Title: 'Every Little Helps'

Author: tigersilver

Fandom: 'Cloud Atlas' film

Pairing: Sixsmith/Frobisher

Rating: NC-17

Word Count: 5765

Summary. Fix-it AU, set in a nebulous (though near enough now) future. No one dies, everyone shags, excepting the Tesco's Express employee, and he might very well, off screen, but not either of our boys, no. Complete crack, utterly unbeta'd, purely for amusement; you have been warned.

Part 1: The Lettuce

It was the tossing of the lettuce that gained Robert Frobisher's attention.

The man doing the tossing was blondish, tallish, definitely, deliciously handsome in a Norman knight sort of manner and terribly wild-eyed and frothing as well, contrarily dressed all too severely in a white lab coat and dark trousers. The lettuce was well aimed and blindingly brilliantly bowled. It went with a satisfying splat against Tesco Expresses' exit/entry doors and caused them to open and close for a moment or two in automated confusion.

Captured completely, more like. Robert started forward toward the man, eyes sparkling, running two sets of excited fingertips through his tumbledown locks.

"Oh! I say!"

"Bloody!" the cashier barked loudly, blinking at the green goopy smear on the glass, his voice drowning out Robert's exclamation. Distracted, Robert noted the cashier noting the brown stain, too, for there was brown: the rusty shade of old blood, drying. "Bloody fuck!" The cashier had clearly lost his composure. He turned to stare at the lettuce-bowler with a huge scowl and an accusingly pointy finger. "What in the bleeding hell did you go off and do that for? You bleeding arse!"

"Hah!" The lettuce-bowler bloke shouted and then fell to laughing uproariously, rocking back and forth, heel to toe, palms up to the heavens in a wonderful 'what the fuckity-fuck?' gesture. "Well, it's rotten, isn't it? Rotten, I tell you, rotten to the core! Oh, hah-ha-ha! Same as that great lot of fools! Hah, I say! Bugger 'em! Bugger them all to fuckity-fuck!"

"Oh, but brilliant," Robert muttered, entirely, instantly captivated, and edged closer to the man, abandoning his shopping and giving the smashed ball of iceberg a bit of kick in passing. It rolled away from the doorway, forlorn, like the head of an old king. "You're brilliant!"

"I don't care about that, you're still an arse," the cashier informed the unchastened lettuce-bowler sternly. "You can't just let loose and fling the veg around, mister—it's not done!"

"Yes," the bowler shot back smartly. "I can. I did. So there!"

"Really, really brilliant," Robert murmured with enthusiasm, deftly accosting the mad fellow by the flapping crook of an elbow. This salad tossing, completely unapologetic, devilishly handsome nutter? He was…he was fascinating, intriguing and entirely unexpected, at least in Robert's eyes. "Tell me?" he pleaded of the man. "Why did you just do that? What's rotten, exactly? Is it Denmark? That's old hat, Denmark." He shook his overlong fringe at the man, smiling. "And you're mental, completely, I see. I like that, I do. It's an excellent quality."

The man didn't so much as glance at Robert. He and the cashier bloke were busy, engaged in some ferociously squinty-eyed staring contest.

"Clean it up, then," the cashier ordered. "And make sure to pay for that. You can't just go about destroying my stock!"

"No. Non, nyet, negative," the lettuce bowler replied, stamping a foot and snorting. He shook off Robert's grip on his elbow in passing. "Not a chance. It's not my fault if you're selling rubbishing lettuce. You clean it up, as I'm not. Not! NOT."

"Stunning!"

Honestly, Robert couldn't help but to admire, really. All there was to admire, and that was an eyeful. By which he internally referred to the blond fellow's spunk, and his beautifully vivid spirit, surging up. This nonsensical destruction of the bad lettuce in a fit of brilliant pique? This grandstanding with the shop clerk over the consequences? It was all exactly the sort of thing Robert would do himself—or he'd more likely get up to far worse, really, and had.

