Charles by Con Riley

31

Charles fumbled through his pockets, swearing until he found the whistle he’d been given. He blew it, his ears ringing with its shrillness, then he listened again.

Nothing.

He blew another long, sharp blast.

Only a sheep replied, bleating back to him in the distance.

Maybe the whistle he’d heard had been wishful thing. Hope, not reality. The truth was that he’d be out here all night.

“No-one knows that I’m here.”

A moment in the outdoor classroom came back to him so vividly then that Charles could almost see Tor during one of his lowest moments. What had Hugo said through the classroom fence to him?

“It’s okay to be scared. That just shows how strong your hope is,” Charles said, his voice thick as if the mist had found a way into his lungs and lingered. He replayed Hugo telling Tor what it was like to wait and wonder. Love had helped him keep going. “He looked at me when he said that,” Charles said. “He looked at me, and his face changed.”

All alone, with no one listening, he voiced a revelation that, despite the creeping darkness was as bright as lightning. “He didn’t know Nathan was back then. He was talking about me. I should have told him right then what I was feeling.”

That light only got brighter, a beam that cut through the mist and dazzled. Charles covered his eyes, blinking.

“There you are,” Luke said, lowering the torch he held. “You okay, Charles?”

“Yes.” Charles almost staggered. Would have blamed it on the weight of his sodden backpack, but the truth was that Luke wasn’t who he wanted to see the most in that moment. He was about to ask if Hugo was with him when Luke put his own whistle in his mouth and blew it, letting out three sharp blasts, this time.

Luke came closer, mist parting around him, hair plastered to his forehead and water trickling down a face Charles had thought icy the day he’d first stepped into his headmaster’s office. But now Luke smiled, looking a different, much warmer, person. “You’re right about Hugo changing.” He swung his backpack from his shoulders. “I know, because I’ve watched it happen since the first day you moved in with him.”

“Y-you heard that?”

“About you falling for Hugo? Bit hard not to.” Luke gestured to the base of the tor as if that explained his answer, putting his whistle to his lips again, three more blasts splitting the silence, before Charles could ask why. “Good thing though as I really didn’t fancy searching all night, but there was no way Hugo was leaving without you.”

“How did you know—?”

“That you were here? When the weather started to turn, we took the students back to the minibuses. Hugo saw your car. Stayed with it in case you came back while we took the boarders back to the school. Then we came back and set off to search for you together.”

“Thanks.” Charles felt a mix of emotions. Relief coupled with embarrassment, but most of all a surge of something he didn’t have a name for at Hugo refusing to leave the moor without him. “I feel a bit stupid that you had to come back for me.”

“Hold that thought.” Luke pulled out his phone, having more luck than Charles with finding a signal. He dialled and then said, “Found him. Yes, safe and sound.” He peered at the mist around them. “Probably tomorrow. Call the others for me? Cheers, Ruth.” He pocketed his phone, and picked up from where he’d left off. “You know what’s really stupid?” Luke didn’t wait for an answer. “Me not offering you a permanent spot on the team before now.”

“Me?” More emotion flooded through Charles, but Luke wasn’t done yet.

“Of course, you. You’re an asset. But I’ve got form for that.”

“For not offering jobs? Or for being stupid?” Charles didn’t think that last option could be true. “You’re the head of the whole school.”

Luke spoke as if he’d overheard far more than a snippet of what Charles had said to himself while thinking no-one could hear him. “Definitely the latter. You see, I caught feelings for someone once, as well, and didn’t tell them what I was thinking either. Been there, done that, don’t recommend the T-shirt.” Luke’s torch beam made the mist feel like a white wall around them—a folly surrounding his old feelings. “I couldn’t deal with being casual, like you.”

“You think I’m okay with being casual?” Charles shook his head. “I used to be. But lately, I’m the worst at it. Casual is the last thing I want these days.”

Luke straightened, the beam of his torch dazzling Charles again. “At least you didn’t move out with no warning.”

Charles felt a twinge of guilt for running to Casterley then, and maybe Luke noticed.

“You came back right away. Not like me. I got back to our flat from lectures one day and sat across the table from the guy I’d fallen for, listening to him plan his future, none of which included me. I moved out over Christmas break and never said why, because that was easier than telling him—”

“Telling him what?” another voice asked.

Nathan emerged through the mist next, his long hair saturated, clinging to an angular face Charles had hated. No. Had wanted to hate. Now, a twist of compassion squeezed him, because Nathan wore a look he’d seen in his own mirror. “Telling me what, Luke?”

