I've been putting it off, and Steven knows it.

We couldn't go while we had the kids – that old house is not a fit place for children – and we had them until Monday. The rest of the week he's on the evening shift at work, and I can always swing it so I don't have to be at the club during the day, so we could have gone on Tuesday or Wednesday, but we haven't, and he hasn't pushed it. He hasn't so much as mentioned it, and I half wish that he would because then I could pick a fight about it, and if I pushed the right buttons there'd be enough bad blood between us to let me put it off some more.

It's Wednesday night and I'm in the kitchen. No, not Wednesday night: it's Thursday morning, two-something, and I'm just home from work and I'm stood at the counter eating the dinner he's left in the microwave for me. I hear the bedroom door open.

"Alright?" I say, and I look round to see him stood in the doorway. He's in an old pair of boxers and a T-shirt of mine, and socks, and his hair is crested on the top of his head from how he's been lying. "This is good, this... risotto, d'you call it?"

"Yeah, risotto." His voice is low with deference to the late hour. "Brendan?"

I turn back to my dinner. When he says my name like that it's always a prelude to something he wants to say, and I can guess what it is this time.

"It's good risotto," I say between forkfuls.

He comes and stands behind me, puts his arms around my belly and rests his face against the back of my shoulder. It feels as if he might fall back to sleep right where he is.

"You're not meant to eat standing up," he says. "It's bad for you."

"Who says?"

"Amy, she says it to the kids, dun't she. You can't digest it properly or something."

"That's just to get them to sit down, Steven. One of those parent things, ain't it, just a trick. There's no scientific basis."

"I thought it was true."

He's got his eyes closed, I reckon – he feels heavy against my back. I finish my dinner and my glass of water, and then I turn around in the circle of his arms. He picks a bit of rice off the corner of my moustache and wrinkles his nose, and then we smile at each other and kiss. No tongues, just lips pressed on lips, kiss, kiss, kiss. We stand here, holding on, his hair against my cheek. I breathe in a sigh, and get the scent of him; he's brought the humid sweetness of bed with him.

"That why you said it to me, Steven?"

"Mm?"

"To get me to sit down."

"No." The word vibrates against my collar bone.

"You were gonna ask me something though. It's okay."

"I wasn't gonna... I didn't wanna, y'know..."

"It's okay. We'll go tomorrow."

He looks up at me.

"But only if you want to, though, Brendan, cos – "

"I know."

He kisses me and he moves all of his body against me but I shut him down – I evade his mouth and tighten my arms to hold him still. We haven't fucked since before we didn't fuck on Saturday night. We fooled around a night or two ago when he followed me into the shower, a bit, and yesterday morning when he woke up with a hard-on I sucked him off; but we haven't fucked. I don't know why.

"Bren – "

"Get back to bed, Steven, yeah? I'm just gonna get a shower." I release him. "Go on."

"Okay."

"Good lad." I edge out from between him and the worktop, and stop in the doorway and turn and see him putting my plate and glass into the sink. "I love you," I tell him.

"Yeah, but you're coming to bed though, in't you?" There's an edge of panic in his voice.

"Course. Just, y'know, in case you're asleep when I come."

"Oh, right." He manages a smile, and he says it back: "I love you too."

In the shower I lean my forehead against the tiles and let the water run over me until it goes cold, as it always does at this time of night, and then I turn up the pressure and the spray feels like needles as it hits my skin.

I unlock the bathroom door, but it turns out I didn't need to lock it because he didn't follow me, or at least I didn't hear if he tried the door. I hope he's asleep. I put on jogging bottoms and a vest. He's on his side of the bed – he hasn't taken possession of the middle yet – but when I get in on my side he moves across and lies his head on my shoulder. He doesn't speak and he settles into sleep: he's got the message that we won't be fucking tonight.

In my dream though, I'm Superman.

:::::::

He's up before me. I find him in the kitchen. He's got the radio on low enough not to wake me, loud enough that he doesn't hear me when I arrive in the doorway as he dances along to it. 'Dances' might be putting it strongly, but his backside in his grey trackies is moving in a way that holds the attention.

"You perving on me?" he says when he turns and sees me, and his smile is like a light coming on.

"Would I?"

"It's raining, but they've said it's gonna stop," he says. "I was gonna do a cooked brekkie but then I thought you might just want toast. But we've got sausages and that if you want? I think there's eggs... Yeah, there's eggs, so I can – "

"No, you're right." I don't want anything. "Toast is good. Thank you."

"Sit down then."

"You don't have to wait on me, Steven, I can get me own breakfast."

"I've put it on now, an't I." He hands me a mug of coffee.

