For Real (Spires)

9.2

I woke in the early hours of the morning to discover I was alone. My first reaction was a wave of panicky abandonment followed by visions of a grief-stricken Toby wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night. Common sense reasserted itself as sleep receded, and I realised it was far more likely he was just somewhere else in the house. So I slipped out of bed, pulled on my dressing gown, and went looking for him.

I found him in the living room, cross-legged on the floor, his hands full of rope. In the flicking light from a black and white movie, he seemed to be practicing knots from a battered copy of The Boy Scout Knot Book.

He flinched when I put a hand on his bare shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Sorry. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Always wake me.” I knelt down next to him. “What are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. Thought it might help or something. Give me something to do with my brain that isn’t think about Granddad. It’s…it’s like the emotional equivalent of having a tooth out, y’know? I keep touching the space with my tongue to make sure there’s really…nothing there.”

“Oh darling.”

He rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. “Wish I could cry. That’d be normal, right? And then I could get better.”

“There’s no normal in grief.”

“Yeah…” He glanced at the rope spilling across the living room carpet. “I think I got that memo.”

“Is it working?”

He sighed. “Not really. Mainly, it’s just annoying the crap out of me.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Well, I need my hands to tie the knots, but I need something to tie the knots around like, for example, my hands.”

“Ah yes, a common manifestation of the infamous chicken-and-egg problem.” I didn’t know what else I could give him, how else I could help him, so I offered him my wrists. “What are we watching?”

His eyes met mine, sad and silver-touched by the screen. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll be okay.”

“I want to. Will you let me stay? Be with you?”

A long shuddering breath, as if it was his yielding, not mine. Then he took my wrists in his cold hands and began—inexpertly—to bind them. For whatever reason, he’d chosen nylon rope. I shivered a little as it slid against my skin, a cool, silky whisper of mingled promise and danger.

“It’s Swing Time. Found it on iPlayer.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“One of Granddad’s favourites. Sunday-afternoon-type viewing.”

It was hard not to watch Toby’s fingers working to immobilise me, but I glanced at the screen where a man and a woman were singing irritatedly at each other in the snow. Toby was whispering the words under his breath, interspersed occasionally with instructions from the book. My heart ached helplessly for him, and my body—God help me—my body was a whore.

I shifted, trying not to draw his attention, but I should have known that was foolish. His eyes flared, his face losing some of the stillness that made him almost a stranger in that eerie half-light.

And then his hand pressed between my legs. “Are you getting hard in front of Fred Astaire? That’s so wrong.”

“I’m sorry.” I squirmed even more. “I can’t help it. You’re tying me up. I know it’s not what you need right now.”

He grinned. “It’s exactly what I need.”

“And I’m probably ruining all your happy childhood memories.”

“Or…” He drew the knots tight, keeping a thumb beneath for control, and I moaned. “Making new ones.”

I closed my eyes, everything disappearing except Toby and the rasp of rope across my skin. “If this is what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

I didn’t know what to tell him. For a little while, we sat together without speaking, Toby’s head bowed over my captured hands, Fred and Ginger bickering in the background.

Robert had liked to bind me. Severely, decoratively, lovingly, humiliatingly—I had thrilled to all his moods, to the strange liberty of constriction, and the peace of being so mercilessly held.

This wasn’t like that at all.

I was worried for Toby. Grieving for his grief. But in a strange way, content. He was with me now, and I was going to…do better and be better. I was going to be there for him in every way I hadn’t been before. Make him safe and happy.

As he did me.

He cursed softly as a knot slipped and unravelled. “I think I really suck at this.”

“It’s just practice.” I struggled a bit and most of the rigging held. “Why the sudden interest in ropework?”

“Something to do? I don’t know. I thought it might impress you.”

“You don’t have to impress me, Toby.”

It was the wrong thing to say. I could tell by the downturn of his mouth. “Yeah, well, maybe I want to.”

“You already have me.” There was some…anxiety, some uncertainty in him, and I didn’t fully understand where it had come from, let alone how to alleviate it. I tried a more teasing note. “You don’t need ropes to keep me.”

“But your last boyfriend…”

It was neither something I expected nor wanted to hear. I didn’t want to talk about Robert with Toby, not because I was trying to keep anything from him, but because I’d already wasted too much of my present on my past. “It was one of his things, yes. But I’m with you now. We have our own things.”

“Okay.” He tucked his knees up to his chin and huddled.

And I wished for my freedom so I could touch him, reassure him with my body if nothing else. Finally I looped my hands over him and drew him in close. He made a startled sound—almost a giggle—and then settled against me.

