His whole body locked against the wall. He made a sound Neil hadn't heard before, half word, half nothing, and clamped down hard enough that Neil's knuckles ached. Slick, over both their fingers. Rory's forehead dropped to Neil's shoulder and stayed.
‘Keep going,’ Rory said, rough. ‘Don't stop.’
He didn't. Rory's hand guided him through it, Rory's breath at his ear, Rory's other arm round his back now, holding him in place as though Neil were the one who might fall. Neil came against Rory's stomach with his teeth set in his own lower lip, not because he didn't want to make a sound but because the sound that wanted to come out was a word, and he wasn't ready for the word yet.
They stood there. Breathing.
The hall light hadn't been turned on. They were in the dim hallway of a man's flat at the end of a Saturday afternoon, half dressed, leaning into the wall and each other because the wall wasn't enough.
‘Tissues in the bathroom,’ Rory said eventually.
‘In a minute.’
‘In a minute.’
Neil didn't move. His forehead was still against Rory's jaw. He could feel the prickle of stubble and the slow return of Rory's pulse and the specific silence of a flat where nobody was listening.
‘I didn't come here for this,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘I don't want you to think I came here for this.’
‘Neil. I know.’
A pause. The radiator clicked somewhere. The rain had stopped without him noticing.
‘The rule,’ Neil said.
‘What about it.’
‘I don't know what it is anymore.’
Rory's hand moved at the back of his neck. Thumb against the hairline. That small unthinking gesture.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Me neither.’
When Neil left, it was fully dark. He stood on the step and breathed cold air and felt lighter. The fiction was gone.
He got in his car. Drove home. Didn't turn the radio on.
It was how far the light could reach before it touched Freddie.
8
CHRISTMAS
Next time,Kieran opened the door.
Not Rory.
Kieran.
In joggers and a hoodie, earbuds in, phone in one hand, someone interrupted mid-game and being magnanimous about it. He looked at Neil for approximately half a second.
‘He's in the studio. Shoes off if you're going past the kitchen. I've just mopped.’
He stood aside. Neil entered. Took off his shoes, not because Kieran had told him to but because the instruction was so disarmingly domestic that he obeyed before his brain could object. Kieran returned to the sofa, put his feet up, resumed his phone.