I go and sit down at the small table, and in a minute or two he puts a plate in the middle with a heap of toast on it, and sits opposite me. We both eat and he talks – about his work last night, about what he's thinking of getting Lucas for his birthday at the weekend, about which of the furniture in this place is decent enough to take to the new place when we move in. I don't know if he notices I'm barely eating half as much as he is, and then I think maybe the reason he's put it on a shared plate instead of a plate each is because he hopes we'll neither of us notice.

I listen to him talking, and it's keeping me calm. He's my normal.

:::::::

It's seemed a long drive, but we're getting close now.

"Are we nearly there yet?" he asks me.

"What are you, eight? Yeah, ten, fifteen minutes."

He switches the car radio off. It's only some station he's found playing pop music, but it's been okay and he's been nodding along to it when a tune's taken his fancy, so I'm surprised he's turned it off. I go to switch it back on for him.

"No, don't," he says, and he stops my hand before I touch the control.

"We ain't there yet, Steven, we don't have to turn it off."

"No, I know."

"So why'd you turn it off then?"

"Don't matter. You don't like it much anyway."

"It's okay, I don't mind it."

"Yeah, but..."

"What?"

"I just thought... Right, I just thought, if a song comes on, like, just when we get to the house, you're... If you ever hear it in the future, like, if it comes on the radio or something, it's just gonna remind you of... Cos songs do that, don't they? They take you back."

I don't say anything. I just touch his knee for a second.

:::::::

The sky is grey but the rain has stopped for now.

"We've run out of road," he says when I pull up.

"Yeah. Gotta walk from here. Ain't far though, so."

We get out and he stretches, and his weatherproof jacket crackles in the wind as he puts it on.

Our feet slide on the sheer stony path down to the beach. As we walk I get the smell of the sea, and it's different from how it smells in Dublin and in Belfast; I remember it now from the last time I was here, treading these sands with my sister ahead of me with her arm around my nana, and Walker bringing with him the secret of what we'd done the night before – plus a whole other bag of secrets of his own that I didn't know about yet – and the back of my neck prickling like something was coming.

We come around where the thicket of trees curves back above the beach and the house comes into view. I tell Steven, this is it.

"It's like a secret place, this," he says, and he's right, there's plenty of secrets here.

"Gets near enough cut off when the tide's high sometimes, so my nana said."

"It's bigger than I thought," he says when we get closer. "How come your nan had a house in England?"

"Dunno... Must'a come down to her from her mum and dad, I think. They were business people; she went the other way though, told us she was a hippy sorta thing when she was a girl, y'know, least till she met my granddad."

We stop and look up at the house. There are high wooden hoardings across the front of it a few feet from the building hiding the lower half of the house from view, the white paint on them thinning and dirtying where the salt winds have battered it. The upstairs windows are broken, what's left of their frames is blackened, and they're boarded up from the inside.

We head up and over the thick sedge grass that's taken over the old path. There's a new padlock on the hinged panel of the hoarding, and bare wood where an old lock must have been prised off.

"Somebody been here?" Steven asks.

"Yeah, from the auctioneers. They phoned me, asked if they could break in so the valuer could see the place. Guess they've been already."

They'll be showing the place to interested parties too. Not today though, I hope.

"You not got a key though, no?"

"No. I didn't think. Didn't even know it was boarded up like this; all's I knew was the explosion, didn't I. Didn't think."

"It's too high to climb over."

"Come on, see what it's like round the back."

We follow the perimeter along the front and round the side. Looking up, it looks as if the fire damaged the front of the house not the back, and the hoarding finishes part way along the side, where it's attached flush against the wall of the house. We push our way through the overgrown bushes and round to the back of the building. Here, the ground floor windows are boarded over against vandals, I guess, not because they got blasted out, and the upstairs ones are intact and uncovered. The back door isn't covered over: it's solid oak, tougher than any nailed-on planks would be. I haven't looked at this door for twenty years or more, but I remember the pattern of knots in the wood.

Steven tries the handle.

"Locked," he says.

I reach up under the lintel and feel along the narrow shelf of bricks. Something crawls onto my hand and I jump back.

"Jesus."

I try to shake it off. The spider clings – fuck knows how – to my sleeve for a second, pale and dusty against the black leather, and then it drops onto the step and stands there recalibrating for its changed situation, then it runs like hell for shelter.

I reach up again, and this time my fingers find the key.

The lock is stiff, but it turns.

It's dark in the house. I try the light switch but the electricity is off, of course. We leave the door open so it's not pitch black, and go in and through the kitchen. The floor must have been swept sometime, because there's no debris underfoot. There's nothing here at all – the cooker's gone and the old dresser. What wasn't destroyed in the fire has been cleared away.

My eyes adjust to the gloom and I go through.

"It's creepy," Steven says.

I'm at the bottom of the stairs. The handrail has gone and there's just a few stumps of the bannister struts left. It's lighter upstairs because the light from the back windows must be coming through the doors onto the passageway; lighter like it's trying to lure me to go up.

