Jack bought the apartment—and all the furniture in it, even, it turned out, the blue-and-gold linens—because how could he not?

And if Theo went back to his house, alone, and imagined all of his clothes lined up next to Jack’s, their books on the same open shelves, their toothbrushes aligned, his on the right, Jack’s on the left...

Nobody needed to know.

The first time they kissed was on a bench, next to the river, hidden under a copse of oak trees, right at the edge of the university campus, and he hadn’t meant to do it, swore to himself that he never would, but he did it anyway.

It was Lughnasa.

When Theo was small, hiding from his father with a thick stack of books in the closet of his bedroom, he spent hours researching different locations that he might run to, and there was something about Ireland—the land, the history, the mythology—which spoke to him. Most people wouldn’t have known this truth about Theo, that he longed for something deeper, that he desired more than anything a connection to something bigger than himself. He’d never felt entirely comfortable where he was, even though he pretended; Baltimore was his father’s place.

So he fell in love with warriors and kings, goddesses and gods and lovers, Cuchulainn and Emer and Oisin and Aengus, and he lost himself in this, this place he hungered to see, and the old stories were a part of him.

And he left behind the false surety that his father had forced on him as a Beaumont in Baltimore, and today—today was Lughnasa, that first of August, and he had Jack Gardner with him, and he was exactly where he had always wanted to be.

He should have known that he couldn’t stay here—he should have known better than to think he could keep this.

And he should have known better than to kiss Jack after nearly a month of fucking and drinking and laughing and—kissing made it real. And on Lughnasa, when marriages were once made, a year and a day to see if it would work, if love could grow, if passion might stay.

It was by its very nature a magical time, one of those in-between times, the wheel of the year turning, the first harvest, the invitation. And he’d been sitting there, smoking as usual, with Jack there next to him, and the river running, and he’d been thinking about the stories he had told himself, and Jack put his arm around him, a little.

“What are you thinking about?”

Theo leaned back into Jack’s muscled arm, flicked his cigarette into the water. He put his hand on Jack’s thigh. “I’m thinking about fucking you right here on this bench.”

Jack laughed, and he blushed, shaking his head. “No, you’re not.”