DISCLAIMER:    Not mine.  They're dressed.  And I was 7 at the time.
WORKING TITLE: Milbury Tangents: Circles Round the Son
AUTHOR:        kel
FANDOM:        Children of the Stones
PAIRING:       Matt Brake/Adam Brake
RATING:        R, I, UA
WARNINGS:      They’re family.  Matt’s underage.  If that bugs you, don’t read this.

CHRONO:        During Full Circle.  Will make absolutely no sense unless you've read
               Salt Circle.
ARCHIVE:       yes to Fabulae, Britslash, Rareslash
SUMMARY:       arms around you like the circles going ‘round the sun

FEEDBACK:      Of any and all stripes welcome – to bessie@goldweb.com.au

THANKS TO:     technically unbetaed?  I have a vague idea I sent it to a
               trusted fiend in 2003, for a once-over, but I can't swear to it

COMMENTS:      Somebody had to.  To say this was provoked by Broken Memories 
               would be far too simplistic.  Originally the end of a long series-
               parallel type story, but the middle never got written.  So I've hived it off as an
               overly melo (to me) fan piece riffing on the End Of The Series, such as it was.
               (Time Circles - WTF?)



=====================
Circles Round the Son
by kel
======================

And Matt doesn’t tell Adam what he learned, as he tried to save Sandra, as she turned to stone
under his hand. That Margaret drank and beat her daughter; and after a year of pain and secrets
they lived as Matt and Adam do.

That Doctor Lyle, grieving and overfond of his prescriptions, bedded his son, sometimes with
consent, but never touched him here. And Jimmo, poor stupid Jimmo, bore bruises faultlessly for
many years, as his father had done before him. That all the incomers — and how he knows this, he
does not know, but it came with the last great flash as they ran — were chosen for very particular
sins, in Hendrick’s eyes; for sin, and to be cleansed of sin. And the sarsens had called all of
them from afar.

And made them Hendrick’s children. And fed upon them, made them safe, perhaps? And it must have
been to save them, but it cannot have been, because the sarsens called to Matthew from the painting,
and his visions were harmless, before. And Adam wanted Matt because Matt wanted him, and Matt
didn’t want him *until*...

And the Matt and Adam who lived here, in this strange new Milbury, the Matt and Adam for whom they
were taken by the Margaret they did not know, were not lovers. He knows it, in his bones.

It frightens him, and he makes Adam stop the car, when they are past the stones; makes him stop and
get out, stop and look back. And Matt, with strength beyond his years, takes his father’s hand and
pulls him close; kisses him open-mouthed in the middle of the road, shoves him against the car and
straddles him where anyone can see. Because he needs so desperately to know why, and how, and
whether it has all been a lie.

And exults to find it is real, this desire. That it is his, and his alone.

And Adam doesn’t resist; Adam lets himself be pushed against the dusty back of the red Austin,
feels Matt’s jeans warming his hands, and his son harden against him, and holds him there; loses
himself in the play of lips and tongue, with Matt’s hands undoing his tie, twisting in his hair,
because it was close, so close, and he’s damned if he’ll give this up, for anyone.

But he learnt the same things, today, learnt too that there were many more before them. He wonders
at the deaths of wives, the deaths of husbands, and cannot, will not believe that Milbury caused
them. There is no evidence. No shining cause. But everything after... there are patterns there,
cycles. Of love, and harm, and loneliness: and he is horrified because Matthew, it seems, is just
another victim.

And he falters, and Matt pulls away, makes Adam look into his eyes.

-- Stop it, old man. Turn that bloody brain off, just for a minute.

And Matt strokes Adam’s cheek, gently; revels in the way the wiry sideburns scritch and part under
his fingers.

-- Don’t even think it, Adam. I know my own mind.

-- We can’t be sure of that.

-- I can. I knew it a year ago, I knew it a month ago, I know it now. And it’s mine, not the bloody
Bear Cult’s. Not Hendrick’s, not yours. *Mine*.

-- Are you qualified to make that judgement?

-- Better than anyone else. Including you. I love you, Adam; I love you, Dad. Two different things.
I thought you’d worked that out.