"Talk to me, my man, tell me all about it," he ordered, making another bid for the fellow's arm. "You're exactly my type. Tall, blond and barmy."

Robert couldn't deny it, either. They'd all said, the Caius lot, at time or another, that Robert was mad as the proverbial hatter. That was all right, then, but this? This was never what he'd expect out of this buttoned-up, severely pissed off fellow met by chance in the local grocery. This lovely fellow who was stone-struck with the angry giggles and joggling away under Robert's grasp like a pink-cheeked blancmange.

"Ridiculous!" the man gasped, jouncing about on crane legs like some enraged amphibian eater. "Pfft! Expecting me to pay for—for!" He pointed at the ruined lettuce. "That!"

It was curious, Robert thought: the man looked exactly as if he should have a fireplace poker reamed well up his very nice, very tight arse, but he didn't—he clearly didn't!

"Why the lettuce?" Robert persisted.

It was impressive, vastly. And sexy—the man had a brilliant arm on him. One could practically see the fitness radiating out from under the lab togs.

"Why are you laughing like that?"

It was foolhardy, and outré, and it had ticked off the Tesco employee no end, that laughter, the tone of it. Robert peered up at the chap, well aware he was making sheep's eyes at him, flirting.

"Who are these fools you speak of? Talk to me, man!" As Robert needed know. What if he had rivals already and was unaware? "Are you shagging any of them?"

"Shit, no! I shan't and you cannot force me!"

But the chap didn't, which was galling. Speak to Robert, that was.

"Fucking shit!" It was all about the aftermath, instead. And the shop clerk, that insignificant wanker. "The nerve!"

"Fine, fine, fine, keep your wig on," the clerk growled. "I'll clean it up but you're still paying for it!"

"Shit! Shit, shit, shit, no, I wont'!" the rudesby blathered 'round the shop, rather emphatically waving off the clerk's muffled grumbles as the latter shambled off to collect the destroyed lettuce. "And you'd better!"

"Hullo? Hi, there? D'you even see me?" Barmy Blondie nearly managed to fling off Robert's clingy fingers as he got up his histrionics, but not quite. This time round, Robert held on. "Hullo?" He waved a hand before the man's eyes. Very fine they were, too. " Is anybody in there?" he asked. "I'm speaking to you! Pay some attention—I'm right. Here."

"Bloody hell," the clerk riposted.

No, not, nothing. Barmy Stranger didn't seem to notice Robert's rather grim hold on his arm at all, nor Robert's peering, searching gaze, nor Robert's actual presence, breathing.

"Fine!" the man snapped. "Have at it, won't you? And that was probably inexcusable, what I did here, but no, I'm not sorry! Wait! I am sorry, and I'll pay for it, of course," the oblivious fellow carried on, shaking his head as he mentally skidded to halt and careened about some other train of thought.

Perhaps his lab togs indicated some sense still resided within him? Robert blanched, sorely disappointed.

"Oh, don't," Robert had to implore, praying the man wouldn't balk at this last hurdle. "You'll ruin it, and that's a fine strop you've got on, Sexy. Don't dare apologize now!"

Clearly something was getting through to the bally blighter, even it was on a subliminal level. The man swiveled his eyeballs about and visibly changed his mind again, quick-march. "No!" he shouted.

Robert grinned mightily to himself, vastly pleased. His lettuce-tosser had a perfectly wonderful shouting voice, extremely well-timbred.

"Excepting, you know what?" Blondie snarled, once again on his game. "Maybe I won't bother myself, after all, because if you—oh, oi, you there, yes! I am speaking to you!"

"Well, fuck off," the clerk said. "Don't!"

"If you examine,' the chap enunciated slowly, taking his time to drawl out every word as if the cashier were an imbecile, "and actually care to employ your bloody peepers to look, useless tit, you'll see that was a half-gone lettuce on your shop shelf— an ex-lettuce! Well past the purchase-by date by ages and all black at the heart! And the one next to it and the one next to that! The entire set of lettuces on display, all rotting where they sit! And you were ringing mine up, blast you, despite it! Pretty as you please! The hell, I say. You can't do that!"

