Neil sat on the edge of the small bed. Elbows on knees. Head bowed.
Is that different from a friend?
Five-year-olds didn't have subtext. And the simplicity of it cut through every system Neil had built because the answer was no. It was not different. Or it was, and the difference had to do with the card in his wallet and a voice that saidNeilas though the name were worth holding.
Wallet closed. Into the jacket. Light off.
In the dark hallway, Freddie's breathing through the half-open door. Rain against the windows. The flat still. Always still after nine o'clock. The day's business done and nothing left to organise and the only company the clock counting minutes.
The following week. Rory's response to the writing prompts by email:These are brilliant. Jade Amir's line is the one. ‘The roots hold what the branches reach for.’ Fucking perfect. R.
He'd sworn in a work email. Neil read it four times.
Rory's travel mug and a takeaway cup with Neil on it in Rory's looping biro. Rory talked about the Year 9 section, ahead of schedule. One of the Year 7 root poems picked up by the school newsletter. Professional. Normal.
That same afternoon, four seconds in the courtyard. In the last half-second, Rory's mouth moved. Just the corners lifting. A signal: I know. I remember. I'm waiting.
Neil walked into a bollard, hard, clipped it with his hip, stumbled half a step. Nobody noticed except Rory, whose shoulders shook once before he turned back to his students.
Evening. Freddie asleep.
In the hallway, he stood and looked at the jacket. The wallet. The card.
Then the bedroom. Door locked, the twist of the mechanism loud in the quiet flat. A sound he'd never made in his own home, because there was nobody to lock out except his sleeping son and his own pretence.
He lay on the bed. Didn't undress.
The images came.
Rory in the reprographics room, leaning past him, the mass of his chest through the margin of air. Rory in the doorway, three inches above, sayingafter youin that unhurried voice. Rory's hands on the charcoal sketches, the fingers that shaped branches in the air.
He thought of those hands on him. Fingers unbuttoning his shirt. Pulling his belt free, wrapping around his cock with the same grip that held a palette knife, firm, sure, knowing.
Already hard.
Belt off, trousers pushed down, his hand on himself. Urgent.
The images sharpened, Rory's mouth on his neck, Rory's hand replacing his own, both of them pressed together on a surface, skin to skin, cock against cock, Rory bearing down.
Sweat and skin.
And a voice sayingNeil, low and direct, no Mr Ashworth, no surname, no distance, just his name in that mouth with the ring against his lip.
He came hard. With Rory's name bitten off between his teeth. His hand kept moving through it, wringing out every pulse, the orgasm rolling through him in waves that left his legs weak and his breath torn and the sound he'd made still echoing in the bedroom.
After. Still. Breathing. Hand wet. A car passing on the street below, headlights swept the ceiling and moved off. The room dark again. Freddie's breathing through the wall.
He got up. Cleaned himself. Splashed water on his face. The tap dripped when he turned it off.
Bed. The mattress held his weight alone.
The card was in his wallet. The wallet was in the jacket. The jacket was on the hook. Thirty feet away. Shrinking.
It wasn't a question of if. It never had been. Since the handshake, since a man with paint in his knuckles saidRory Cavanaughand extended his hand and changed the temperature of the room.
It was a question of when.
5
