“When have I ever not been all right?”
“Three months ago, when you were in St Mary’s and I was just sat there watching your heart monitor.”
“Apart from that.”
“That’s a massive apart-from-that, Daddy.”
Colin squeezed his shoulder. Stephen reached up and gripped his wrist, holding him there, the way he’d done as a boy when Colin would try to leave his bedroom after lights out.
“Bring him round to family dinner at yours next week,” Stephen said, into Colin’s hand. “I promise…we’ll talk properly this time.”
Colin kissed the back of his son’s head, fumbled for his bag, and let himself out into the cold. The security light above the entrance flickered on as he approached, buzzing at its usual frequency.
He took the stairs slowly, his knees protesting on the second landing the way they always did, and let himself into the flat. The hallway was dark and cold and smelled of the pine cleaner he’d used on the lino before he’d left that morning. His keys went on the hook, his bag on the chair. His bed was waiting for him, empty.
Chapter Twenty
Thewalk had taken them from Ledbury Road through Holland Park and down into Kensington, two hours for what should have been forty minutes, because Diwa de la Vega could not pass a dog without dropping to his knees on the pavement and having a play.
Colin had counted. He’d fussed over eleven dogs. The alpha’s standout favourite: a golden retriever puppy that Diwa had allowed to put both paws on his chest and lick his chin while he said, with complete sincerity, “You are the most important person I’ve met today.”
Each time, Diwa would look up at Colin from the pavement with those ridiculous dimples and say something like, “Colin, look at hisears,” as though Colin had not been standing three feet away watching the whole performance.
“You’re going to get fleas,” Colin said, after the eighth dog, a spaniel whose owner had been trying to get it to heel for the past thirty seconds while it rolled onto its back between Diwa’s knees.
“Worth it.” Diwa scratched behind the spaniel’s ears with both hands. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime dog, Colin. Look at that face.”
“You’ve said that about four dogs in the last hour.”
“And I’ve meant it every time.”
Colin watched him there on the pavement, kneeling on damp concrete to rub a stranger’s spaniel’s belly, and felt the heat sit low behind his navel.
It had been building since that morning. It wasn’t the ambush of three months ago. The suppressants were doing what Dr Gu had promised they’d do, keeping the edge off, holding the flood at a trickle. What he felt now was warmth, a banked glow between his hips that pulsed when Diwa’s shoulder brushed his on the pavement, or when Diwa’s hand rested on the small of his back to steer him across a road.
They walked home in the last of the afternoon light with Diwa talking about a podcast he’d listened to that morning about the declining bee population and whether urban beekeeping was helping or making it worse. Colin contributed the occasional “mm” and let his shoulder stay where it had drifted against Diwa’s arm. The yellow door came up on their left, and Diwa fished for his keys with one hand while the other stayed at Colin’s back.
Inside, the house was warm. Diwa’s home automation had done its job, the heating coming on forty minutes before their return, the hallway lamps glowing amber. Diwa kicked his trainers off and padded through to the kitchen to fill the kettle, still mid-sentence about colony collapse disorder. Colin hung his jacket on the hook and stood in the hallway, listening to the tap run and the kettle click on.
He went upstairs to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his socks, setting them in a neat pair on the floor by the nightstand. One floor below him, he heard the kettle cometo a boil. He heard Diwa open the cupboard, the clink of mugs, and the soft pad of his bare feet coming up the stairs.
Diwa appeared in the doorway with a mug in each hand and stopped when he saw Colin sitting on the edge of the bed in the middle of the afternoon with his socks off. “Come to bed, Diwa,” he said.
Diwa set both mugs on the dresser without looking away from him. “Colin.”
“I’m not in heat.” He said it flat and clear. “The suppressants are working. I can feel it starting, but it’s not here yet, and I want to do this before it gets here. While it’s me choosing, not my body deciding for me.” He looked up at Diwa. “Come here.”
Diwa crossed the room and came to stand in front of Colin between his knees. Close enough that the smell of him filled Colin’s next breath. His hands stayed at his sides.
Colin reached for the hem of his own jumper and pulled it off over his head, folding it once by habit and dropping it onto the floor beside his socks. His T-shirt went next. The cool air of the bedroom raised the fine hairs on his arms, and he sat there bare from the waist up, his hands back on the duvet. Diwa’s throat moved as he swallowed.
“What do you want?” Diwa asked. His voice had gone low and careful.
“You.”
“You have me. I just need you to tell me how you want it.”
Colin looked up at him. In the half-light from the curtains, Diwa’s face was open and serious. “Take your shirt off.”
