Page 61 of Cassian is Getting Out

“It was beautifully lit,” Cassian protested. “The golden hour was doing good things to your foreskin, Ruari.”

“Right…” Ruari scrubbed both hands down his face, dragging the last of sleep out of his expression, and when his hands dropped, the look he gave Cassian was devastatingly fond. “Come here.”

Cassian climbed onto Ruari’s lap and Ruari’s cock, hard and still awake from Cassian’s earlier efforts, nudged up against his arse. Cassian forgot about getting the right photo.

The weeks that followed were the best of Cassian’s life, and he’d had some strong contenders recently.

He practically lived at Proving Ground now. His toothbrush stood in the mug beside Ruari’s in the bathroom upstairs, and his Tangfastics had colonised the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard where Ruari kept the good chocolate.

He still returned to Ledbury Road most days. Colin expected him for reading practice at eleven, and Tala needed holding while Colin did the bathroom grouting he’d been putting off since before she was born.

But mornings belonged to Proving Ground. He woke to the sound of Ruari’s alarm at half three, felt the mattress shift as the enormous body beside him rolled upright, and fell straight back asleep until the smell of proving dough and fresh espresso dragged him downstairs around seven. By the time he appeared, Ruari would already have the first batches cooling on the racks, and there would be a passionfruit tart or a Chelsea bun waiting for him on the counter with a fork laid beside it.

Then the Belgium trip came around.

Cassian had jumped at the offer, but the last time he’d been away from Ruari for more than a day, the curtains had come down and the flat had gone dark.

What if leaving again triggered the same thing? Ruari could wake up on Saturday morning to an empty flat, and by the time Cassian got home from Bruges he’d be ignoring him again.

But Ruari had insisted that he’d be fine. He’d pointed out that Lysander and Hamish wanted to make a fuss of him for his good exam results, and he should let them. So Cassian went to Belgium.

He ate his body weight in speculoos. He watched Hamish interview a seventy-three-year-old man who wept openly while describing the homing instinct of his favourite bird, texted Ruari extensively throughout the trip, and then fell asleep on Lysander’s shoulder during the ferry crossing home.

When he let himself into Proving Ground on Monday morning, Ruari was behind the counter. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and as usual he was arguing with Raf about proving times and how they needed to be adjusted when the temperature was expected to go up later in the day.

He looked up when the door chimed, and the shop-frown fell straight off his face when he saw it was Cassian.

“Alright, gorgeous?” Ruari asked, already reaching for the passionfruit tart he’d set aside.

Cassian took the tart. He bit into it. The familiar taste hit. He let himself collapse dramatically onto the counter and Ruari grinned.

Ruari had been fine the whole weekend, according to Raf, who reported that Ruari had baked, served, closed up at the normal hour, and gone to the Elgin on Saturday night to watch Villa draw nil-nil with Fulham, which had put him in a foul mood, but a normal one.

Which meant the conversation Cassian had been putting off was no longer necessary. Whatever had happened then had passed. Ruari had come through the other side of it on his own.

The café was heaving by half nine, a queue snaking past the chalk menu and out towards the pavement. Raf had both hands going, one on the till, one reaching back for paper bags, while Ruari loaded the display case. Neither of them looked up when Cassian slipped behind the counter and took the stairs up to the flat.

He found dishes stacked in the sink, a tea towel draped over the back of a chair with enough flour on it to constitute a second proving surface, and three mugs abandoned between the kitchen and the sofa. A pair of joggers lay inside-out on the bathroom floor where Ruari had stepped out of them and kept walking.

This was all just normal bachelor Ruari disarray. Nothing worth worrying about.

He started with the mugs, carrying all three to the sink and running hot water over the dried tannin rings. Then he wiped down the counter where toast crumbs had accumulated around the toaster. The joggers went into the laundry basket. He smoothed the duvet, plumped both pillows, and lined up Ruari’s slippers beside the bed.

The recycling was the real problem. Two carrier bags sat wedged between the fridge and the wall, heavy with whisky and beer bottles.

Cassian crouched down, grabbed both carrier bag handles in one fist, and pulled.

The bags moved two inches off the ground before the weight of the glass bottles made him stagger sideways into the fridge door. He braced his other hand on the countertop and tried again, getting as far as lifting the bags clear of the floor before his grip gave out and they thudded down, the bottles clinking against each other inside the plastic.

He rubbed his palms against his thighs. Ruari could carry both of those in one hand without adjusting his breathing. Cassian nudged the bags into their spot with his foot and made a mental note to get Ruari to deal with them later.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Colin’s face had been getting tighter and tighter for the last fifteen minutes.

“But why, Colin?”

Tala was balanced on Colin’s hip, one fist in her mouth, the other wrapped around the collar of Colin’s shirt. Colin shifted her higher and glared at the new Entry Level 3 science workbook open on the kitchen table between them.