"Will?"
He blinked, and it was as if he blinked with his entire body; the degree to which he was suddenly with her made her sure he'd been somewhere else just a second before. "Jane," he said, and smiled. It was probably meant to reassure her. "Hot tonight, isn't it?"
"Very," she said, "the Tube was a suffocating nightmare."
He was sitting under an open window in the lounge, back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. Jane dropped her bag into an armchair, kicked off her sandals, and sank down beside him, tucking her legs to one side because of her skirt. She'd been working in the bookshop all day, which wasn't bad as far as part-time jobs went, but between that and the train and the walk it felt like heaven to be off her feet.
The neck of Will's t-shirt was damp, a darker blue than the rest, and his hair stuck wet to his forehead. "I'm sorry," he said, frowning. "I meant to cook for us."
"You cook?" Jane said, even though she wasn't surprised to hear it - she just did not think in terms of there being things Will could not do, that he was not good at. It was more the everydayness of it all that was new and a little startling, the easy familiarity in the words for us.
"Survival skill," Will said, shrugging, "there were nine of us. And," - he flashed a grin - "I'm very good at eggs. I can do them three ways."
She grinned back. "Good job Simon's not around. We'd be in for his lecture on the dangers of cholesterol."
Will smiled at that, but a beat too slow, and his eyes went vague. Jane knew he was drifting away from her, like a boat on a line, slipping quietly out as far as it may go. She wondered if, tonight, it was to do with the heat; it dragged at her own thoughts, turning them dream-heavy, and she closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall.
Outside there was a siren, a few streets away, and the low grind of the number 28 bus, heading west. The sounds were muffled tonight, like the heat had wrapped the city up tight, fading everything she was used to. She was so hot and the air was so hot and she felt like she was melting into it, becoming part of something else, something big.
When it came, the sound of a key in the lock was enough to make her jump. "Oh," Jane said, coming to herself, "Bran." That night, there was no-one else it could be.
Will said, "Yes."
Her parents were on a fortnight's holiday in Spain, and they'd encouraged her to have friends round, keep her company, as Simon and Barney weren't home for the summer. Will and Bran were probably not quite what her parents had meant, but Jane did not feel as badly about that as she might have. In her memory, for whatever reason, time spent with Will and Bran had always been something other people might not understand, and a thing to quietly guard. If it came with small deceits, that had never made it any less right.
As Bran entered, the first thing he did was switch on a lamp, and Jane blinked because her eyes had got so used to twilight gloom. Slipping the key into his back pocket, Bran crossed the room with marked slowness, raising an eyebrow. "So this is what we're doing this evening, is it?"
Will was cheerful. "Yes, we're dreadfully boring."
It was a bit silly, being found sitting on the floor in the dark, but Jane didn't entirely care, because if it was an odd little moment that Bran had just walked in on, it was an odd little moment that belonged to her and Will. "We were just talking about food," she said. "We decided it was too hot to eat."
Which wasn't actually true, they hadn't decided anything, but something about Bran made Jane do things like that, made her find tiny ways to draw herself to Will tight, tight, tight. It had been that way since the first day they'd met - moments like this would always be tinted the colour of a shining Welsh sky to her - and she'd never been quite able to stop. It wasn't that Jane didn't like Bran, and it wasn't that she didn't want him to get close; exactly the opposite, in fact. She just couldn't bear for him to get between.
Once he did, she thought, that would be it.
Bran was nodding. "True enough," he said. "Here's a thought, got any ice-cream, Jane?"
Jane hopped to her feet and led the expedition to the Drew freezer, where a quick search turned up a full carton of vanilla and a nearly empty one of chocolate. She pulled out spoons and bowls and pushed them towards the boys, who were already bickering amicably over the distribution of chocolate. Jane leaned against the counter and watched them.
It was still new, yes, but it was also easy, seeing Will in her home; she'd imagined him there more times than she cared to admit. For too many years, whenever she'd had a long day or a boring day or a lonely day, she'd found imagining Will beside her as she did the littlest things made it all brighter. When she was younger, they took tea together at the kitchen table, or sat on her bed in a patch of sunlight and talked. When she was older, they still talked, but they did other things too in that sunlight, and they always smiled at each other during, they always smiled at each other afterward.
With Bran, it was something else altogether. She had never had those sort of daydreams about Bran, because she had never been able to predict how they might go. Even the Bran inside her head went his own way; he belonged to himself, and she could not guess him.
Some sort of arrangement about the chocolate must have been reached, because Will came to lean against the counter beside her while Bran, on her other side, began dishing up for all three of them. Will said, "They're having a bonfire on Hampstead Heath tonight. If you're looking for something to do, Bran."
Jane said, "A fire, hot as it is?"
