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“Is everything alright, dear?” William addressed his brother in the dark when his entire body suddenly jolted in the bed.
Albert only came to at his voice, not fully understanding the question. His mind was still dominated by earlier impressions, and he struggled to shake off the oppressive images.
His loud gasping slowly quieted into soft, rapid breaths when William tightened his grip on his arm and then stroked it gently.
“I’m here. Did you have a bad dream?”
“I think so.” Albert’s voice was hoarse with exhaustion. He turned to the side, trying to find William beside him, who still did not let go of his arm. Their heads bumped together, and his brother shifted back slightly on the pillow. Even so, they were breathing into each other’s lips, and Albert spoke the next words close to his face. “About the fire… I think.”
That was enough, he did not want to sink deeper into the blurred images that were resurfacing. They had little to do with the former Moriarty estate being set ablaze, which he had once believed did not affect him at all, and much more to do with his father, whose face he saw among the flames.
Albert refused to talk about his father. In truth, he had always acted as if his family did not exist, except for those few occasions in the first months of their orphanhood when others still mentioned them.
The Albert who answered then was the young head of the Moriarty family, not the disturbed man lying in bed now. He was always able to sharply separate the overly serious, composed child from his true, inwardly trembling self, and he never wanted to reveal the latter even to those dearest to him.
They had spent more than ten years together, and yet Albert still refused to speak about it, because he did not consider it important. Everything that turned into a nightmare on rare nights never came to his conscious mind in waking life, as if it had never truly been part of his existence. The boundaries, however, blurred, and until Albert became aware of where he was and who was beside him, he could not calm down. William’s grip on his arm, however, anchored him in the bedroom, and the soft rustling of the blanket washed the confused, dreamlike murmurs out of his mind.
William moved closer and wrapped an arm around him when Albert pressed his face against his neck and kissed his collarbone, simply wanting to be as close as possible and to feel his brother’s reassuring scent. William stroked his back and did not insist that he speak. If they did not become too alert, Albert might fall asleep again, and he could follow him, though sleep had long since avoided him.
Lying there in silence, lost in his thoughts beside his brother, he listened to Albert’s steady, undisturbed breathing, which began to dull his own senses as well, when Albert suddenly shuddered and gasped for air, pushing himself up from the pillow. The moment passed, but the terror had not yet dissipated from the air, William could feel it in the rigid grip of his brother’s fingers clutching him.
“It’s alright,” he whispered into his hair and kissed Albert’s head while continuing to stroke him.
For a while Albert did not move. He tried to align his frantic heartbeat and breathing with William’s. The sweet, clean scent that permeated his brother’s clothes and skin began to sober him. He loosened his grip on William’s shirt, and finally lifted his head, hesitantly searching for his face, then his lips, stealing a calming kiss from them.
William held him, even stopping his caresses. Their bodies pressed together under the blanket, and he gently returned the kiss. They met without desire, with affection, free of the intensity that had taken hold of them in that bed a few hours earlier. Bite marks darkened on Albert’s shoulder, and the ache of his grip lingered at William’s waist beneath their clothes, yet when they kissed again, only softness surrounded them.
The remnants of the bad dream seemed to dissolve, and it became easy to surrender to a gentler continuation as William stroked Albert’s face and hair.
Albert wrapped his arms around William’s waist and drew one of his legs over him without slipping his hand under his clothes. He wanted to feel that he was close, and that he would not vanish as if he were merely an illusion. At times he felt William was too good to him, and a fear crept in of when everything they had experienced together would be rendered meaningless.
But William was real, not his lonely fantasy. His slender fingers threaded into Albert’s dark hair and pulled his head closer, deepening the kiss, while Albert pressed their hips together.
They continued for a long time, wavering between rising desire and exhaustion, until night ultimately prevailed over them. William, with his eyes closed and his lips moving ever so slightly, kissed Albert, whose hand eventually slid from his hip down onto the blanket. He was able to fall asleep again, and carry William with him, so that his brother could no longer worry about him.