Chapter 22
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Door key abandoned in the lock, Yoda mug dangling from one hand, Simon tugged the collar of my t-shirt. Playful, but hard enough to pull me a step towards him on the slippy tiles of his communal entrance hall.
“Simon.” I rooted in, leaning back, making myself heavy with dutiful resistance. “I should really head home soon.”
“Why?” Simon grumbled. “It is still a work day.”
Shoulders braced against the glossy paint of his flat’s front door, he stretched his long, lean body invitingly towards me. Smug and unsurprised to catch me looking.
“This isn’t a holiday, Ben Cooper,” he said, putting on a school-teachery kind of voice, “just because Mel doesn’t like the optics of us showing up at the office.”
He ducked to nose against my neck, and I hummed, failing to hold onto anything other than the feel of his lips on my skin tickling like a froth of bubbles bursting all over me. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
This was dangerous. I wanted his mouth on me again and again. Not just for this constructed window of time where real life stopped existing. And that was not an option.
“Actually”— I levered him back with my palm to his chest, forcing him to watch me speak—“I thought we agreed that’s exactly what it was.”
“Did we?” His cool eyes skimmed playfully down me – head to foot. Then he raked his gaze all the way up with the same excruciating thoroughness.
My tongue went dry.
“Simon…”
“I’m joking.” With a dull, careful clack, he set the Yoda mug down on top of the bank of pigeon holes, stretching distance away. “Ben, you can go home if you want to go home. I’m not—”
“No—” Shit. Yesterday he’d talked about taking advantage, and now I was making him think he really was.
“—I want to stay.” Matt could wait. So could the shopping.
In fact, the whole of the rest of my life could go and do one.
“I’m just wondering what I’m going to be interpreting for you all afternoon. ”
Simon snorted softly, amusement crinkling his face.
“How to fake a relationship, of course. Do keep up.”
His fingers knotted into the neck of my t-shirt again, and he gave another tug. This time, I went with it.
His free hand skirted my side, fingers pushing up under my t-shirt, my hip, my spine, muscle and skin and tendons and bone.
He’d barely left space for me between his thighs.
I didn’t need much to plaster in along the incline of his body.
I kissed him. And he straightened urgently, drawing taller, pulling me into him with a hand at the small of my back.
Done playing, I arched to meet him as he licked into my mouth, groaning around his tongue.
Oh. Fuck going home. I was officially doing anything he bloody wanted. Right here in his entrance hall if he’d let me.
Simon rolled me against his front door, arm above my head blocking me in, our bodies rocking together with each heavy breath. And—
The door fell inwards.
Simon stumbled back, and I lurched for him, grabbing uselessly at his arm, trying to keep us both upright with sheer willpower against gravity’s revenge. Our feet tangled. Everything twisted. We went down in unstoppable slow motion, as inevitably as a Jenga tower collapse.
My hip hit the floor, the air whooshed out of my lungs, and the whole building shook with the aftershock of our impact.
Behind us, someone cleared their throat obnoxiously loudly. “Did another ‘train’ get ‘cancelled’?”
Fuck. I rolled off Simon, scrabbling upright, balancing self-preservation with keeping him in conversational alignment. “What the hell is Sev doing here?”
“Helping legitimize your deepfake of a relationship, you ungrateful shit.” The rounded toe of Sev’s shiny black boot tapped against the floorboards.
At least she didn’t jab me in the ribs. “Thought you wanted to do a working lunch, Simon?” she said.
“To sort all the really urgent social media stuff you summoned me for.”
“Right.” Simon smirked. Like a cheeky school boy. “Absolutely. Let’s get on with that. Just – call me old-fashioned – my spare key is really only supposed to be for emergencies?”
Dusting himself off, Simon shut the front door a little harder than necessary.
And then Jo – it had to be Jo – poked her head out of the living room doorway. “Don’t blame Sev. Your fault for not replying to my messages.”
In real time, the easy looseness Simon had shown all morning shifted as his focus sharpened on his sister. I could practically see him backwards-inducing everything she’d said.
