After the Funeral

[Kenneth Branagh]

After the funeral and after everyone had left, Ken felt the loneliness more pronounced and heavier throughout the house. The only sound now was the thump of his footsteps as he traveled from room to room, aimless and bereaved. From drawing room to sitting room through the hallway into his father's library, Ken wandered blindly. He ran gentle fingertips over a row of books on mythical creatures. His father was a great scholar; he collected many tomes over the span of his lifetime. Always be prepared was his motto. Ken's father armed himself with knowledge.

He walked slowly to the wide mahogany desk and touched its cool, smooth surface. His index ran over a groove in the hard wood...

~~~~~~~~

"Kenneth, dear, you must be on your very best behavior today. The Gallaghers are very important people." His mother fussed with the bow tie at his neck. It chafed and tickled under his chin; Ken didn't like it. He nodded obediently nonetheless and his mother smiled at him and gently cupped his cheek.

From behind him, Ken heard the scraping of a chair. His father had stood up from his desk; it was a massive thing, an antique that they had brought all the way from their old house. It belonged to Ken's great-great-grandfather and his father was very attached to it. Ken watched his father sleeking down his blond hair. His mother bustled over to straighten his tie, too, while Ken meandered over to the desk and leaned his elbows against it. He traced a long groove in the reddish wood boredly as his father and mother discussed the Gallaghers.

As it turned out, the Gallaghers were an important family, because they lived in the biggest house that Ken had ever seen. They were shown in and their coats were taken from them and stored away into a cloak room. Ken was quiet as Mrs. Gallagher ushered them into a large sitting room, where a tall man with a stern face stood beside a long line of children.

"Conor." The tall man came forward and shook his father's hand. The women exchanged pleasant, but meaningless, small talk and Ken peered around his father to look at the children. There were five of them, lined up according to height. They had neat dark hair, all parted at the side, and their faces were shining and well-scrubbed. One of them, Ken noticed, had a teeny tiny smudge on the bridge of his nose, but above that were the most mischievous sparkling green-gray eyes that he had ever seen. His eyes were funny; every tiny tilt of Ken's head, even the smallest shift, seemed to make them change color, dancing between green and gray and back again.

"Childen. Attention." The tall man's voice was full of command. Ken watched them stand straighter, backs rigid to attention. Behind him, he felt his mother's hand at his shoulder and he, too, stood taller. "This is Junior. Padraig." The man went down the line to introduce his children, placing a hand at their shoulder as he spoke their names. Junior nodded faintly, looking every inch as stern as his father, while Padraig slightly lifted his head in a superior kind of way that Ken immediately disliked.

"Daniel." When his father moved on, Daniel lifted a hand ever so slightly by his side and waved. A flash of the fingers, a swift wiggle, and then he was back to his former stance.

"Niall."

The boy with the changing eyes and the smudge grinned.

He grinned broadly and widely, showing a set of white teeth. The grin seemed to almost hurt his cheeks; it was the kind of grin that irradiated his entire face and seemed as if he was pouring everything he had into it. Ken didn't know what to make of that. Suddenly, all he could see was the smudge and the green eyes and the smile. Vaguely, he heard "And Lorcan, our youngest," but he had already stopped paying attention to Colm Gallagher Sr. He just stared at the boy called Niall and he kept staring until his father pushed him gently in the back.

"O-oh! I--I'm Kenneth Branagh. P-pleasure to meet you all."

[Kenneth Branagh]

By the waxy golden light of a single bedside lamp, Ken could see into every corner of his old bedroom. His mother had kept it neat and tidy, everything in its place and a place for everything. Even though she was gone, he could still see vestiges of her in the room. The crooked picture that hung above his bed had been straightened. Figurines lined his bookshelf like soldiers, neatly in rows. His mother had always tried to keep a clean house.

He shifted to put his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Tomorrow, he would have to make arrangements for the house that he had grown up in. He wouldn't be living here for quite some time but he didn't want the house to fall into disrepair, so a gardener needed to be hired for the grounds, and a maid to come in and clean once a week.

Ken sighed to himself as his tired eyes fell upon his desk, where a single, aged bible sat.

~~~~~~~~

Everybody said that that curly-haired Gallagher boy was Trouble, with a capital T, but Ken didn't know what made them say that. Even his own brothers--Paddy and Junior--made it a point to come over to his house to warn him.

Niall Gallagher was Trouble and if he, Ken, wanted to be a good little soldier and hunter, and if he wanted to get in with the 'right crowd' then he'd stay away.

But... Niall Gallagher didn't look like Trouble. He looked friendly. Ken peeked out from beyond his parents, seated primly on the hard church pew. The priest was saying something about sinners. It was always about sinners, though. It was never about the good people, or the righteous. Always sinners, and how to not sin.

He tried to hold his bible up to hide the fact that he was looking at Niall, but somehow Niall seemed to know. They made eye-contact and suddenly Niall's face was wreathed in smiles. Ken started to smile back, before he noticed Colm Sr. scowling at Niall, and he schooled his expression back to one of neutral blankness. But when Colm Sr. looked away again, Ken smiled too--a fast little flicker of the lips.

After the sermon was Sunday School, so Ken trotted obediently off with the other children, into the back of the church where a small classroom was made up for bible study. As he walked, he looked around for Niall. It wasn't difficult to spot him, with his curls bouncing and his jaunty step and his voice rising above all of the other children's. Niall was saying something to Lorcan, who was following him like a loyal puppy.

Then, suddenly, Niall turned his head right around and they made eye contact again. How did he always do that? As if he had a kind of radar that told him when Ken was looking at him...