"For Midsummer's Eve," Will said. Something about his voice, some tiny strain, made Jane glance at him sharply.
"Now there's a thing I didn't expect," Bran said. "I didn't know city Sais still did such things."
"Some do, whether they know why or not," Will said. And then he and Bran both looked to Jane, each displaying a different curiosity - Will's quietly hopeful, Bran's closer to a challenge.
Jane sighed, feeling she was failing them both. "Why?"
Will looked as if he were about to speak, but then did not, his eyes sliding to Bran as if he could not help wanting to hear what Bran might say instead. Jane was good at telling when something was going on with Will, even if she didn't know what, or why, and right then she had this idea, this wild, strange idea, that he was picking at the corner of a scab, peeling the tiniest bit back, testing to see how much it hurt. And he knew he shouldn't be doing it, and seeing that was fascinating - Will Stanton, doing something he shouldn't.
Bran noticed Will's hesitation, and said, "It is the longest day of the year, which means the sun and all the good things associated with the sun are meant to be at their strongest. But of course that also means that every day after those things will grow weaker and weaker, all the way to the dark of midwinter. So the fires are encouragement, like."
"Oh."
"And some believe," Will said slowly, not looking at Jane or Bran, perhaps not seeing the room, even, "and some like to pretend that they do, and some just like to watch things burn."
"Oh," she said again. "Well. Did either of you want to go?"
Bran shook his head, and dished up more ice-cream; Will said, "I'm hot enough as it is," and looking at him, Jane thought that was true. While Bran's face was flushed pink, and she imagined hers was too, Will's was drawn and white, and the sweat that stood on his forehead made her think of illness. Jane was about to encourage everyone to move to the table, just to get Will to a chair, when Bran reached across and wrapped two long fingers around Will's wrist.
"Far too hot," Bran said.
And Jane stared, marvelling at the ease with which Bran crossed lines. She could not ever remember touching Will in such a deliberate way, which was certainly not to say that she had never wanted to. She couldn't take her eyes off the sight, white fingers on summer-brown wrist, when suddenly, with a shock that ran straight through her, the fingers of Bran's other hand were encircling hers.
"See? Jane's cooler than you."
Bran was watching her, his head tilted and his brow arched: another challenge. But Jane realised, new and heady, that Bran did not offer gauntlets because he wanted to see her fail. She took a deep breath, blindly grabbed at Will's hand by her side, and said, "Bran's right."
They stood like that for a long moment, framed by the solemn tick of the longcase clock in the hall. When Jane dared to look at Will, she saw exactly what she'd hoped not to: his gentle, friendly smile, the one that at the oddest times made her think of armour. He said, "Ice cream, then?"
Something hot and disappointed crossed Bran's face, and Jane knew she had been wrong - there was no ease in this for him at all. His touch disappeared, leaving a ghost-pressure lingering on Jane's arm, and she let go of Will too, feeling alone and regretful. They carried their ice-cream back to the lounge without speaking, and sat on the floor by the coffee table, where there was a chance of catching a breeze through the open windows.
There was silence between them now, stretched tight. Bran would not rush to break it, Jane thought; his pride had been hurt, and something deeper besides. So it was up to her. "What'd you do today, Bran?"
There was no need to ask Will that question. She knew he'd been in a reading room at the British Library, working on a massive research paper, something about the Dark Ages. Which was where this had begun: it was silly for Will to take the train in from Buckinghamshire almost every day, when there was room to spare and her parents had wanted her to have company....
"Went to the British Museum," Bran said. "Saw things I should be able to see in Wales, by rights."
"Like what?"
"The Pennal Letter, written by Owain Glyn Dwr back in the 1400s - he was a famous Welsh nationalist, so there's irony for you. And the Gold Cape of Mold. From the Bronze Age, that is, and as thin as a sheet of kitchen foil; I suppose it would have to stay, I am not sure how they could move it."
"They probably have all sorts of special equipment," Jane said, a little vaguely. She was looking at Will, noticing that not only was he very quiet, but that the ice-cream in front of him was melting, barely touched, and the fingers of his left hand were curled up white-knuckle tight.
She bit her lip, and glanced at Bran. His gold eyes on her were warm, and strong, and they gave her what she needed to reach out, put a hand to the side of Will's neck, and say, "You're not all right, Will. Is there something we can do?"
Because her hand was right there, and his life was under her fingers, Jane could feel how minutely he froze; she would have missed it in an eyeblink. "It's just the night," Will said, eyes slipping off to the side. "Makes it hard to tell - well. It's the heat, that's all. Maybe I should go up, take a shower or something."
"You could do that," Bran said. There was daring in his voice. Just as he had given Jane nerve, so, she thought, the sight of her hand on Will's neck, fingers now gently stirring, was helping to bring his nerve back full force. He leaned past her, bracing himself with a hand on her knee, and spoke at Will's ear. "But why should you go up alone?"
