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Oliver cracked open one eye. “Some fucking twats at the pub were calling him a dyke. He came out without his binder, and he was pretty uncomfortable. I lost it. He asked me to let it go, but I didn’t. I made a scene and got kicked out. Then I shouted at him for not standing up for himself.”
“Did he punch you?”
Oliver snorted. “No, he didn’t.”
There was a long pause before Leo answered. “I’d have punched you in the face, but that’s just me.”
“I think I was too pissed for him to feel comfortable getting violent. I vomited all over my shoes straight after,” Oliver said with a laugh. “He walked me home and told me he didn’t want to see me until after the funeral. He thinks I can’t keep it together, and he thinks I’m going to spiral now that the bitch is dead.” He ran his hand down his face hard enough to make his nose sting and eyes water. “He’s probably right, you know.”
Leo gave him a long, hard stare. “I know,” he eventually admitted. “You only know it because you’re fucking high. Tomorrow you’ll sober up and all your repressing shit will happen again. You need a goddamn therapist.”
Oliver laughed, this time the sound booming off the walls and he realized he just didn’t give a shit who heard him. “You’re probably right, but I’m a bloody coward. I don’t want to relive all of that.”
“Who would?” Leo asked. “And there’s no guarantee it won’t make it worse. But if you don’t try, Gabe’s never going to forgive you.”
“It’s probably already too late for us anyway,” Oliver said. “Which is the worst, you know? Because I fucking love him like I have never loved anything before. When it’s officially over, he’s gonna rip my bloody heart out and leave me with nothing more than a gaping cavity in the middle of my chest.”
Leo lifted his brow, then shook his head. “Your heart is on your left, under your ribs. Not the center of your chest.”
“Thank you for that, Doctor-Professor Sasaki,” Oliver said, but he was smiling now. With a sigh, he looked at the clock and realized their relatives would be arriving any minute. He rose, feeling a little floaty and his limbs heavy, but he knew he’d be able to manage it now. Offering a hand to his sibling, Leo hoisted himself up and they took turns making sure their suits were righted and hair in place.
“You ready for this?” Leo asked. “All the cheek kissing and I’m so sorry for your loss?”
“Yeah, I’ve got this. I’ll pretend it was about that goldfish you fed Oreos and beer to last year,” Oliver said, smirking just a little. “I was pretty sad about that damned fish.”
Leo chuckled. “Bloody good funeral, that. I never meant to be a fish-killer, you know.”
“It’s what happens when you get stoned and try to take care of pets, you stupid fuck.” Oliver reached out, grabbing his sibling by the back of the neck, and yanked him close. He pressed their foreheads together, and he took in a huge breath. “I fucking love you, Leo. And not just because I’m wankered on that pill you gave me. I couldn’t do this without you. Not this, and not the last three years.”
Leo let Oliver hold him in place for a moment, then carefully pulled away, but kept a tight grip on his sibling’s wrist. “I love you too. I don’t know why sometimes. But I do, and it’ll be over soon.”
Oliver sighed as the door opened, and a pale face of a random cousin poked in. He put on his best mourning expression, nodding for her, and the siblings took their spot a few feet from the casket. More family arrived shortly after, and the tears began. Dry lips pressed to their cheeks, insincere hugs, and they bore it with the weight as only the children of an abuser could do.
A careful smile, a nod of the head, and a quiet, “Thank you,” whispered into the void.
Sixteen
“Could have gone worse,” Leo said, his voice only a little slurred. They managed to escape the suite the next afternoon, finding a quiet local where only a handful of people were drinking and watching a recorded rugby match on the muted TV above the bar.
Oliver had his hands wrapped around a glass of whiskey, a couple of black straws jammed into the pulp of a lime, and he was watching the amber liquid go hazy with the fruit juice. “Mm? What did you say?”
Leo laughed, taking a pull from his gin and tonic. “I said it could have gone worse, the funeral. Weird to see people from school though.”
Oliver snorted, his head shaking back and forth. He was still a little off from the pill Leo had given him the day before, but not nearly as giddy and numb as he had been. The viewing had gone as planned, Oliver occupied enough with family members he hadn’t seen in decades, so he wasn’t thinking much about his mother’s body.
The funeral itself lasted as long as any proper Anglican funeral did. The vicar did a decent job of making his mother sound like she had once been a decent human being. Oliver was spared from making any big speeches by his father reading a passage from the Bible—nothing Oliver recognized, but then again, he’d spent years blocking out those lessons.
The drive to the cemetery was long, but they had an escort through the streets, and in a haze, Oliver watched his mother’s casket lowered into the ground. He expected some great storm to unleash itself on everyone who stood around, watching the morbid procession of events, but the most they got was a gentle summer mist, and a heavy fog settling around the area.
By the time it was all over, Oliver was too tired, too sober, and inches away from punching the next person who gave insincere condolences.
A few people had attempted to make small talk. Mostly people he barely recognized from school, and a handful of people from his teenager years whom he figured had only come to see how the Sasaki siblings had fared all these years in the States.
The worst was Mitchel Teague, one of the boys from school he’d had a little tryst with on the football pitch. He could very clearly remember the feeling of Mitchel’s cock down his throat, and seeing him there with a glint in his eyes, his wife on his arm, Oliver nearly lost it. It had taken everything in his power not to laugh until he cried, and then cry becauseGoddid he miss Gabriel right then.
He knew coming back to London was going to be ugly for him, but he had no idea how bad it would feel until that moment when Mitchel met his eyes and gave him a wink.
“I just can’t believe we ever hung round with stupid fucks like that,” Oliver said after a little while. He drank half the contents of his glass in one go, then swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His phone was in his pocket, pressing hard against his thigh, almost begging him to send a text to Gabriel. He was trying though, to give Gabriel and himself space, to work things out on his own so he could be better. He wanted to be better, to stay in love and deserve to be loved back.