“Are you really worried about the ghosts of boyfriends past?” I asked.

“I’m worrying about everything.” He tucked his head against my shoulder and let out a long sigh. “I know I should be thinking about Granddad, but all I can think about is me. It’s messed up.”

“I told you, there’s no normal here. Whatever you feel is okay.”

“Fretting because”—he touched his jaw self-consciously—“I’m really scrofulous right now? That’s normal, is it? Not completely shallow and selfish?”

“Not at all. And I’ll get you some tea tree oil tomorrow.”

“Oh God. I’m grotesque.” He hid his face against my neck.

“Acne is susceptible to stress and emotional distress.”

“Not helping, Mr. Doctor.”

“How about this.” I rubbed my cheek against the edge of his jaw, nuzzling into him, awkward without hands to touch or anchor me. “You’re beautiful.”

He twisted and looked at me, his eyes wide and a little tear-blurred. “I’m really scared, Laurie. I’m scared of being alone, and of…of the whole of my life.” He took a deep, shuddering breath, and then the words came rushing out: “And then I get really angry at my granddad for leaving me. And then I feel like a shithead. And then I get stressed out at something completely irrelevant like acne or not being able to tie a double slipknot. Or that I can’t live up to some guy you were with like ten years ago.”

“All of that’s understandable,” I told him soothingly. “Except for the bit about Robert, which is nonsense.”

I kissed his cheek. On the screen, the credits rolled, bathing us in flickering light.

“But…” Ever persistent, Toby ducked out of my embrace and wriggled away. “You were with him for ages, and when you couldn’t be with him, you didn’t want to be with anyone and—”

“I want to be with you.”

After a moment, he nodded. “Okay.” I hoped that might be the end of it, but he went on. “It’s just everything feels so fucked up right now. I don’t want to fuck this up as well.”

I wanted to reassure him, but I was wary of forevers. Robert and I had promised each other so much. Possibly too much. “Let’s not jump off bridges until we come to them.”

Toby blinked moisture from his lashes. “At least tell me why you broke up with him, so I know not to do that.”

Oh God, how to explain. How to condense all that pain and loss and confusion into a single, useful parable. “Well, you could try not to tie a slipknot on a sole load-bearing suspension line, causing me to fall and break my wrist and fracture my pelvis.” I heard Toby’s startled gasp, but I pressed on, wanting to be done. “And you could try not to be so consumed with guilt about it that you stop having sex with me.”

I knew I was being unfair to Robert. It had been complicated, and we had both been hurt in our different ways. I’d become a permanent reminder of a single moment of failure—no wonder he hadn’t been able to bear being close to me.

My voice had lost something of its careful modulation, so I took a few calming breaths before I continued. “Then you could not start going out to clubs, and doing all the things you used to do with me with other people. And when I confront you with it, you could not tell me it wasn’t cheating because it wasn’t sex. Because it was. Sex. Cheating. It was.”4

There was a long silence.

Toby’s arms came round me and held me so very tightly, my already-trapped hands trapped between us, making me feel at once safe and unbalanced and exposed. As Robert had once done with rope. “I won’t do that,” he said fiercely. “I won’t ever do that.”

“Please,” I said, realising I was weary beyond reckoning, “can we go back to bed?”

He nodded and began to undo his knots.

I would have already been leaving had it been a workday, so it felt a little strange—chronologically dislocating—to be shedding my dressing gown and crawling under the duvet in the greyish half-light of an incipient dawn, my wrists still hot from Toby’s ropes.

But I slept regardless, with sudden and terrible ease.

* * *

I woke again in what had to be the early hours of the afternoon. I was relieved to find Toby still in the bed with me, but he was awake and watching me, and I didn’t know how much he’d slept.

I reached out to fluff his hair. “Are you all right?”

“I–I don’t know. It’s weird waking up with you like this.”

“But you often wake up next to me.”

“Yeah, but you’re usually hustling me out of the house because you have to go to work.”

Another unwanted but entirely deserved reminder of what a dick I’d been. “It’ll never happen again. And for the next week at least, we can do whatever you like. I’m… Well…I suppose I’m on holiday.”

“You…you”—his eyes widened—“took holiday? For me?”

I couldn’t lie. “Um, technically, I took holiday to get over you because I thought you weren’t coming back.”

“It’s about me. Still counts.” He nipped at my shoulder, possessive and playful at the same time. “I’m counting it.”

