The Stars Over Bittergate Bay

Chapter 10

10

T he balcony was a rectangle, perhaps eight feet by six feet. There was a small table and a chair directly in front of the door, and baskets held several hanging plants with barren vines that curled down over the balustrade. All of those things Sidney would notice later because his attention was immediately fixed on a massive telescope.

It was wedged into the far corner, overlooking the bay to the northeast. It had sleek black tubes and silver fixtures, nearly a foot in diameter and almost five feet tall. It made Sidney’s mouth water almost as much as the sight of Jonas naked had.

“Good lord,” Sidney said appreciatively.

“The most impressive of my telescopes,” Jonas mused. Sidney’s face reddened and he resolved not to respond. Instead, he walked over and lowered his face to the eyepiece. It was a little after midday by now and the sky had cleared. It would be a good night for stars.

“Did you make this one too?” Sidney asked. There was no response, and when he looked up he realized Jonas had gone back inside, and was coming out now with a large wooden case. “What’s that?”

“I thought you were interested in the lenses.” Jonas set the box on the wrought iron table and flipped open the latches with his thumbs. “The different celestial skies.”

“Yes.” Sidney managed to finally remember why he’d come into Jonas’s bedroom in the first place. Jonas shrugged, taking out a wide red lens and gesturing to a silver band around the bottom of the tube above where the mirror would have been.

“Each color comes from a different realm or dimension.” Jonas said, sliding the silver aside with a click and then slotting the red lens in on top of it. “They don’t entirely act in place of witch sight, but they do enhance it quite a bit.”

“Could you create something that gives witch sight? That isn’t like taking a mark, I mean?” Sidney crouched down to examine the spot where the lens fit. The first silver band seemed to connect to the lens around the rim, holding the whole thing in place. He ran his fingers lightly around the metal. “This is an incredible design. You should patent this.”

“I’m the only one who has a use for it,” Jonas said. Sidney scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“I have a use for it.”

“To study something that no one else can see?”

“You can see it,” Sidney countered.

“Yes, but I don’t care about your research. I’m not handing out grants.”

“It’s for my doctoral dissertation.”

“I’ve got no power to give you a doctorate either. The only thing you’ll get, Quince, is ridicule.”

“Are you so afraid of being called a fraud that you’d hold back progress for the entire field?” Sidney pressed his hands to his knees to hoist himself to his feet, his injured calf throbbing. He shifted his weight, leaning back against the rail as Jonas watched him beneath a furrowed brow. “Even if people don’t believe in what they’re seeing, there would be other applications. Or can’t see it, I mean. But there could be uses. Maybe not ones you or I could come up with, but?—”

“Are you always so charitably minded?” Jonas folded his arms over his broad chest, biceps bulging. Sidney shifted his weight again. He really shouldn’t have crouched. He could feel blood trickling down his calf.

“It’s not the worst thing I’ve been called.”

“You hurt your leg, didn’t you?”

“It’s fine,” Sidney lied. Jonas rolled his eyes and started back inside.

“Liar.”

“Karolina offered to cover my classes until the Ascension,” Sidney said, hobbling inside after Jonas.

“So you can, what?” Jonas called from what Sidney thought was the bathroom. “Keep looking into the different celestial skies and doing research of no use to anyone without sight?”

“I was thinking I might try to examine the question I posed to you yesterday. If the energy flow created by a multidimensional planetary alignment can create portals. Which, I don’t know what those are—” Jonas reemerged with gauze and a small jar filled with a green paste.

“Portals are how you move from one realm to another,” he said. “Lean on the bed and take your trousers down.”

“I’m fine!”

“I can see the blood on your pant leg.”Sidney looked down at the blood on his pant leg. Shit and damn. He walked over to the edge of the high mattress of Jonas’s bed and leaned his hips against it. Jonas grunted as he got to his knees in front of Sidney, and Sidney scrambled back into the conversation they’d been having as he undid his belt. His head wasn’t clear when it came to Jonas in that position. Or any position of proximity. Focus, Quince.

“So, if the extra-dimensional bodies aligning can open portals, perhaps the shifting gravitational fields of those bodies in other celestial skies impact other things on our planet.” He shuffled his pants off and stared at the ceiling, as Jonas prodded at his leg, trying to keep his train of thought moving in a productive direction. “Tangible evidence, or at least chartable evidence, is likely the best route to being taken seriously by the establishment.”