“Nathan,” Luke said, the sound lost as Nathan raised his whistle to his lips, blowing another three times, but he hadn’t needed to send out that last signal.

The final man on the moors searching for Charles—the only one he’d ever wanted—found him.

“Charles,” Hugo said, mist swirling round a face that two torch beams swung to light, rendering it grim and bone-white.

Charles didn’t shy from its sternness, like he’d seen the children do when they first met. He shrugged out of his backpack, which fell behind him with a dull thump, and then Charles ran towards him.

With its weight gone, Charles found wings.

He flew the last few steps and Hugo caught him, his arms as strong as ever, his hold rock-steady, but Charles heard his voice shake.

“Thank God,” Hugo said, his voice hoarse. “Thank God, we found you.”

* * *

They setup camp right there.

“It can’t be that far to the car park,” Charles said. “Shouldn’t we go back?”

“No,” Hugo answered bluntly. “The mist’s thickened to fog. I’m not risking injuries.”

“Injuries? Oh. I didn’t even ask how your knee was,” Charles blurted.

“I didn’t mean me.” He carried the rucksack Charles had dropped before running to him. “Do you know where you dropped this?”

“When you turned up?” Charles glanced over his shoulder, the mist a solid wall behind him. “Yes. Just a few feet back there. That’s the direction I was going to head next when Luke found me.”

“Jesus!”

Charles blinked at that, struck silent by how much feeling Hugo had injected into one word, waiting for him expand on it. When he didn’t, Charles tried to help set up camp, but found he couldn’t. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he finally said, struggling to unfasten some ties. “I don’t usually have trouble pitching tents.”

Hugo would have laughed at that once. Now he took over undoing the ties around the two-man tent he’d unpacked. They released for him with no problem, the tent popping up in no time. He took the pegs Charles fumbled with as well, securing the base of the tent with them, and finally relieved him of the guy lines that Charles couldn’t unravel, his numb fingers uncooperative.

“I don’t know why my hands are shaking,” Charles said quietly, watching Hugo make short work of tying them off.

Hugo did look up then, water dripping from the end of his nose. “You’ve been out here since…?”

Charles tried to say when he’d arrived, but his teeth chattered. He clenched his jaw, but could still feel its tremor. “I-I don’t know why they’re chattering either,” he managed to stammer. “It’s not midwinter, for fuck sake. It’s almost summer.

“Wet through for hours?” Hugo cast a glance at what Charles was wearing. “Dressed for a gentle stroll rather than a hike up here in bad weather? You’re lucky chattering teeth are your only problem. What’s in your backpack? You need dry clothes.” Hugo stood, and started to undress Charles, unzipping his jacket and pulling at his belt buckle.

“I already got through everything in it. There’s nothing dry left.” The mist beaded his bare skin in seconds. Charles pulled away, glance flying to the tent Luke and Nathan had pitched, which was lit with a dull glow, both men already inside it.

“Don’t worry about them,” Hugo said gruffly. He kept up his undressing, shoving wet clothes off Charles. “Think they’ve got more on their minds than ogling your gooseflesh.”

“Okay, okay. M-much as I’m a fan of g-getting naked with you,” Charles said, crawling into the tent and shedding his jeans. “T-this isn’t making me any warmer.”

Hugo found a towel in his pack. “Here. Dry yourself.” He also found a thermos, its contents steaming once he unscrewed the lid. “And stop talking.” He poured a cupful of hot chocolate. “Drink.”

It was easier to obey than argue or ask questions while Hugo shucked out of his outerwear too, leaving it in the tent’s awning. Charles found himself crouching inside the tent, shaking hard as Hugo took over. He rubbed him down, and then dressed him, pulling a long-sleeve jersey on him and rolling thick socks over toes Charles hadn’t known he couldn’t feel until then. “Here.” Hugo passed Charles another towel. “Dry your hair off.” He zipped sleeping bags together, and urged Charles to slide in next to him.

“Always been a fan of tight fits,” Charles managed to get out without stuttering. “But if you’re aiming to get my temperature up, aren’t we both meant to be naked?”

“Old wives’ tale,” Hugo said shortly, but his rubs were brisk, powerful, and quickly warming.

“I don’t know about that.” Charles couldn’t help threading their legs together, slotting himself against warmth he’d climb inside if he could, revelling in body heat he hadn’t known had leached from him, until Hugo warmed him. “It’s like cuddling a furnace. You’re so hot.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Hugo said, his voice flatter than Charles liked.

“You’re angry,” he said, knowing Hugo had every reason to be.

