Neil walked down the hallway in his socks, past a teenager who knew everything and cared about none of it, and the normalcy cracked a hinge in his chest that drama would have left intact.
Rory was in the studio. Paint on his jaw. Music low. He looked up and the smile that arrived was the real one. Unhurried. Easy. Glad to see him.
‘Alright?’
‘Your brother mopped.’
‘I know. He's either maturing or he's broken something and he's softening the blow.’
‘I'd check under the sofa cushions.’
Neil laughed and kissed him. Easier now. He set the wine on the worktable beside a jar of brushes and a coffee mug with a dried ring inside it. The studio was its own ecology, surfaces layered with the debris of making, everything covered in paint or charcoal or the ghost of both.
‘Show me what you're working on,’ Neil said.
Rory turned the canvas on the easel. A new piece, not the Neil painting, which was still propped against the far wall, the shoulder still turning, the face still absent. This was warmer. Looser. Two figures, barely suggested, just the impression of bodies in proximity. The palette was gold and ochre, the scrape-back revealing hints of blue beneath. Unfinished but charged.
‘It's different from the others,’ Neil said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Warmer.’
‘Yeah.’ Rory dragged a rag over his knuckles. ‘The palette's been shifting. I can't mix darks the way I used to. My hand keeps reaching for warmer tones.’ He looked at Neil. ‘The paintings are changing because something's changed in me and the paintings don't lie.’
‘When have they ever lied?’
‘They haven't. That's the whole point.’
The evening settled around them. Wine on the sofa. Music. Rory's feet in Neil's lap. Physical contact that wasn't sexual, the intimacy of naked feet on another man's thighs while the wine emptied and the rain came on. Neil's hand rested on Rory's ankle. Absently. His thumb against the bone. A gesture he hadn't planned.
Kieran became background. Part of the furniture. When Neil arrived on the second Friday after the discovery, Kieran was in the kitchen making toast. ‘Alright, Mr Ashworth.’ The same tone he'd use for the postman.
At school, Rory started testing edges. He was smarter than reckless. But the invisible fence developed gaps. A coffee appeared on Neil's desk during his free period. The takeaway cup. Flat white, no sugar. A yellow Post-it stuck to the side: Thought you could use this. R
Neil peeled the Post-it off. Folded it. Put it in his wallet, behind the card.
Colleagues noticed the shift, if not the specifics. Martin Clarke said, ‘You seem better this term, Neil. More relaxed.’ Sue Dhillon gave him a look that suggested she'd noticed more than the relaxation and was keeping her own counsel. Mrs Webb, passing in the corridor, said, ‘Good work on the mural writing component. The cross-curricular element has been noted.’
Neil thanked her.
Last Friday before Christmas. Term had ended that afternoon. The staff room was full of mince pies and cheap prosecco and the relief of people who'd survived another autumn. Rory found Neil's eye across the room, a single loaded glance over the rim of a plastic cup, and Neil felt it in his groin.
Kieran had left an hour ago, overnight bag, a ‘Happy Christmas, losers’ thrown at the door. The flat had been quiet for twenty minutes before it stopped being quiet, and now it was quiet again.
They were on the sofa. The cushions were a lost cause, shoved sideways, a blanket pulled over Neil's lap and no further. Rory was propped against the armrest, Neil against his side with no particular intention of moving. Rory's arm was around him, hand resting on his shoulder. His thumb moved in the absentway it did when he wasn't thinking about it, slow, unconscious, the same rhythm he used when he was working something out.
The room carried them still.
They talked about Christmas. Neil's schedule, the day with Freddie, lunch at his parents', a prospect he described with the enthusiasm of a dental extraction. Then Freddie to Gemma's for the week between Christmas and New Year.
‘What are they like?’ Rory asked. ‘Your parents. You've mentioned them. Fragments, bits. Never the full picture.’
He turned the glass. The question was simple. The answer wasn't.
‘My father wears a blazer to breakfast. My mother has opinions about everything. Their house smells of air freshener and the television is always on because it means nobody has to talk.’
‘That bad?’
