Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hamish knew the morning was ruined the instant Cassian picked up the cereal box.
There was a sound a nearly empty box of Lucky Charms made when Cassian shook it, a thin rattle of a few marshmallows and bits of cereal knocking about the bottom, that Hamish had learned to dread in the eleven days since Diwa had introduced Cassian to the stuff.
Cassian tilted the box towards the light and peered inside, and his face performed its whole repertoire of expressions in sequence: the lift of anticipation, the pucker of doubt, then the slow drawing in of every feature as he confirmed what the rattle had merely implied.
He shook it again, harder, as though the cereal might materialise with a bit of encouragement.
Hamish leaned against the counter with his coffee and waited for the meltdown.
He hadn’t slept. Lysander had walked out of their bedroom somewhere around eleven, barefoot and furious, and the mattress had stayed cold on his side all night.
Hamish had lain there in the dark waiting for the door to open, and it hadn’t.
At some point the birds had started up outside and he’d given up on the pretence, come downstairs, and made coffee that was doing nothing for him. He was running on fumes and bad temper.
“Hamish.” Cassian held the box high. “It’s finished. There’s none left. I only had one bowl of it yesterday and now it’s all gone, and this is the one with the little purple horseshoes that go soft in the—”
“I can see it’s finished, Cass.”
“But there’s none left.”
“That does tend to be what finished means.”
Cassian set the box down on the island. His bottom lip had begun its slow migration outward, and Hamish recognised the shape of the next ten minutes with total clarity: the negotiation, the doctrine, the escalating grief, the eventual production of some catastrophically unsuitable alternative that Cassian would reject on grounds of texture.
On any other morning he’d have handled it.
He’d have trickled ungodly amounts of honey over longganisa with his own hands if that was what it took.
This morning his patience had been spent in the small hours on a man who’d called him a coward, and there was nothing left in him that could see him through this.
“There’s plenty to eat in the pantry,” Hamish said, and heard the flatness in his own voice.
Cassian’s head came up.
“Are you cross with me?”
“No.” Hamish rubbed a hand down his face. “No, Cass, I’m not cross with you.”
Cassian’s eyes had gone wide and careful, working out whether he was upset enough to press the issue. Hamish, who did not fancy Cassian’s chances if he chose this exact moment to pitch a proper fit, opened his mouth to head him off at the pass.
“Right, what’s the crisis?”
Lysander was in the doorway.
He was in yesterday’s t-shirt and boxers. He looked wrecked, and also, Hamish registered, entirely unbothered.
Hamish waited for Lysander’s gaze to swing to him and reignite their fight. Instead, Lysander crossed to the island, took in the abandoned box and Cassian’s general air of tragedy in a glance.
“The Lucky Charms are gone,” Cassian informed him.
“Okay.” Lysander plucked it off the counter and dropped it in the recycling without ceremony. “Let’s walk to Proving Ground and get you something else, then.”
Cassian’s grief evaporated in an instant. “I’m having the bun with the currants,” he said. “And the pastéis. Can I have four?”
“No. You’ll make yourself sick, Cass.”
“I ate twelve before I threw up the last time.”
Lysander steered him towards the hallway with a hand between his shoulder blades. At the doorway Lysander paused. He didn’t turn all the way round. He tipped his head back over his shoulder, not quite far enough to meet Hamish’s eye, and said, casual as anything, “You coming, then?”
He waited on the front step with Cassian while Lysander went back upstairs to put trousers on.
Cassian sat on the second step watching the street come to life. A woman walking a greyhound received a wave so enthusiastic that her dog startled sideways into a recycling bin.
“Sorry!” Cassian called after her. “Your dog is beautiful! Is he allowed sugar?”
Hamish pinched the bridge of his nose.
Lysander reappeared and Cassian launched himself off the step and set out along the pavement at a clip that put him six paces ahead within seconds, his attention already snagged by a florist’s bucket display on the corner.
They fell into step beside each other. Hamish kept his hands in his pockets and matched Lysander’s pace. Their shoulders collided on a narrow bit of pavement where the bins had been put out.
“Sorry,” Hamish and Lysander said at exactly the same time.
They walked on. At the next kerb, Lysander’s shoulder pressed into his arm again, and this time neither of them moved apart. The contact held all the way across the road and onto Portobello.
Cassian had stopped twelve feet ahead to crouch beside a ginger cat sitting on a doorstep, cooing at it.
“I got rid of the recording with Dane,” Lysander said. “And I started again. I want to tell the story of my family instead.”
Hamish watched Cassian scratch the cat behind its ears. The morning light caught the pale crown of his head, turning it briefly silver.
“I’m proud of you, Lysander.”