“Are you really so concerned with being taken seriously?” Jonas asked. Sidney laughed.

“I mean, it would be nice.” Jonas scooted closer. Sidney could feel Jonas’s breath on his thigh. He looked up at the ceiling again. “I’m trying to get tenure at Holyworth. I want a research position.”

“So, you can do what?” Jonas asked, as he unwound the rest of the old bandage. “Make nickels instead of pennies?”

“Thanks to Karolina, the astronomy department has become one of the most prestigious on the east coast. It’ll pay well, and I could even leverage it into a better job elsewhere, if it comes to that.”

“You’re content living like a spider— spinning your brains out for money?” Sidney cocked his head to the side. He knew the quote, but was surprised Jonas did. Never mind that it was a little ironic coming from someone who could afford to own a telescope larger than the University’s.

“You read Louisa May Alcott?”

“She’s quite popular,” Jonas replied a little defensively. He opened the jar, dipped his fingers into the paste and then dabbed it on Sidney’s wound. Sidney hissed.

“Christ on the cross! Fuck, Jonas! That stings!”

“Sorry. But it’ll heal up overnight. Barely a scratch by morning.” He smeared more green on and Sidney winced, clutching the bedspread as he groaned again. Jonas cleared his throat. “And you’ve read Alcott as well, otherwise you wouldn’t have recognized it. You need to stop accusing people of things you’re guilty of yourself.”

“It wasn’t an accusation, just an observation. She’s a favorite of my mother.” Sidney could feel his skin knitting itself back together, and decided not to look. Jonas began to wind a fresh bandage around his foot. “I heard Little Women annually, though I preferred ‘The Mummy’s Curse.’ My brother read it to me when I was younger and it scared me to bits.” Jonas winced as he moved to tie off the bandage behind Sidney’s knee. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine,” Jonas said. Then he glanced up at Sidney with an arched brow. “Actually fine.” Sidney hadn’t been paying attention to Jonas’s shoulder when Jonas was naked to know if this was true or not, but he wished he had been. Aside from pulling Jonas’s shirt off, which he was not going to let himself do, he could think of only one way to find out.

“I don’t believe you,” Sidney said. Jonas blinked up at him, his amber eyes bright, not with amusement, but with something else. Darker maybe? Perhaps Sidney had made a major miscalculation.

“You don’t believe me?”

“I doubt you’ve already healed.” Sidney gestured to Jonas’s shoulder. “Those weren’t paper cuts.”

Jonas huffed, but Sidney could clearly see the flush of pink that slid over his cheekbones. Jonas reached up and slid one black suspender off his shoulder, keeping his gaze intent on Sidney, and Sidney had the sneaking sensation that he might have miscalculated again. Standing over Jonas was doing strange things to him. It wasn’t a position he found himself in that often. Not that he was in anything like a position now, but?—

The gashes on Jonas’s chest were still there, red, angry looking. The fact that Sidney had missed them before was embarrassing. He grabbed the jar of salve from where Jonas had left it on the bedspread and dipped his fingers into it, rubbing the green paste gently against Jonas’s shoulder.

“I would have been fine,” Jonas sulked.

“Of course,” Sidney muttered. “Liar.”

A silence fell between them as Sidney worked. It had been the same silence that had him nattering on about his research two minutes ago, but now he had nothing left to fill it. He was distracted by the heat of Jonas’s skin and wondering what on earth Jonas could be thinking, as they both watched Sidney’s fingers move over Jonas’s chest.

“Stay and use the lenses and the library until the Ascension,” Jonas said abruptly. Sidney looked at him, and Jonas met his gaze with a small smirk.

“Are you sure?”

“Certainly. If you think it’ll help with your dissertation.”

“Thank you.” Sidney drew his hand back, at a loss for what else he ought to say. “You need gauze. That looks like it stains.” Brilliant.

“Thank you,” Jonas smiled, then leaned back on his heels and stood, half his chest exposed, lines of ink and all. Sidney’s fingertips itched to skate over Jonas’s skin. He wanted to kiss him again.

Oh, no.

Jonas started around the end of the bed toward the bathroom, juggling his medical supplies. “Just do me a favor, Sidney and knock before you come in next time.”