Sitting where she was, for one small moment Jane caught all. There was the naked hope underneath Bran's boldness, and as for Will... she inhaled sharply at what she saw there, pain as fresh as from a needle-prick, yet somehow old, and deep. It didn't belong on Will Stanton's face, but it did, and that was the strangest, worst thing of all.
"No, Bran," Will said finally. "Not tonight."
Bran sat back on his heels, his posture strong and straight, chin high. "Of course I cannot speak for Jane," he said, "but if you think I say these things because I am heat addled or caught in some midsummer madness, then you are wrong. And you have never known me very well besides."
Slipping her fingers through Bran's hand, still on her knee, Jane gave him a swift smile. "I don't know," she said, "I think you spoke for me pretty well." Her other hand left Will's neck, found his fingers, and squeezed. There was a small answering pressure; it felt like the edge of surrender, and Jane's heart raced.
When Will spoke, it was with a quiet formality that would have been strange coming from anyone else, but it fit him, fit the night. "Bran Davies. Jane Drew. In many ways of knowing, I know you."
"Ah," Bran said, eyes gleaming and wicked, "many, yes, but not all, and since when does Will Stanton resist a bit of learning?"
The smile started at the corner of Will's mouth, and his fingers turned in her grip; he said, "You know, Jane, he makes a good point," as he leaned forward -
And Jane knew fire. She was a candle flame, small and steady and bright, and Will was more than that - Will was -
She didn't know, it didn't matter, he was Will, his lips were hot and soft and when she parted hers, he parted his, letting her explore; for all her imagining she had never known this, never known how he would reach up and thumb her cheek, how he would make that little noise in his throat when he pulled away, one that said he was sorry to let her go.
"Well now," Bran said, while Jane's world spun and settled, "my turn, I think."
Jane instinctively leaned back, towards the sofa, out of the way. Inside a cold little voice already was beginning to wonder if Will had kissed her because she was sitting closer, or he'd known her longer, or if it was easier because she was a girl, or - this was the worst - because it meant less. So it was a moment before she caught Bran looking at her, frustrated and amused. He said, "Going to make me chase you, Jenny?"
She blushed deep, right up to her hair, and because she didn't trust her voice, answered by shaking her head.
Bran kissed nothing like Will. He was quick and sure, slipping past her lips and taking possession like a right. Jane was happy to yield. She slid a hand through his soft hair, bringing him closer still, and he smiled against her mouth.
When he pulled back, Bran said, "And that would've been done ages ago, if it weren't for our friend the tortoise there."
"Now, Bran, you know what they say about those who wait."
And Jane did know, as a matter of fact, but Jane had also just been kissed very thoroughly by two boys she'd wanted to kiss for a rather long time, and she was done with waiting.
It was want, more than courage, that carried her from there. She was the first to stand, to reach the stairs, to step into her bedroom. And there, it was want that led her hands straight to Bran's shirt - his, rather than Will's, not for any grand significant reason, but because it had buttons, and she had a weakness for the seduction of that, the mystery involved in revealing a little more and a little more with every twist of her fingers.
Then Bran pulled at Will's t-shirt, and she happened to be looking when his fingers first slipped under the edge, happened to catch the first touch. All the movement of the last few minutes became a sudden stillness; Jane found herself, ridiculously, holding her breath, and thought she might not be the only one. When Bran moved, flattening one hand against Will's stomach as he tugged with the other, Jane breathed, and entertained no little voices. She did know better than that; knew that both Will and Bran wanted her there, that neither would ever, ever, play a game with her in this. She would never have cared for them half so much if it were different.
They turned to her together, smiling, and now she knew their bedroom smiles. Will's was soft and amused, a hint at the corners of his mouth, while Bran's was something predatory; both sent a shiver up her spine. And then Bran lifted her top, and Will smoothed a hand along her side before Bran had even finished, while she couldn't see, all caught up in blue cotton. They fell onto her bed, the narrow twin under the window, and it held them all.
It was Bran who touched her first, as sure with his fingers as he had been with his kiss. She had to roll away from him too soon, gasping, not wanting her part to be over yet.
It was Will whom she touched first, held between her hand and her leg. Bran, at her back, clasped Will's upper arm with a strong hand, and Will pushed against her, pushed against them both, and then he went still, with a silence that brought every concern she'd had that night rushing back. But then Will gave a strangled groan and pulled back, panting, just as she had, and Jane knew with a strange clear pride that together she and Bran would hold him here for this night, and for a long time to come.
The order of things fell away after that, to remain only as impressions in her memory, but it wasn't important. Jane would remember the way they stayed tangled together, like a promise, as the long night became day.