In response to Niall's big grin, Ken smiled. It was a smile that grew from a shy and hesitant twitch of the lips to a full-grown one. Nobody who smiled like that could be trouble, could he? Ken didn't know. He still didn't like Paddy much but he respected Junior. Both of them couldn't be wrong but... Niall seemed to like him.

Ken didn't know for sure, only he thought that a lot of the time, Niall caught him looking because he was looking at Ken, too.

When they were all inside and scrambling to find seats, Ken sidled up. He tried to play it off as mere coincidence when he slipped into the desk beside Niall's but before he could say anything or do anything to catch Niall's attention, the teacher came in and they were all instructed to open their bibles, and Ken lost his nerve.

[Kenneth Branagh]

Sleep was hard to come by that night. The minutes stretched into hours into what felt like years as Ken laid in bed, warm under the covers. His heart was cold, though. Every time he closed his eyes, demons of the past came back to haunt him from behind his eyelids. He saw his parents' disappointed faces as he told them that he was leaving--leaving the clan, the house, the country. He saw his father's terrible anger and his mother's crushing disappointment.

He saw Niall, too, that face so clearly burned into his mind.

Slowly, Ken turned onto his side. He drew his legs up and pulled the covers closer to his chest, curling up like a small child as he squeezed his eyes closed and took in a deep, shaky breath.

~~~~~~~~

"Ken, Ken, Ken," Niall sang as he straddled his hips. They were already half clothed, having ended up that way during a rough and tumble impromptu wrestling match after Ken called him Wooly. They'd passed a paddock full of sheep and it just seemed to go from there. Ken had a half dozen pet names for Niall now, all to do with his mop of curly hair. Wooly was just the latest. There was Curly and Sheepy and Poodles. Niall really hated Poodles, so of course Ken always called him that.

"You should have been paying attention."

Ken was supposed to be the superior hunter; he was agile, slim, quick on his feet. But now Niall was on top and Ken couldn't find it in himself to hate it. Niall lowered his head and Ken swore that he could feel and taste the smile on Niall's lips. Niall's voice went low, husky, and it shot down straight to Ken's groin. "Now I've got you right... where... I want you..."

Slowly, Ken's hand rose to cup Niall's face. He kissed him again, deeply and passionately and still a little clumsily. They didn't have many opportunities for practice since Niall's father watched him like a hawk, but on rare occasions when they could get away like this, they made the most of it. Ken liked kissing Niall. He liked the softness of his lips and the sweetness of his breath and the slickness of his tongue. He liked the way that Niall's body was a warm, comfortable weight on top of him and he especially liked it when Niall shifted his hips so that their bodies brushed in a certain way.

"That's just what I wanted you to think, Wooly," Ken grinned breathlessly as they parted. "And you fell right into my trap~!"

He shifted his head and Niall's eyes changed again, from green to gray. Ken loved his eyes. He could look at them all day; the way that they constantly shifted colors was so mesmerizing. His fingertips curled against Niall's cheeks as he brought his head back down for another series of kisses, groaning low in the back of his throat as he bucked his hips into Niall.

[Kenneth Branagh]

Things had gone horribly, horribly wrong and Ken didn't know how to deal with them anymore.

When he wasn't training, he was confined to his room. He studied the bible religiously and without pause, hoping and praying to find answers within the good book--something to guide him back onto the path of righteousness. Or maybe... a loophole somewhere. Some mention of God granting forgiveness to those who loved, but loved wrongly.

Ken had sinned. He had been with Niall and everyone said that it was unnatural and wrong. So wrong that they couldn't even bear to look at them. Niall came under his own share of the scorn and scandal too but Ken didn't know how he was holding up. They hadn't talked since that incident, when Colm Sr. and Ken's father, Conor, caught them in the woods behind old man O'Connell's farmhouse.

Before they knew what was happening, lights were being shone onto their faces and their fathers were shouting at them to pull up their pants.

After his father's meltdown, Ken began to avoid Niall altogether. He actively skirted around the places they once shared and when he caught Niall's eye in church or at hunter meetings or even in the streets, he turned his head away. He acted as though Niall Gallagher never existed. When Niall tried to speak to him, he turned and walked away, even though it tore him to pieces inside.

Everything they ever had--their friendship, their relationship--tore Ken all to pieces.

Everybody said that that curly-haired Gallagher boy was Trouble, with a capital T. And if he, Ken, wanted to be accepted into the community of hunters that had become his very identity and that shaped his way of life, then he would stay away.

So he stayed away. Far away. So far away that it felt as if he had hit rock bottom, down to the depths of the cold, cold deep where his heart could be frozen into a block of ice, never to be thawed again. Never to be seen or touched.

Feeling the way he felt was forbidden and they were sinners. But somehow it felt so much worse to not sin. It felt so terrible, so awful, to ache for Niall the way that he did. He cried at night, alone in the darkness, thinking of Niall's disappointed face when he was ignored, hearing the trail of his voice as it tapered off to the sight of Ken's back. He cried with his face in his pillow to dampen the noise, curled up like a babe, shivering the way his heart shivered for want of Niall. He wanted to apologize for everything, but he had no voice and he couldn't face Niall with so many judgmental eyes boring holes through them.

Did God want this? This torture?

Was this what being good and righteous and obeying God's word was supposed to feel like?

~~~~~~~~

Finally, Ken fell asleep, still curled up underneath the covers. His white-blond hair splayed against the dark green pillows and his hand curled around a corner of his blanket. His breathing slowed as he drifted off into the land of nod, and the demons that haunted him finally silenced their voices.

Tomorrow, he would make arrangements. A gardener for the grounds, a maid to clean. The house would be boarded and sealed, awaiting his return.

The house would be here when he came back with Niall.