Here, at last, I had an opportunity to prove myself. To give him everything I had—for one reason or another—withheld. “Would you like… Would it help…if we went away somewhere? Together?” I heard his breath catch. And remembering his excitement at a night in Oxford, I couldn’t resist teasing him gently. Anything to reach him in his loss and bring him back to me. “You know, a minibreak.”

“Oh, Laurie.” He sounded heartbroken rather than amused, and I was conscious of yet another failure. “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

He gave me a watery smile. “You may be on holiday, but I have to work.”

“Straight after your granddad’s funeral?” I frowned at the ceiling.

“It’s okay.”

It was not okay. He was surely entitled to some sort of compassionate leave, paid or…ah. “Is this about the money?” I hadn’t meant to ask it so baldly or abruptly, but concern made me clumsy.

“Like, hello. Tactless.”

“Sorry.”

He sighed. “It’s not about the money.”

“What is it about, then?”

“Um, it’s my job.”

I felt just a little bit like shaking him. His stubbornness, endearing though it was, came perilously close to destructiveness sometimes. “You work in a café, Toby. Jobs like that are two a penny.” It was obvious from the silence, the sudden rigidity in his body, that I’d said the wrong thing. “I just mean, you have rights, and you’ve suffered a bereavement, and you shouldn’t push yourself.”

“It’s not what you said, though, is it?” he muttered. “Look, it might not be worth anything to you, Mr. Consultant, but it’s what I have, and that means something to me.”

“Well, if it makes you happy, then of course—”

But this wasn’t the right thing either. “Now you sound like my mum.”

He was nineteen. Confused. Grieving. Patience, Dalziel. “I don’t know what you want from me right now.”

“How about not pissing on my life?”

“How is suggesting you take some time to deal with the loss of your grandfather pissing on your life?”

He rolled away from me onto his side, his body curving like a comma. A comma that didn’t want me touching it. “You were sneery,” he said, in a small voice.

Very tentatively I laid my hand across the smooth dip at the top of his flank, and he didn’t shake me off. “I’m sorry, Toby.”

“Nobody gets it. Nobody I knew at university bothered to keep in touch, and all my school friends who went to university think it’s weird.”

“If it’s what you want to do, then”—I smoothed my fingertips lightly over his tender skin—“fuck them.”

“Hah. Easy for you to say. Bet nobody thinks you’ve wasted your life.”

Well. No. At least, not professionally speaking, although how I came to it had been an inextricable mixture of my parents’ determination, my own temperament, and an early recognised need for purpose and stability. It hadn’t precisely been a choice, but I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. “You can’t compare yourself to what other people are doing. Only you can know what’s right for you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Once again, I was obliged to remind myself that it wasn’t appropriate to lose your temper with the grief-stricken. “But—”

“Laurie, like, seriously. What part of ‘don’t want to talk about it’ are you interpreting as irrelevant?”

I gave up. We didn’t have to do this now. I slid an arm over him, and curled myself around him so that we were two commas now—quotation marks, perhaps—and gradually he relaxed into me.

I was just on the verge of falling into a doze when he said very softly, “I’m sorry I can’t go away with you.”

“There’ll be another time.” I kissed the tops of his shoulders, where the skin was rough and sweet beneath my lips.

“Where would we have gone?”

“Anywhere we wanted. Paris, maybe.”

“Because that isn’t at all clichéd.” His voice wavered as he spoke, which made me think he was more likely trying to hold back tears than rebuff me.

“We still have the weekend.”

He sniffled. “I guess.”

I put my lips to the back of his neck and felt the shiver move through his skin. “Two whole days, just for us. We can do whatever you like with them.”

“Really?” His hair tickled my nose as he shifted.

“Yes.”

He seemed to be thinking about it. “I–I want to make you a lemon meringue pie.”

Not quite what I expected. “All right.”

“And have some seriously filthy sex.”

That seemed more like it. “As you wish.”

“And…and…okay, I can’t really think of anything else right now.”

“I’m sure other things will occur to us.” My ridiculous, beautiful boy. I would have found a way to give him the moon if he’d wanted it.

He pushed his arse against my cock, making me gasp. “Is there anything you want to do?”

I wasn’t sure I could top filthy sex and a lemon meringue pie. I was about to say so, when I realised there was something else I owed him. “I’d like to take you on a date.”

He squeaked. “What? In public?”

“No, in a nuclear bunker.” I fiddled idly with the arrow through his nipple, gently moving it back and forth until he was panting and wriggly. “Can I take you out to dinner?”

“I don’t know.” It was a pathetic attempt at indifference. I could hear the excitement in his voice. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“Please.”

“Well, maybe, if we can have all the courses, including aperitifs.”