Page 66 of Cassian is Getting Out

Geoff looked at Cassian, who was still blinking furiously. “He can’t even finish the eight-ounce on his own, Ruari.”

“Thirty-two-ounce bone-in, Geoff.”

The flush crept up Cassian’s neck first, then his cheeks, and deepened with every minute.

“Ruari.” Cassian swayed sideways on his stool until his shoulder pressed into Ruari’s arm. “Ruari, I need to tell you something very important.”

“Go on, then.”

“The Light teaches us that alcohol is a veil between the soul and its higher purpose.” He blinked three times, slowly, as though each blink required full planning. “But I think the Light was wrong about that, because I feel extremely connected to my higher purpose right now, and my higher purpose is you.”

Ruari put an arm around his waist, and Cassian sagged into him.

“Also,” Cassian continued, his fingers walking up the buttons of Ruari’s shirt and fiddling with the collar, “I need to tell you that I don’t like football.”

“Yeah?”

“No. I’ve been pretending, Ruari. When Villa scored that goal and I yelled out, I was yelling because you were happy, not because I understood what had happened. A ball went into a net. I don’t know why everyone was so upset about it.”

“They were celebrating, Cass.”

“Some of them were crying.”

“That’s celebrating.”

Cassian considered this. “Crying is celebrating?”

“When Villa score, yeah.”

“Hmm.” His fingers had migrated from Ruari’s collar to the hinge of his jaw, rubbing the same spot over and over. “I don’t understand your sport. But I understand your face when you watch it, and I like your face very much, so I’ll keep sitting next to you while you watch it.”

The steak arrived. Cassian attacked it, cutting each piece into neat squares that he chewed with his eyes half-closed, humming in satisfaction now and then.

Ruari drank steadily through the meal. Two pints arrived that he hadn’t ordered. Geoff knew the rhythm, and by the second one the pub had gone pleasantly soft around him. Cassian talked between bites, about Tala’s new trick of blowing raspberries that sprayed purée across Colin’s clean shirts, about Ivar’s theory that English spelling was a conspiracy against non-native speakers, about the science tutor Colin was hiring.

Cassian reached for his glass and fumbled the tumbler sideways. Ruari caught it before it tipped, lifted it to Cassian’s mouth, and tilted it until the last mouthful met his lips.

Cassian drank from Ruari’s hand, his eyes on Ruari’s face the entire time, and when the glass was empty his tongue darted out to chase the last drop from his lower lip.

“Right.” Ruari set the tumbler down. “Pint of cider for him.”

“We’ve got Aspall or Rekorderlig,” Geoff said. “Rekorderlig’s strawberry-lime.”

Cassian’s head came up. “Strawberry? I’ll have that.”

The pint arrived pink and cold, beading with condensation, and Cassian took his first sip. He smacked his lips and took another, closer to a gulp.

“Ruari.” He held the glass up to the light and turned it. “This tastes like Tala’s juice. But bitey.”

He drank half of it before Ruari had finished his pint.

Sandra brought the second Rekorderlig unbidden, setting it down in front of Cassian with a wink that Cassian returned with such sauciness that Sandra looked briefly wrong-footed before retreating to the taps.

Ruari’s arm was around Cassian’s waist, his pint freshly pulled, and the Villa conversation had expanded to include Geoff, Tall Dave, and a bloke called Rick who drove a taxi and had strong opinions about the back four. Ruari was mid-argument about whether Kamara should be dropped for the Wolves fixture when Cassian’s voice cut through from beside him.

“The thing is,” Cassian was telling Sandra and a woman Ruari vaguely recognised from the Saturday market, “football is actually very simple when you think about it in terms of light and darkness. Villa are the light, obviously, because they’re Ruari’s team, and if the other team scores, that’s the darkness encroaching, and what you have to do is vanquish the darkness. Which is what the forwards are for. They’re the vessels of vanquishing.

“That’s what the Lumineer would say,” Cassian continued. “If your harvest fails, it’s because the darkness got in through insufficient devotion. So if Villa lose, it’s because the players haven’t devoted themselves fully to the light of the pitch. They need to open their hearts to the will of the ball.”