Chapter 18
CELEbrATION
Back to Rory's flat. It was where Neil needed to be.
Where he'd first stayed.
The flat received them, dark, familiar, the studio smell, which had become, over eight months, what Neil associated with arrival. In from the cold. The specific sensation of a body that had been performing all day and could now stop.
He took off his jacket. His shoes. Socks on the hallway carpet. The routine that had started as courtesy and become ritual; the shedding of layers at the door, the transition from public to here.
Today he'd stood in front of the painting, in the evening, in front of strangers, holding Rory's hand, and stayed.
Rory opened wine. Poured two glasses, as always. He'd known they'd come back here.
'Come,' Rory said.
The studio door opened. The concentrated chemical smell of a room where oil paint had been mixed and scraped and layered and scraped again for three months.
The studio was different. Emptied. Most of the canvases were at the gallery, the walls bare, the stacking spaces vacant. The worktable was clean, scraped down for once. Brushes washed and standing in clean jars.
Only the easel remained. And on it, a canvas Neil hadn't seen.
Smaller, two feet by three. The palette luminous, brighter than anything in the show.
Golds and ambers and the deep, living umber that Rory had been reaching for since the autumn.
No dark blues. No bruised blacks. The underpainting was white, not dark, the gold tones built on light rather than scraped through darkness.
Two figures, close together, a margin of air between them, the live space of bodies that knew each other but hadn't yet made contact. On the left, a figure turning towards the right. The other already facing forward. A meeting of two movements, one completing, one waiting.
It was them. Obviously. The features matched. But the postures were legible. The man who'd been turning for twelve canvases had arrived, and the man who'd been waiting was there to receive him.
'When did you paint this?' Neil asked. His voice sounded strange in the empty studio. Thinner.
'After the opening. After...' He didn't finish. After Friday. After the car. After the night spent on opposite sides of the city with the same painting between them. 'I needed something for afterwards. Something that wasn't for anyone else.'
'It's not in the show.'
'It's not for the show. It's for us.'
A painting made in the days between the fracture and the repair, when Rory hadn't known if Sunday would happen and painted it anyway because painting was what his body did when his mouth couldn't.
'Where will you hang it?'
'Wherever we end up.' He said it simply. The togetherness already decided, only the geography remaining.
Neil looked at the painting. At the margin of air between the two figures.
The turning. The waiting. The meeting.
He put his thumb on the paint ridge of the right-hand figure, his own jaw, Rory's half-centimetre decision, and looked up.
'Is this appropriate, Cavanaugh?'
The word was a joke. The first time the word had been a joke in his mouth.
'No,' he said. 'Never was, Mr Ashworth.'
'I love you,' Neil said. 'We should find our own place. And hang it there.'
Unplanned. The mouth saying what it meant because his body was tired of carrying things unsaid.
Rory stilled. Wine glass frozen. His eyes on Neil.
'You're sure?'
'I keep being sure. I keep finding new things to be sure about.'
'That's how it works.'
'Terrible system.'
'Best system there is.'
Rory set his wine down. Crossed the studio. Three steps. Both hands on Neil's face, paint-stained, the fingertips on his cheekbones. The grip he'd used the first night in the hallway. The grip that said: I've got you.
'I've been attracted to you since the staff meeting,' Rory said.
'Since you sat in the third row and took notes while everyone else was half asleep.
Since you wrote MURAL, CAVANAUGH, TBC in capitals too large.
Since your pen pressed into the notepad and left a mark.
I saw the mark, Neil. I saw the indent from three rows away. '
'That's not possible.'
'I'm a painter. I see marks. I see the pressure behind them. And yours was... you were holding on. To the pen, to the notepad, to the desk. Like everything would fly apart if you let go.'
'It would have.'
'I know. That's why I noticed.' His thumbs moved on Neil's cheekbones. Slow circles. 'I've wanted you since you called my paintings honest. Since you dropped Art History and the loss showed on your face every time you looked at a canvas.' He paused. 'I see what's on faces.'
'When did you know? Actually know.'
'The reprographics room. The life-saving comma. You laughed and your whole face changed. The eyes opened. Half a second. Then the mask went back on.' He touched Neil's cheek. 'I wanted to paint the half-second.'
Neil's throat closed. The man standing in front of him had been watching him with the accumulated attention of eight months.
'You're ridiculous,' Neil said. Roughly. His eyes burning.