Lysander’s jaw shifted once. Ahead of them, Cassian had abandoned the cat and was pressing his face against the window of an antique shop, his breath fogging the glass.
“And I’m sorry,” Lysander said, “for calling you a coward because you wouldn’t be like Dane and tell me what to do.”
Hamish nodded, then reached across and wiped a streak of dried drool, crusted to a shine, from Lysander’s mouth with his thumb.
Lysander batted his hand away. “Get off.”
“You’ve got spit on your face, Sander.”
“So? I just gave you a heartfelt apology.”
“And it was delivered beautifully, even with a slug trail on your cheek.”
Lysander scrubbed at the spot with his own sleeve, glaring at him, and Hamish almost smiled before the rest of what needed saying caught up with him.
“Some of it was true, though.” He kept his gaze on Cassian, who had moved on from the antique shop and was now standing at the edge of the pavement waiting for the two of them. “What you said about me just standing by and watching. With Cass and the Family of Light.”
Lysander went quiet.
“I filmed them for weeks,” Hamish said. “I got my footage. And I knew, not suspected, Sander, I knew that something in that compound had gone badly wrong for him.” Hamish shook his head.
“I told myself I was being professional. Maintaining objectivity and respecting his autonomy. All of that was true, but I still feel like I should have done something sooner.”
The pedestrian light changed, and Cassian bounded across the road without looking, nearly giving Hamish a heart attack right then and there. They’d need to have words about that later.
“It haunts me. And I’m trying to make up for it every single day he’s with me,” Hamish said.
Lysander leaned harder into his arm.
“Is that why you let him eat the shit he does?” Lysander asked.
Hamish looked at Cassian, who had reached the other side of the road and was already scanning for the Proving Ground shopfront, bouncing on his toes with anticipation.
“Yeah,” Hamish said. “Partly.”
Lysander knocked against his shoulder once, hard enough that Hamish had to correct his balance, and they crossed the road together.
Cassian called back at them, walking backwards now. “I’m getting Tala her own Chelsea bun.”
“No you’re not,” Hamish called after him. “You’ll just end up eating it yourself.”
“No, Hamish. I love Tala.” Cassian pressed a hand flat to his chest, wounded to his core. “I wouldn’t do that to her.”
He turned and disappeared through the door of Proving Ground before either of them could argue the point and mention all the other instances when Cassian had commandeered more than his fair share of treats.
Lysander watched the door swing shut behind him and smirked. “He absolutely does love her.”
Hamish made a sound of agreement. “That’s not in question. But he’d still eat that bun right out of her hand, if it came down to it.”
Lysander laughed and moved towards the door. Hamish caught his sleeve.
“One more thing, before we go in.”
Through the window, Cassian had already reached the counter and pressed both palms flat against the display case, his nose an inch from the glass while Ruari waited on the other side of it, arms folded, in no hurry at all.
“I’ve got a meeting on Thursday,” Hamish said. “With the BBC. It’s a commissioning, not promo for the Family of Light doco. They’ve been circling since the numbers came in, and they want to talk about a series. My format, their money. Filmed here.”
Lysander went very still. “Here as in—”
“Here as in the UK. It’d mean basing myself in London for a year at least. Possibly more, if it gets a second run.”
A market trader two stalls down was arranging crates of oranges, and the traffic on Portobello carried on around them. Lysander stood on the pavement, the beginnings of a smile brightening his expression.
“I was going to tell you last night,” Hamish said.
“But then you called me a coward and stormed off to sleep somewhere else, so the timing felt a little off.” He pushed his glasses up his nose.
“Which does bring me to the one thing I need to confirm before Thursday. You’re not done with me, are you?
Because I’d hate to restructure my entire career around a man who doesn’t want me around anymore. ”
Lysander grabbed the front of his shirt with both fists and kissed him so hard their teeth knocked. Hamish tasted coffee and the faint sweetness beneath it that was just Lysander, and his hands found Lysander’s waist and pulled him in until there was nothing between them but cotton.
When Lysander finally pulled away, he smacked one hand against Hamish’s chest. “I’m nowhere near done with you, you idiot,” Lysander said.
“And when we get home, I’m going to ride you until neither of us can walk.
Then you can call the BBC from bed and tell them yes while I’m still sitting on your knot. ”
Hamish’s brain shorted out. “That’s — I’d struggle to sound professional under those circumstances, Sander.”
“Good.”
A sharp, furious rapping on the glass behind them made Lysander flinch and Hamish turn. Cassian’s face pressed flat against the bakery window, his palms spread wide on either side of his head.
“Ruari says you’re putting off the customers!” Cassian’s voice came through the glass, muffled but carrying the force of deep indignation.
Lysander wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grinned at Hamish, and they went into the café.