"Shit." The first tread collapses soon as I put my weight on it.

I step on the next one and it creaks but holds.

"Brendan, d'you have to go upstairs? It's dangerous."

"It always was."

I tell him to stay where he is, and I go up.

Half way along the passage I stop. The ceiling is lower than I remember, and the walls are closer, and I don't know why I've come here.

"We can go if you want, Brendan, right." He's come up with me. "We don't have to stay here no more, do we, not if you don't want to."

At the end of the passageway I pull open the door. It's too dark to see anything at all at first, but after a minute I can make out that there's nothing to see: the room has been emptied. Everything has gone. That bed has gone.

I go over to the window, and I work out by touch that the hardboard covering it isn't nailed into place, it's wedged, and I feel around it for a gap to get my fingers in. I find one, and pull at the board, and Steven joins me and between us we prise it out.

There's not much sun but it seems bright after the darkness, and fresh air comes in through the missing panes. We both turn and look at the room. The walls and ceiling are charred grey, and the paint on the radiator is blistered and melted. There's no smell from the burning though; it's been too long for it to still be lingering I guess.

"This was my room. Every time we stayed here, I always had this room. It was... I liked looking at the sea, you know, it... it was..."

Steven moves a step closer like he's going to reach out and touch me but I shrink from him. I can't be touched, not in here, and his hand drops back to his side.

"Did you come up here last time you was here?"

I nod, and I turn and look out of the window.

"This is where she told me. My nana, she came up here that time and she told me that she knew."

"Why did she tell you? After all them years, why did wanna tell you then?"

"I dunno. Catholics, ain't we. We all confess in the end."

"No, but why did she have to tell it to you? She could'a confessed to... a bloody priest or something, right, cos all she done was hurt you more, didn't she? She just done it to make herself feel better, she weren't even thinking of you."

I can hear the fight in him to hold in his rage.

"She died though, Steven. That same day, she died." I don't know if he believes that I killed her or if he'd rather believe my retraction of that confession. "She got hers."

"Good. I hope she suffered. Whatever she died of, if it was the cancer or... I hope she suffered."

"She... She asked for forgiveness."

"From God?" There's contempt in his voice.

"From me."

"So did you forgive her?"

"I told her what she'd taken from me."

"Did you forgive her, though?"

"No. Maybe she thought I did, I dunno."

"But she died knowing what she'd done to you."

"Yeah."

"Good."

Steven doesn't ask about her any more, but he's still here.

I pick up the hardboard and lift it into the window, and shove it till it's wedged back in place. When I turn back to Steven he's a shadow in the doorway and for a moment I feel nauseous, then my mind catches up and I swallow it down.

"Come on," I say. "I'm done here."

He goes out and I follow behind him until we're at the top of the stairs, then I move him out of the way and walk down ahead of him.

We find our way to the back door and out. I lock it and put the key back in its hiding place.

I touch him on the back, then I lead the way around to the front of the house, and we walk down to where the scrubby greenery thins out as it meets the sand. Everything has been whipped dry by the wind since we went inside, and we stop and stand looking out across the beach to the sea. There's a sailing boat scudding along out there; otherwise we could be the last people left on earth.

"I brought this," Steven says, and he pulls out of the pocket of his jacket a half-bottle of whiskey. "I can drive going home."

"Thank you."

I take it from him and unscrew the cap and drink a slug of it. It sears and warms.

"Thought you might need it, didn't I."

I offer him the bottle: "A mouthful won't hurt."

He drinks and hands it back, and I keep it then. We neither of us say anything for a long while.

It's Steven who breaks the silence in the end.

"It's beautiful here."

Beautiful. It's seems a strange word to hear from him, and he pronounces it carefully – he says the t in the middle like he says every t and every h when he's reading aloud instead of dropping them in his usual way – as if he feels its strangeness too.

"I thought so too, Steven, I guess. Before my dad... When we first started coming here, y'know, it was... I thought it was paradise."

"So you'd been here before the time when he..?"

"Came here a coupl'a times I think, when I was... I dunno. All's I remember is looking forward to coming back here, and then..."

"What changed? I don't mean, like, for you. I mean, why did Seamus suddenly wanna..?"

I take another drink.

"I don't know, Steven. I used to try and figure out what I'd done to... Came up with all kinds of reasons, but – "

"It weren't you, Bren. It was nothing to do with you."

"I know that now, don't I. Just took me all my life to get the guilt out of my head, is all." I think for a minute. "It was after his old man died – my granddad. It was the first time we came here after he'd gone."

"So d'you think your dad was too scared to do nothing when his dad was around?"

"There was... There were things he did, Seamus, before he... Things he said, meant nothing at the time but when I think back, there's... there's ways he shouldn'a been around a child. I was already scared of him, see, long as I can remember. And then after my granddad passed..." I fall back into silence and then something drifts into my mind. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer."

