thinks, and Dismas smiles at him, buffered against a wave of gold. I love you. When he ducks back into the shadow of the doorway a few minutes later, his skin is warm. The smallest sprinkling of white at his temples, peppered tastefully amongst the crop of jet black hair.
“Lunch is ready,” Reynauld murmurs, and Dismas smiles. I love you .