-- I don’t think I... I can’t do that. I can’t take that on faith.

-- Wave, particle. What are you afraid of? We’re not like the others.

-- That’s not what Hendrick thought.

-- Oh, well, that’s that then. He knew me so much better than you do.

-- He understood me very well, says Adam, gently, the memory of Hendrick’s hand on his back strong
in his mind. – That’s what worries me.

-- We survived. They didn’t. There has to be a reason. And Matt smiles, gently. – If it makes you
feel better, I’ll back off until you’ve thought about it.

He sits back, rests his full weight in his father’s hands, so that Adam sinks down, propped against
the bumper bar. Tweedy jacket and shirt catching on the battered numberplate, exposing his back to
the hot metal.

-- Then again, I could just tie you to the bed and abuse you for a change. Take your mind off it.

-- I rather like the sound of that.

-- Thought you might. It’ll cost you.

-- Parts and labour?

-- Play your cards right and we’ll see. Do you love me?

And Adam pushes Matt away, a little, and looks into his hazel eyes, Jennifer’s eyes; and is surer
of himself than he has ever been. Stones or no stones; whether he had been a student, or a friend,
or a stranger. And Matt is all these things, and more.

-- You know I--

-- Let me finish. *Me* me. Not what’s-left-of-Jennifer. Not Adam Brake the Sequel.

-- The cheek of it. I do hope you’re not claiming to be New and Improved.

-- Just answer the question.

And perhaps it is better, in the end, that he is not another man’s son, for Adam would never have
dared to trust him. Or himself.

-- Yes, Matthew. Oh dear Christ, yes.

Almost inaudible; soft and painful and torn from Adam, against his will.

-- Good answer, O aged brain.

And Matt’s trying to smile, but it means altogether too much to him, and his voice is barely there.
And Matt leans unconsciously into Adam’s hand, as he brushes a stray lock behind his ear, as Adam’s
eyes search his own, for forgiveness.

-- Conditional answer. Paraconsistent, tending to true. I’m not sure I can separate it all out.

-- Well, I can. If worst comes to worst, you’ve got seven years to disown me. I’ll think of
something.

And he still has trouble saying his ‘m’s; and the gap between his lips, the hint of tongue behind
his teeth drives Adam crazy. Now more than ever.

-- And if Hendrick was right?

And Matthew shrugs, slightly. Smiles, brilliantly. – Puzzle, puzzle.

And Matt doesn’t care, and although it hurts Adam to think about, the unanswered questions will
circle round them for the rest of their lives. So there’s no need to deal with them now, no need at
all.

Adam just pulls him close, wraps his arms around him, tightly; lets the shakes and tension of the
last day pass through them both and disappear. Rocks his lover, gently, and listens to the crickets
in the fields, under the sun; feels the warmth of his hair against his face, smells damp straw and
Dai’s sheepskin.

-- This won’t last, you know, he says, softly, with a little sadness. – It can’t. *I* can’t.

-- Not my problem, grasshopper, says Matt, muffled against his chest. -- You’ll run out of willing
young men long before I run out of wrinklies. And I’ll make you wait *ages* before I take you back,
see if I don’t.

And he sounds exactly like Jennifer, like that, and she’d have laughed her head off at the look on
Adam’s face. And there will certainly be heartache, when Matt grows and moves on, but for now this
is enough. It is honest, and it is theirs, and it will bring what it will bring.

And Adam slides his thumb between Matt’s lips, then bends and fucks his mouth with his tongue,
gently, the way Matt likes; in rhythm with the movement of Matt’s hand on his body. And the sun
beats down on Matt’s denim-clad body against his own, on Adam’s quickly discarded tie; he can smell
the heat of Matt’s skin, of his hair, warm under his hands. And neither cares if the stones are
watching.

There may be worlds, or time circles, where Adam and Matt are father and son and nothing more,
where Adam has submerged himself and married again; where either hides, or Matt is less precocious,
and the wrong touch, a public touch, does not risk censure or prison. Perhaps there are those where
they are not related. But here they are friends, and in the end that is so very much more important.

===== © arjuna 2003 =====