'I'm a painter. Ridiculous is the job description.'
He kissed Neil. Slow and thorough and tasting of wine and the weekend.
Rory's bed. The bed that had held both of them for months and that felt, tonight, different, not in the sheets or the mattress but in the air above it.
They undressed slowly. The unhurried removal of clothes by two people who knew what was underneath and wanted to see it again anyway.
Neil's jumper over his head. Rory's shirt, button by button; Neil did the buttons, his fingers on the familiar terrain of Rory's chest, each one freed with the care of a man unwrapping what he'd nearly lost.
The T-shirts. The trousers. Rory's belt, the brass buckle, the thick leather, the hiss of it sliding through the loops. The bedroom, lamp on, curtains open to the April dark, and they looked at each other.
Eight months of learning this body. And still, each time, this was new.
'Stop looking at me like that,' Rory said.
'Like what?'
'Like you're seeing me for the first time.'
'I'm seeing you for the first time as someone I've told.'
'Told what?'
'That I love you. Keep up.'
Rory laughed. The low one. Neil pulled him to the bed. Pulled. Rory's hand in his, leading him backwards until Neil's calves hit the mattress and they folded onto it together, Rory's weight coming down on him, and Neil did what he'd never done before.
He didn't shift. Didn't adjust. Didn't angle his hips to reduce the pressure or create space. He pulled Rory's full weight onto his chest and held him there.
Rory braced. Instinct. Arms on either side, taking some of his weight, the consideration he'd built into himself, bigger body, learned care.
'Down,' Neil said.
Rory hesitated.
'I'll crush you.'
'Down.'
Rory lowered. The full weight of him, chest against chest, hips against hips, the press of his cock against Neil's stomach and Neil's against his.
The heaviness was extraordinary. Grounding.
The physical fact of another human body covering his completely, like a blanket that breathed and had a heartbeat against his own sternum.
Neil wrapped his arms around Rory's back. Hands flat against the shoulder blades. Held him.
Rory's mouth found his. The kiss was slow. Thorough. His tongue moving against Neil's without hurry. The whole night ahead.
They moved together. Past the crash of the first time, past the studio, past the sofa.
Something without precedent. Slow. Every touch intentional.
Neil's mouth on the serpent tattoo, travelling up, wrist to forearm, a route he'd traced a hundred times and that was, tonight, a pilgrimage.
Rory's hands in Neil's hair, the fingers curling rather than pulling.
Rory shifted down Neil's body. Mouth on his throat.
On his chest. On his stomach, the muscles twitching under the kiss, the breath ghosting across his skin.
He took Neil's cock in his mouth, slow, deep, the heat of it total, and Neil's hand went to the back of Rory's head. The dark curls between his fingers.
'Come up,' Neil said. Rough.
Rory crawled up his body. The drag of his skin, the hair on his chest rasping against Neil's stomach, his cock leaving a wet trail on Neil's thigh. He settled on top again. The weight.
Neil reached for Rory's hand. Brought it to his mouth. Kissed the knuckles. The paint that never fully left the creases. Then guided the hand down between his legs.
Rory went still. His eyes searched Neil's face.
'You sure?'
'I want you inside me when I say it.'
Rory's breath caught. He understood. His hand was already moving, reaching for the nightstand drawer, the lube.
No condom. They'd been to the clinic together, three weeks ago, a Tuesday afternoon in Brixton, a waiting room with plastic chairs and free leaflets about chlamydia.
Both negative. Both tested. Both choosing this.
The cap clicked open. Rory's fingers, slick, between Neil's legs. The touch at the opening familiar now. They'd done this since that night on the sofa. Neil's body had learnt. The first finger went in without resistance. The muscle knew Rory's hand.
'More.'
Two fingers. The stretch that had burned the first time was a welcome pressure now, a door his body opened because it recognised who was knocking. Rory's fingers curved, found the spot. Neil's hips lifted off the mattress. His cock jumped against his stomach.
'Fuck.' The word came from the back of his throat. 'Right there.'
Three fingers. The fullness of it drawing a groan from Neil that he let out without filtering, without counting, without managing. The management was over. Had been over for months.
Rory withdrew his fingers. Slicked himself. The sound of his hand on his own cock, bare, no wrapper, no barrier. The bed shifted as he positioned himself between Neil's legs.
Neil hooked a leg over Rory's hip. Drew him closer.