“I’m not,” Hugo insisted. “Neither angry with you, nor hot. You’re just colder than you realised, and I’m annoyed it took so long to find you. I’m worried, not pissed off.” Hugo’s hands didn’t stop moving, rubbing shivers away with firmness that bordered on painful. “Have been since you left, to be honest, so give me a minute to believe we actually found you, okay?”

Charles nodded, chastened. And touched; so touched. He couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted. Instead, he grabbed Hugo’s shoulders and held on, letting Hugo work to warm him.

Finally, Hugo slowed down, wrapping his arms around Charles too, stroking now instead of rubbing, seeking the bare skin under his jersey as if he needed much closer contact with no fabric between them. “That’s better,” he murmured. “No more goosebumps.” His hands ceased their movements, and Charles grumbled.

“Don’t stop.”

He opened eyes that he hadn’t realised had drooped closed, and saw Hugo from close up. The lantern cast him with stark shadows, but just like when Hugo had emerged from the mist looking so grim, those sharp lines didn’t scare him. He traced them in silence while Hugo watched him, saying nothing as Charles mapped a face he’d also seen crack with relief sharp enough to carve out a brand new place inside him.

“You looked for me,” Charles eventually said in not quite a whisper, but this pool of quiet between them meant not speaking any louder—demanded that he not joke, not while Hugo held him so tight.

“Of course I did,” Hugo said. He still sounded gruff, but his mouth was gentle. Charles felt his lips skim the hinge of his jaw, the shell of his ear, that patch of skin directly below, where they lingered. “Charles, I need to tell you something.”

For all the warmth Hugo exuded, Charles felt a chill roll up as fast as the mist had. “What?” he asked, stiffening.

Hugo’s stroking hand stilled. “I heard what you said about me.”

“When?” Charles pulled back as far as their sleeping bag let him, his mind racing, trying to replay what he’d said. “Wait. Do you mean after Luke found me, or—”

“Before,” Hugo confirmed, and there was the return of the compassion Charles would have walked for days to earn more of. It warmed Charles faster than a towel, a tent, or the hot chocolate Hugo had brought for him. “Charles, I heard your prayer from start to finish.”

“How?”

Hugo answered with another question. “Where do you think you are, Charles?”

“Under High Tor. I wasn’t lost,” Charles insisted. “I just got turned around by the mist, but I figured it out. That’s why I was about to head east for the car park.”

Hugo let out a groan and held Charles even tighter. “East,” he said, sounding strangled. “Please promise you’ll never trek again without me?”

“Never? That could be a long time.”

“God willing.”

Charles didn’t need the lantern to see how much Hugo meant that. He felt it in his hold, in his kiss, in the way he rolled them so Charles was shadowed by Hugo’s body as if he was a tor above him, or a wall built just to shield him—Charles was safe in his shelter.

“You got more than a little turned around, Charles. This is Whisper Tor.”

“Whisper— Oh.” He pictured their view from the pub, those two peaks miles from each other.

“You remember what’s near it?”

His heart stopped. “The quarry.”

“Yes. The quarry that you dropped your backpack next to when I got here. Right on its edge, Charles. One more step east and….” Hugo’s kiss was rough. “Never without me again,” he said, but it sounded more like a prayer than an order. He kissed Charles again before asking, “Do you know why it’s called Whisper Tor?

Charles shook his head,

“The granite at its base is curved. Whisper near it, and the sound travels further than usual. Speak up like you did and half of Cornwall probably heard you.”

“Ah.”

Hugo nodded. “Ah, indeed. So I heard you mention things I could have cleared up if you’d told me earlier.” Hugo’s mouth found that spot below his ear again, his body a blanket of warmth Charles couldn’t help but wrap his arms and legs around. “Like you thinking that Nathan’s on my wavelength. He is, like I imagine Keir is for you too. But I wasn’t seeing Nathan at uni.”

“I gathered that much.” Curiosity needled at him. “Who were you seeing then?”

“A nice enough guy I met at the Christian Union, but he wasn’t the one I needed to wait for. Nathan wasn’t either.”

Charles glanced to the side as if he could see the tent pitched a few metres away through the canvas between them. “You think they’re okay?”

“I think it’s more than time they had this conversation. Like it’s more than time I told you a few truths too.” Hugo echoed words that Charles had thought he’d only shared with his maker. “You were never someone to kill time with, Charles.” His mouth skimmed sensitive skin. “Not for me.”

Charles met his mouth, their lips touching, gentle.