"Oh, is that it?" Robert tried gallantly to interrupt the flow but it was hard going. "You're saying this fellow gave you bad head, then?" He poked at the man's heaving ribs with a pointy finger, quite ink stained, and strained to press his lithe body a bit nearer yet. "I'll give you better, I promise. Look here, please? Right here, that's it."

But all Robert's skill with the puppy-dog eyes and the patented Frobisher arse-wriggle made not a jot of difference. This lovely lettuce-bowling blighter was a staunchly single-minded one, one might even say 'thick'. He only shouted louder at the clerk, rolling his eyes in outrage and glaring down his Norman nose.

"Head, I said. Give you head, man! Hey!"

"And you? You have the gall to ask me why, to question my flinging of your bloody rubbish? You fool! It's a metaphor, is what!" The lab-coated man exclaimed, completely missing Robert's rude winking and the meaningful nudge that accompanied it. "It means my entire life's gone to shit, is what. My career and my work and—and even the bloody veg hates me! You probably hate me, my superiors definitely hate me, my subordinates posi-fucking-tively despise me—and now even bloody Tesco's itself hates me, to offer up a piss-poor lettuce like that to a customer! How dare you? How dare any of you, is what I want to know? It's—it's unforgiveable!"

The fellow abruptly darted forward, following after the cashier and dragging Robert along willy-nilly, unheeding. He pointed an accusing finger and snarled at the gawping employee.

"But you work here, don't you? Then you must understand they're all rotters, every single blasted one of them, and it was just simply too much, too much to bear, today. It's the Machine, I say to you." Somehow, Robert thought, the man had managed to capitalize the 'M'. He sighed happily, basking a bit. "The Machine in full force, drilling down on all of us, eating up our very souls with stupidity and rot, and then me? Me, you ask? All I wanted was my bloody sandwich! With lettuce on it!"

"No, stop!"

The gone-off lettuce wasn't the only thing gone right the fuck off; Robert had had quite enough of being ignored by this bloke. 'This bloke' was by no means a poor looker, even red-rimmed about the eyes, pale and drawn, and glaring squinty-eyed at all and sundry—well, excepting Robert. Insulting, it was, and very rude. Robert considered himself by no means a shabby specimen, either, what with the ebon' curls the girls tousled and the trim, tight arse the boys fondled, oh, so very often lately at uni.

But still? Still, and relentlessly, the lettuce-bowler was brambling on, practically foaming at the mouth. Made him difficult to hold onto, but hold onto him Robert did.

"Could you—would you, please just—"

"Is that too much to ask? Is it? It was tomato! Tomato requires lettuce." The man drew himself up to his fullest height and stomped down a heel. Robert nimbly hopped aside, ducking. The clerk flinched, his mouth completely agape. "It is logical, it is proper. Which you and your bleeding company could both care less about, obviously. Fine, right, that's it. It, I say! The hell with you, you stinker! The hell with your rubbishing lettuces! I'm leaving!"

It was, finally, the last straw. Or lettuce leaf—whatever!

"Oh, no, you don't!" Robert growled deep in his narrow chest and lunged for the fellow's face with both hands, letting slip the man's arm in his haste. "That's quite enough! Tomato or no tomato, lettuce or no lettuce, look at me, will you? I'm asking you a question! I've been asking, is more like! No, more like a million questions and never mind your bloody salad! You say they're rotters, but why? Who are they; what have they done to you, to set you off like that? Why did you—I mean, it's wonderful, it's exactly what you should do when it's all gone wonky, life with a capital 'L' I mean, but I cannot believe—I've never met—and I need know why—tell me straight away—and come away with me immediately, if you please. I want to know you." He got his nose so near the stranger's face, the other nearly went cross-eyed at him, goggling. "Carnally. And we can't do that here."

"What—what? Who are you? Where did you come from?"