“Had a busy morning,” he threw back, irritatingly nonchalant. I flushed when he caught my eye.
Jo laughed – this great warm blare that glowed through her. Simon was high-waisted trousers and tailoring, and she was high-fashion and femininity. Even in bare feet.
“Mmhm, and how was your doting sister supposed to know you weren’t unconscious, unable to get to your phone, oblivious to us hammering on your door, thinking no one was ever going to find you?” Her hand went to her hip. Her fingernails were the same deep orange as her toes.
“Because I’m not eighty.” Somehow Simon managed to look affectionate towards her despite rolling his eyes. “Or prone to fainting. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“There could have been a gas leak.”
“Oh I see, you’re skiving.”
“For your information, I’m deep in the design phase for the next collection. And my creativity requires inspiration.”
Simon nodded slowly, miming deep understanding. Only, the bottom half of his face was too amused to get the message. “What are you doing here then? It was Sev I asked to lunch. For work.”
Jo patted his arm. “You kidnapped the love of my life for basically the entire weekend, leaving me all on my own—”
“It was a day.”
“Babes, you were with—”
“Hush. Not relevant.” Jo held her finger up to silence Sev. Pursing her lips did nothing to banish the laughter in her eyes. “All on my own. I thought why not take back some quality family time, the three of us? And Ben, obviously. Hi Ben.”
“Erm. Hi.”
“Oh,” said Simon. “I see. Nothing about using my garden then?”
Jo blanked him. “So... My brother with an official boyfriend?” She looped her arm into mine. “I cannot believe Simon hasn’t introduced us. It’s rude at this point, really. The internet tells me you’ve been together ages.”
“Stop it,” Simon warned. “Least you can do is behave yourself if you’re staying for lunch.”
Jo and Sev let Simon shoo them out of his open French doors into the garden where Sev had already set her laptop up. Jo snagged her sunglasses from the outdoor dining table, lounging back on the sofa-seat cushions, out of the sun.
I didn’t mind Simon tugging me back to the kitchen with him one bit. What was I going to tell his sister about the mess of a situationship we’d got ourselves into anyway?
Clattering open his cupboards, Simon frowned into each one like he’d forgotten where he kept anything. I hovered, leaning against the counter by his stupidly complicated coffee machine.
“Grab a bowl from under there, will you?”
I followed orders.
Like Richard’s kitchen, Simon’s had an island. Only, the working area of his was about the size of a tea trolley, not a helicopter pad. Herbs growing in tin-can pots hung on the window side, soaking up the sunlight. Terracotta jars stuffed full of utensils crowded the top.
He dumped a tin of chickpeas into a bullet blender with a spoon of something sticky from a jar.
“I forgot I’d asked Sev to come over. I messaged her as soon as I left the office yesterday.” He crushed a clove of garlic with the flat of his knife under the heel of his hand. “Sorry about Jo, she can be...” He made a face, and didn’t even try to verbalise it.
I glanced guiltily back through the windows out into the garden at her, and purposefully dropped my voice. “She’s nice.”
“She’s lovely,” Simon agreed firmly.
Jo stretched out next to Sev, feet in her lap, talking with lively animation too quietly for me to make out words over the screaming whirr of the blender.
Sev, hunched forward squinting at her laptop, was absently stroking her leg.
She kept leaning back to speak, clearly not bothered about distractions.
A smile. A shake of her head, and a laugh.
Eyes on Jo like she could spend a lifetime drinking in everything the woman had to say.
Damnit. I knew that feeling.
“Do you like tinned fish?” Simon asked, voice a notch too loud, and my attention snapped back to him. “I’ve got mackerel or sardines.” He held out a stack of tins. “Bit spicy, but I think you’ll manage.”
“Sure. I’ll give it a go.” I cracked the tins into the bowl and prodded at the pieces with a fork, unsure whether I was supposed to break them up or not.