Hugo said, “You were a gift, Charles. Were what I needed, so much. Are who makes me better. I didn’t realise until you drove off.” He dropped his head, lips finding where a pulse beat in his throat, kissing Charles there, and saying, “You went, and it was like my heart stopped beating. You left and took it with you.”

Charles closed eyes that were close to flooding, blinking against the sting of another near-miss.

Hugo kissed his closed eyelids, his lips beyond soft. “I don’t know what my future looks like, Charles, but I want you in it. Have to, if my heart’s going to stop whenever you’re not there. Can it start again now?”

It was the quietest of questions but it crashed through Charles like thunder. “Yes.” He tightened his hold.

Rain pattered on the shell of the tent, and a far-away sheep bleated, but Charles barely heard it. His world narrowed to the few inches between them.

They kissed, rocking as if in a boat together, not in a tent pitched on Cornish moorland, but it wasn’t sex that had Charles sliding his hands under Hugo’s boxers to clasp him closer, not when it came with Hugo finding his ear and whispering.

“I didn’t realise, Charles. I didn’t know I’d fallen in love with you.”

“Me either.”

“I saw Sol after you left. He was worried. Showed me the picture he’d painted of me. He said he thought it would make you happy, but it didn’t.”

Charles recalled the image of Hugo holding one of Nathan’s letters.

Hugo said, “Sol captured a moment when I was thinking about you.”

“Me?”

“You,” Hugo promised. He shifted onto his side, his hand so warm on Charles, finding his cock and stroking, his pace hampered by the sleeping bag, stopping and starting and far from perfect, but the only touch Charles wanted. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“No, but that’s the problem with virgins,” Charles said, joy starting to bubble. “They don’t have the first idea what they’re doing.”

And this was a first time for them both, Charles knew. One he might not have confronted if not for his brother leading by example, showing him that real strength meant confessing weakness. “I got mixed up seeing you and Nathan together,” he admitted.

Hugo’s stroking faltered.

“You looked so happy to see him.”

“I was,” Hugo said simply. “I always will be.”

“Loyalty,” Charles whispered, naming another word that he’d walked under since childhood. One that shaped his own friendships. “I don’t know how I didn’t recognise it.” He kissed Hugo then, and their tongues touched, kiss deepening until Charles pulled away. He buried his face in the crook of Hugo’s neck, muffling what he next said. “But I saw his things in your room. On your bed—”

“His room,” Hugo said with quiet conviction. “I put his things in his room, because your room felt more like mine. Has done from the first night I shared it with you.” Hugo’s lips found his again, and his hand resumed stroking, pulling pleasure from him, his own cock hot against Charles.

Charles held it, loving the heft of it in his hand, the thick way it filled his grip, Hugo’s breath hitching and catching for him.

Hugo’s hand sped. “Love you so much.”

“Even though I left?” Charles drew back just enough to catch his breath, gasping as Hugo stroked him faster, sweat starting to bead on his skin, everything in him heating—his heart, his soul, his hope for a combined future.

“If that meant you came back, yes.” Hugo gazed at him as though he meant that. As if he meant every single thing he said next. “I wanted to follow you.” His hand slowed, still drawing sensation from him, but in a thin thread that pulled tight, his climax not far behind. “Almost did,” Hugo said. “But one less adult meant cancelling the whole trek.”

Of course, he wouldn’t have wanted to break that promise.

Charles let go, giving himself up to so much more than the feel of Hugo’s hand on him. He came, sensation pulsing, and it felt like falling, but Hugo was there to catch him.

He kissed Charles, his hips shifting, his cock still hard and wanting. “If the weather had turned before we left Glynn Harber, I could have come after you right away.”

But then Charles wouldn’t have learned a lesson that his namesake taught him—their being apart was nothing compared to what he and his Huw had been through. Nothing. But the first earl who’d shared his name hadn’t ever stopped hoping. Instead he’d built for their future.

Charles wanted to do the same.

Wanted to build something for this man who kissed him; who gasped as Charles parted his thighs and then closed them tight with Hugo’s cock snug between them. He wanted to give him more than yet another first time like this. Needed years more of Hugo learning to love him however Charles could teach him.

He tensed his legs, and Hugo groaned into his ear, the sound so deep it must have come from his soul. His thrusts were short and powerful, their skin slick with sweat now. Then Hugo fucked through his thighs faster—harder—coming with a long, low groan and shudder, telling Charles that he loved him, over and over.

Charles held Hugo close, decided.

He’d build something for Hugo just as worth keeping forever.