Now it was the strange blond bloke who was become the shocked and startled one, and Robert turned the raver. Not that Robert minded; he was accustomed. Very much so; it was part of his strange charm, They all said.

"Get off me!" The lettuce bowler was distinctly uncharmed and quite, quite startled. He jumped and twisted about and very nearly bolted. "Let go of my face, you—you! You freak!"

"Not 'freak', Robert. Robert Frobisher, at your service." Robert essayed a half-bow, a difficult maneuver indeed when clutching frantically at a chap's stubbled jowls and pressing up close against him, almost close enough for a snog. "Composer, dilettante, lifelong student. And you, youre some sort of scientist? Well! The pleasure is all mine." Robert grinned and pressed closer. The pleasure was indeed all his; he was half-erect already."And can be yours too, love, if you'll but shut up enough to listen."

"Oi? OI?" the divine mad man gargled. "P-Pleasure?"

"Oh, yes, please," Robert purred. "You're more than a mad bit fanciable, mate."

They were, Robert delighted, well off to a good start. They were, however, and Robert lamented this heartily, doomed to be interrupted.

"Agh! So, don't pay for it and bloody good riddance, then!" The angered clerk threw up his own arms and trotted back to the register, taking a stand behind it as if defending a last battlement. "Now you're both gone all freaky, standing there as if you own the place and shamelessly going at one another in my shop, you fucking homos! Take yourselves off, I tell you, the two of you; get out this minute! And never come back here again or I'll call the police down on you, straight away, for indecency—and don't think I won't!"

"Indec—oi, what do you mean when you say indecency?" the Norman knight of the greens spun about, appalled. "What's on with you?"

"Leave here? You said to leave here? Gladly!" Robert shouted, momentarily diverted from the delightful fellow he'd captured. By rampant nit-witticism, nothing more; oh, and the narrow-minded comments of the bigoted. People—most people, according to Robert—were so blindingly thick, though. They deserved a set-down, and he was more than glad to hand one out, as needed. "With alacrity, even! Just make certain you dispose of the rest of that lettuce, will you? Bin it! Did you hear this man? What he said? S'truth! He's wearing a lab coat, can't you see? He's a scientist, twat-for-brains, and he must know a good deal more about decomposition that you do, or me. Excepting your brain cells, maybe," he sneered for good measure. "They're clearly decayed. Stupid."

"Well!" the cashier staggered back, though his finger hovered dangerously above what was clearly some sort of Panic button, built into the counter. "The nerve of you! Some people!"

"No, no, wait! Never mind you." The stranger spared nary a glare at the cashier. He swiveled his burning gaze to Robert. "Look, hey, who are you? Why are you propositioning me in a Tesco's?"

"A friend?" Robert offered up hopefully. "A partner? Your ill-fated lover, in another world, maybe? Let's be off and sort it, shall we? I've been waiting on you, this age."

"Nonsense! What rubbish!" The blond one was not to be deflected, not now he'd been awoken to Robert's existence on the planet. He wrenched his gorgeous body fully away and stumbled back a step, leaving Robert no other option but to swiftly take up his elbow again.

"Oh, no, you don't," Robert told him calmly. "Not now I've had my hands on you. Not so easy-easy, baby."

"Get off me! WHY? Why are you doing this? And where even did you spring from? There was no one here when I walked in; I just wanted the lettuce." Rather forlornly he regarded Robert's quicksilver fingers, again very much attached. He jerked away, or tried to. "I say, and I'm asking you nicely this time. Could you—would you—leave go of me, please? Go away now—shoo, you weirdo!"

"Away? Me? Oh, no!"

That was not possible, was never going to happen.

"That is so very impossible. It is not even to be considered. Now, listen here."

Robert scowled at the fellow, setting his jaw with a grand determination and pursing his lips. Once found out, and once miraculously dug up out of the dinky little Express on East Street of all places, a bloody-minded lettuce-tosser of this calibre could never be so easily discarded. What a catch he was sure to prove, Robert was convinced…and already so greatly superior to the kids at uni, based on looks alone. Incensed, the fellow was hotter than hot. Robert couldn't wait to see what he'd look like when properly aroused.