As soon as Jo had appeared, tightness had curled into his whole body. It finally faded out of him as he pulsed the blender, leaving him smiling as it came together.
I caught his eye, signing instead of trying to speak over the ragged whirr. “Why didn’t your family learn BSL?”
The blender stopped, leaving a gaping echo hanging in the air like tinnitus.
“It’s not like that.” Simon glanced towards the open doors, tone hushed, but no way Jo could see me signing from here. “They’d do anything for me.”
“I can see that,” I signed, tilting my head to keep in his eyeline. Every framed photo showed how great they were. How much they loved him. Even Jo showing up to meddle made it clear. “But you’re so…” I puffed my cheeks. “...fucking tense keeping up with what your sister’s saying.”
A ripple chased along the muscle of his jaw again, and Simon exhaled so hard his nostrils flared. Shit. This wasn’t my place. No matter how much I hated watching it. What an overstep.
“Sorry.” Hands up, I backed off. “Forget I ask—”
“No.” Simon caught my wrist, holding steady. He only let go when I’d stilled completely. “I… didn’t want them to,” he signed.
Honesty furred his eyebrows together. “Not at home. I didn’t need signing at home.
Or with friends.” His eyes shied away from mine, and I felt the effort it took him to look back at me.
None of his usual throwaway humour there.
“I’ve been faking it from context – laughing when everyone else does – for so long I’m practically psychic by now.
Didn’t realise it was so obvious I’m not keeping up. ”
“It’s not. You do.” I stalled, trying to order my thoughts before I started signing. Constant detective work can’t have been the kind of super power he’d ever really wanted. “How much effort does it take?”
Simon blinked. “No one asks me that.”
Why wasn’t that a surprise? “You really don’t keep the best company, do you?”
His smile contorted to an uncomfortable shape.
“Look, Jo got in so much trouble because of me when I started needing an interpreter at school. Which was a joke in itself, because I had to actually learn BSL before it was useful. Ending up dropping out. Repeating a year when I went back. So I got to be the weird older kid no one wanted to be around. And when I got all A’s they said my interpreter must have helped me. Clearly I was cheating.”
“The teachers said that?”
“No. Not the teachers.”
“But that’s ridiculous.”
“Tell that to thirty white teenagers you made feel inadequate.” He rubbed a hand down his face, scrubbing hard at his skin, and my stomach knotted. “Jo was going against these idiots doing impressions of how I speak – my voice. Or, hands all over the place, pretending to sign.
“I wanted to keep it all separate. For school.” He marked a solid place in the space in front of him, boxing it in. Dim, outdated regret soured his face. “Didn’t want my family learning an entire language because of how different I am.”
I winced. How many times had I got myself in trouble over things a stranger had said about Mam?
I wanted to punch the little twerps. I wanted to tug Simon in against my chest so hard the kid he’d been felt it from a decade and a half away.
But my feet rooted to his kitchen tiles, my hands bunched in useless fists until I forced myself to let it go. To sign again.
“You’re not different. You’re fucking fabulous.”
Simon blurted a laugh. The pleased gleam in his eyes washed warmth all over me.
“Don’t think you can really be fabulous when you’re compromising yourself all over the place.
Your flatmate’s the first Deaf person I’ve met in years, and I can barely hold a conversation at his pace.
You’re right. Everywhere I go, I’m either paddling furiously to keep it looking effortless, or I’m a complete outsider. Unless you’re there.”
“It doesn’t have to stay like that.”
Simon looked tired. “I’ve spent so long making sure everyone knows how well I get on lipreading. That I don’t really need any accommodations apart from for work. I can’t tell Jo I’ve been bullshitting most of her life.”
I came around the kitchen island, brushing past the herbs and the mint as I caught his upper arm and tipped his chin in my direction.
“Why?” I asked, consciously keeping my voice soft. “Because Simon Azie is perfection itself at all times?”
“Oh fuck you.” He laughed, skittering his eyes down to my mouth. “I’m being vulnerable here, thank you very much.”
“Funny, I thought you were making lunch.”