"What? I don't..?"

"It's just a poem." I try and remember how it goes, but only torn pieces of it come to me. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold... The blood-stained... No, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed... The... the... innocence is drowned." The rest of it eludes me for now. "Wanna know what's funny, Steven? I thought it would just be here. Cos everything went back to normal when we went home, didn't it, so I thought... I thought he wasn't gonna do it unless we were here. Couple of weeks, that lasted. And you know what else is funny?"

"None of it's funny, Bren."

"I loved him. Even after he..."

"After he raped you."

"I just wanted to... to believe... I wanted something to be the same, you know? Cos everything was out of control and I... Then I figured, if someone you love can be like that to you, you can't trust it. You can't do it, you can't... you can't feel it."

It's quiet here. I can hear the movement of the sea, unless it's the wind in the trees I'm hearing; and then I hear a sob, and I look at Steven and his face is wet with tears, and I say, "Steven, I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry, I shouldn'a brought you – " And then he stops me with a shake of his head.

He dries his eyes with the heels of his hands and he looks up at me, and when he speaks he's gulping for breath between the words.

"My heart is so full up."

"Come here." I crush him into my arms. "Come here. Come here." I kiss his cheek and taste his tears, and then I kiss his mouth, and his ribcage heaves with each breath.

I hold his head and we kiss, and it's just us, and his hands are inside my jacket and then at my belt, and then he's got my jeans undone and his hand inside. He turns around so his back's to me, my cock still in his fist, and with his free hand he brings my hand to reach around him and I slide it inside his trackies and get hold of him, and his balls are soft and his dick is hard and I kiss his neck, and his grip on me loosens as his own pleasure takes him over.

"Fuck me," he says, and we move away from the clumps of grass and stones, down onto the sand, and he tugs his pants down to his knees.

I jack him off rapidly, and I cup my other hand to catch his cum when he jerks and spills, and I smear it, warm and slippery, across his hole and onto my cock. He drops to his knees and braces on all fours and looks at me over his shoulder.

"No. On your back." I need to see his face, see him wanting me.

He gets to his feet and kicks off his trainers and takes his trackies and boxers all the way off, and then he lies down on the sand and I kneel between his legs. I fall onto him and kiss him, then I push his thin sweater up to expose his chest, and I kiss his belly and lick each nipple and scrape my teeth across them. There are goosebumps on his skin, and the hairs on his legs bristle under my palms when I sit back and stroke his thighs, and his cock is mottled and spent.

I try his hole with my fingers through the slick of his cum: it's tight but it gives and I feel the heat inside him. His eyes close and I say, "Steven," and he opens them. "Tell me."

"Fuck me. Love me."

I lie forward and kiss him, and he hooks his ankles around my back and when I breach him, the muscles inside him grab me and take me.

"Steven." I feel his finger nails scratch at my back through the leather. "Steven."

"I love you. I... Fuck. Fuck... I love you. I love... I love you."

As my pace gets up he loses his words and it's just noises he makes, and his arms flail above his head, his fingers clawing into the sand. His sounds go straight to my dick and I come, and there's thunder in my head and flashes of blood red, and I roar with it.

I collapse onto him. He's gasping underneath me; we're both gasping. I roll off onto my back and zip up, and I reach for his tracksuit bottoms and drape them across him. We lie looking at the sky but I have to shut my eyes for a minute because the clouds seem like they're spinning.

When I stand up, he holds out his hand to me and I pull him to his feet. I help him brush the sand off his arse and the backs of his legs, and he shakes out his clothes and steps into them and puts on his trainers.

"Better shake your jacket off too, there's sand in your hood."

He takes it off and does what I suggest, then puts it back on.

"Home?" he asks, and we head off along the beach without looking back.

I look at the sea as we walk. Here and there there's a break in the cloud and where the sun filters through, it glitters on the waves in the distance. Steven was right: it's beautiful.

When we reach the car I forget he's meant to be driving, so he says, "Oi, other side," and I go around and get in the passenger side.

He fidgets in his seat as we set off.

"What's the matter?"

"Got sand in me pants," he says, and he laughs.

"We'll get in the shower when we get home."

:::::::

I'm soaping him. He stands with his arms around my neck, and I smooth the shower gel into his pits and over his back and his backside and in the crack of his arse, and then he turns around and his spine slides against my chest, and I soap his throat, the light muscles of his chest, his belly, and I lift his cock and wash his balls. He smells of vanilla and brown sugar. I taste the water that pools in the hollow above his collar bone.

I turn and face the tiles and lean there, and he does my back. Then I take the shower head down from its bracket and rinse him off, chasing the soap from every plane and crevice of his body. The white foam spirals into the drain at our feet and washes away, along with the last grains of sand.