The mute takes him against his chest, holding him there with a reverence. From the way he touches Diarmuid’s cheeks, and looks into his face with those strange dark eyes, he would have him face to face, but Diarmuid cannot allow it, he must hide from him the blood in his cheeks or the two of them will never find their satisfaction.

The mute has spread his heavy woolen mantle out on the ground for a bed, and not thrown him down among the rocks to rut with him there on hands and knees. All his strength is turned to carefulness — the mute had watched vigilantly while Diarmuid undressed, as though they might be surprised here in this wild empty place.

Now he handles him carefully, with his broadness laid against Diarmuid’s narrow spine — they have kissed and clung to one another, clasping hands and matching limb against limb, but the two of them have never been so close as this. There is much to fear in going further.

“You can touch me if you want,” Diarmuid says, simply. "I won't make you do it." In this, he is allowing a great sin, and he knows it. The ache of what he wants is too much to be borne alone. It must be shared and multiplied.

The mute acknowledges this with a simple exhalation of breath. How long has it been since this wild wreck of a man returned to human language, and since he showed himself sensible to human speech? If he does not speak, it is not from a lack of understanding. He is always listening, and he does what is asked of him. His patience is a lesson, and his obedience, and his forbearance. Slowly, he puts out a hand — pressing it down Diarmuid’s side, from the edge of his ribs to where the sharp bone of his hip juts. His callused palm is reassuringly familiar, like rough stone made smooth by men’s kneeling, and the scars on the backs of his arms stand out like stripes from a rod against the fulled wool of Diarmuid’s shirt.

The touch is intoxicating, like something from a dream. Diarmuid leans back his head, and for a moment he is almost senseless with the simple pleasure of it — speechless, at the clinch of their bodies and the interlocking of their limbs, just as their mouths had met.

“That’s it. You can touch me.”

With shaking hands, Diarmuid draws up his tunic past his thighs, past his hips. The material snags up around his waist, all in a bundle between them, but the cold air licks against his naked legs and turns all his skin into gooseflesh. At the touch of his naked skin, the mute makes a sound of pure anguish, but it as if he bites his tongue. He buries his face against Diarmuid’s neck — the bramble-scratches of his beard, the heat of his mouth, the hard press of his nose — and Diarmuid rocks back against him, pressing his naked backside against the mute’s hips.

His tool is hard too — Diarmuid wonders if under his weatherbeaten suntan the mute is blushing as much as he is right now, if he marvels as much at this excitation of the flesh. Or at how it can be possible to feel this way together as men, far beyond the edges of any home Diarmuid has ever known. In the dark, the mute fumbles for his thin-boned hand, takes it, squeezes it. It is as they once were, speaking the language of their shared loneliness.

For all his eagerness he is uncertain, unwilling to advance further — even as Diarmuid rubs himself against him, staggered by his own desire,

The mute’s powerful arms brace him back with a strength that is almost frightening — Diarmuid fumbles for his broad heavy hand in the dark, and his fingertips press against the scarred knuckles of it in reassurance. He can feel the mute’s hot breath against the back of his neck, and the throb of his heartbeat. He smells like the earth itself, like stone and water.

“You’re not ill-using me. Here, look.” Diarmuid presses the mute’s broad hand between his own legs, to his own secret places — he himself is eager to this task if he can only show him.

Once this man was a foreigner, washed up on the shore of a strange land — but he is a stranger no longer. Perhaps he comes from the same wild places that breed dog-headed men and people who walk around with their faces peering from their bellies — perhaps he has only lived a long while in a hard country, like John the Baptist in the wilderness. Perhaps he has known this sin before. He fits his tool into the hot tight place at the top of Diarmuid’s thighs — instinctively Diarmuid knows how to hold himself, how to keep his legs together and rock back against the mute’s heavy body in order to guide him between his legs.

The mute breathes heavy rasping breaths, pushing with his thrusts through a tight path of friction — between the legs is a lesser sin, but it has stirred the both of them to a frantic closeness and a tight clinch of flesh rubbing flesh. Diarmuid wraps his leg back and tightens the grip of his body, turning his groans into whimpers.

The heat of each press makes him shiver and twist — as the slickness grows, the sensation of each thrust makes his aching balls tighten in their pouch, and his own prick jump. This is what Dairmuid's innermost heart has wanted, when he has sinned by taking himself in his hand — when he has spent himself at night, lost in strange visions. He has wanted this, he has wanted to be so close to another man that their bodies were practically knitted together — close enough to be one flesh.

Diarmuid does not know he is weeping until the mute stops his thrusts. He gives him a little shake; his upper hand creeps to press against Diarmuid’s heart. The man’s alarm is palpable, in the stiffening of his back and in the way he draws back his head. The thought of what his face must say makes Diarmuid burn afresh with shame — he can see it in his mind’s eye, though he buries his face against the mute’s shoulder and shuts his eyes tightly. He is dimly aware that he has already spent himself — that he has poured himself out without thought, without a word, and that the mute has not

“You haven’t hurt me,” Diarmuid says. “You don’t need to stop if that’s the reason. Only —“

But his voice breaks off; he cannot find words for what he means, not in any tongue.

He can feel the mute shift against his back, easier now for the reassurance — his broad knee pressed between his legs, the heavy muscle of his arm taut with gripping. His climax has not passed; release is not yet within his reach. Reaching between his legs, he takes him in his hand.

The mute nuzzles into him, aching with desire. He kisses his throat, his ear, the nape of his neck and the crook of his shoulder. Diarmuid draws him off in strokes, though he is shaking all the while. The weight of all their exertion seems to have landed on him at once — the trees are rustling, and the water runs, and they are bedded down in God’s creation with all the splendors of this wild place open before them. The sky above them is studded with stars.

Once he has finished and the weeping has passed, the mute breathes long breaths against Diarmuid’s hair. He is gentling him like an animal. Diarmuid has seen him soothe horses and hounds this way, without a word. So tall, so strong, so fearless — once he might have been a huntsman, once in another land.

Diarmuid rolls over to face the mute, both slick and spent — he can feel the traces of him coursing down his thighs, painting his most shameful places. He does not know enough of the world to know whether or not this man is beautiful, but he suspects otherwise; the bones in his face are close to the surface, and his nose has been broken once before. But he has fine white teeth, and a proud strong mouth, and his black eyes shine with perfect affection. Diarmuid traces his lips with his fingers. In the monastery, the mute had refused to take part in the kiss of peace, him alone out of all the congregants. He had refused to allow himself that holy intimacy even when it was offered to him by one as open-hearted as Brother Ciarán. Rua had called it humility, and fitting for one slow in mind; others had called it a penance.

Diarmuid kisses him on the mouth, but he is clumsy; he doesn’t know how to turn his head, and they knock noses, bumping one another with teeth. The mute opens up to him with sweet eagerness, cupping the back of his head in his strong hands and drawing him in close.

When he breaks away, he cannot keep from chattering, or from casting his arms about the mute’s neck and cleaving to him —

“I was so afraid for you, but God took pity on us, God has been merciful to us…”

The mute strokes his tangled hair back from his face. Diarmuid searches his features for understanding, and he finds it there. The mute’s dark eyes are full of longing. He is not disgusted with him now, he does not see him as lower than a woman, he does not see him as a stranger. He kisses Diarmuid’s small face, where the salt tears lie, and together they pray.