Page 43 of Cassian is Getting Out

“You’ll want steak when you smell it.”

Cassian opened one eye. Ruari was already half-dressed, pulling a clean T-shirt over his head.

When he was done getting himself sorted, Ruari started dressing Cassian. This involved locating Cassian’s pants from wherever they’d landed, and threading his legs into his joggers while Cassian contributed nothing beyond the occasional grunt of acknowledgement.

The walk to the Elgin took four minutes. Portobello Road was lit amber and still busy enough that they had to weave between couples and tourists. The pub door opened into noise and the rich, heavy smell of charred meat.

“Thorne!” someone bellowed from the bar, and the greeting rippled outward. Three heads turned, then five, then the entire back corner where a cluster of men Cassian didn’t recognise raised their pints in synchronised salute.

“Lads,” Ruari said, steering Cassian forward with his palm between his shoulders.

A whisky appeared on the bar before Ruari had reached it, placed by a bartender who hadn’t needed to ask what he was after. Ruari picked it up and downed it in one go.

“Who’s this, then?” A red-faced man in a Barbour jacket leaned forward on his stool, his gaze tracking down to where Ruari’s hand lay on Cassian’s spine.

“Cassian,” Ruari said. “He’s my omega.”

The man’s eyebrows climbed. A woman at the next table called Ruari’s name and asked after his knee. The barman was already pouring a second whisky. Someone wanted to know if Ruari had seen Villa’s weekend result, and Ruari shouted his answer while pulling a stool out for Cassian with his foot.

Cassian sat. A menu materialised in front of him. The red-faced man asked where he was from. The woman wanted to know if he’d tried Ruari’s Chelsea buns. Someone else told him he was far too good-looking for Thorne and should reconsider his options.

They simply absorbed him into the circle that Ruari occupied, as though Ruari’s hand on him was all the introduction he required.

By then Ruari was halfway through his third whisky and telling a story about a goalkeeper with a fear of pigeons, and the whole table was leaning in, watching Ruari like he was the best thing in the room.

Pints appeared without Ruari ordering them. The red-faced man in the Barbour, whose name turned out to be Geoff, bought the first round, and after that the drinks came in a steady relay, each one delivered with a clap on Ruari’s shoulder.

Ruari drank everything that was put in front of him.

The match came on at nine. Villa were playing Brighton, and the pub’s ancient wall-mounted television flickered to life with a picture so oversaturated that every player looked radioactive. Ruari’s stool scraped away from the bar as he twisted to face the screen.

“Get it wide! Get it fucking wide, Watkins, he’s got acres!”

The entire pub detonated. Geoff slammed his palm on the bar, two men in Villa scarves surged out of their seats, and the barman stopped mid-pour to swear at the screen. Ruari was on his feet, both arms flung skyward, whisky sloshing over the rim of his glass.

Cassian leapt up half a second later and cheered because the room was cheering.

He had no idea what had just happened. Someone had done something good with the ball, or possibly something bad, and the correct response was apparently to shout obscenities at a television while strangers grabbed your arm. Cassian grabbed Geoff’s arm. Geoff grabbed him back and shook him by the shoulder with a ferocity that rattled his teeth.

The pattern repeated. A man in claret would run towards the goal, the pub would hold its breath, and Ruari would lean forward. When the ball went in the right direction, Ruari roared. When it didn’t, he groaned with such theatrical devastation that Cassian groaned too.

“Offside! He was fucking miles offside, are you blind?” Ruari bellowed at a referee who could not hear him, and Cassian told the woman beside him, with great conviction, “He was miles offside,” which earned him a delighted cackle and a pat on the cheek.

Villa won, and by the final whistle Ruari had moved from his stool to the centre of the pub, where the post-match analysis consisted of him replaying key moments, demonstrating a missed header by leaping sideways into Geoff and nearly taking out a table of four.

Someone started singing.

It began in the back corner of the pub, an unfamiliar tune with words Cassian didn’t know. Ruari’s head snapped towards the sound and his face split open with a joy so fierce it bordered on feral. He threw his arm around Geoff’s neck and joined in at top volume.

The song built. More voices piled on, layering over each other in cheerful dissonance, and Ruari stood in the middle of all of it conducting with his pint glass. His voice was terrible, but he sang with absolute commitment anyway.

Cassian watched Ruari sing his heart out, and he never wanted the night to end.

He clapped along on the wrong beat until the woman beside him corrected his timing.

Last orders came and went, and the pub emptied in stages. Ruari was the last man standing, propped on the bar with his chin on his fist, explaining to the barman why Villa’s 1982 European Cup squad was the greatest collection of footballers ever assembled.

“Come on, alpha.” Cassian slid off his stool and tugged Ruari’s sleeve. “Time to go home.”