It was time to take a stand. Many stands. Accordingly, he danced about his prize-amongst-men, and told him flat out what he had on his mind.

"Oh, no. No, no, no!" Robert exclaimed fiercely. "You wanted a tomato sandwich, didn't you? With lettuce on it, right? Or p'raps just the lettuce will do you for now; who knows what's going through that head of yours? I mean, I don't, but then just look at you," Robert insisted, gesturing lightly. "You don't seem as if you've slept a wink in weeks, man. You're exhausted, you're off your nut and to top all that you're hungry. Well then, come on along, then. With me. I'll scrounge up what you need: your lettuce, or your sandwich, or your whatever it is. You can have it, have it all. I'll even spring for it; I've credit somewhere still, I'm sure, though I'm completely foundered at the moment, not a penny left till next quarter—my father's an arse like that—but you'll have to promise to explain what this is all about, all right? These rotters you speak of, and their filthy cores. I need to know. What's rotten; what is it? What's got you so bloody miserable? Because I'll fix it, if I can. You can count on that, you know. I may be a little unreliable at times, but I do very much like you."

Robert took a firmer grip and yanked at the man's arm in a meaningful manner, nodding his head toward the exit.

"L-Like me?" the stranger repeated, rather helplessly. He blinked gratefully when Robert came to a standstill and peered up at him. "Like me how, exactly?"

"Like as in want to shag, obviously. Well? What are you dragging your feet for?" Robert replied tersely. "I've made you my offer. Take me up on it; it'll be perfect."

"What the fu—a'hem! No, no! What the hell do you think you're about? I am certainly not going with you; why would I? I don't even know you from Adam! Now, please leave me go! I've!" The fellow dug in his heels and resisted mightily. "I've asked of you nicely, so please. Leave me alone! The last thing I need today is some loony accosting me! I've got work yet—"

"No." Robert blinked up at him, meeting the man's bleary gaze dead-on and directly. "No, don't you see I can't? Can. Not. Will not, shall not, there is no further argument to be had here; it's settled. I am not mental, at least not so much, and you are not alone at all, I am with you. Very much with you, actually. And we'll be off and face up to whatever is buggering your life over together. Now, come with me and I'll buy you a lettuce you'll like, or maybe even something better—but come. I find I cannot bear it here a second longer. It reeks of rotting veg."

"But I—but, I?" The blond man gulped, his jaw dropping just a smidge. "You—I—huh? Just…just like that? How can I, just like that?"

"Yes. Yes! You can do anything, love, and especially with me. I'm all yours, got it? Now, please. Please?"

"And?"

"And?" prompted Robert. "Go on."

"What's the bloody catch? You swear you're not mental? Not recently escaped from anywhere? Anywhere like, um, maybe…maybe a nearby institution? A hospital? And you're saying, you're saying to me, to my face"—he seemed utterly floored by Robert's quick nod—"you just want to, er, ah…you just want to help me? To feed me? To—to shag me? Me, in particular?"

"Yes," Robert replied, as calm and as serious as he could possibly be given the circumstances. "You've nailed it; got it in one, good on you. That's all it is—completely harmless. Lettuces, shagging, and anything else you can think of, along the way. Only but think of me as just a Good Samaritan, all right? I come to you bearing promises of proper salad materials, which I will fulfill. Er, eventually. You may have to buy one yourself on the way to my flat, but not here, obviously. Here is not the place. Here has failed you totally, least in that department."

"Oh, that's it, that's it!" the forgotten cashier howled. "It's as bad as the telly. Out with you." He bustled around the counter and grasped the barmy blond's earlobe, bodily thrusting them both out the exit, as Robert hadn't left hold once of his brand new friend. "I've had quite enough of you chaps! Out you go, off with you! Take it somewhere else, please. We're closed now. Don't come back later, either."

He slapped a 'Closed' sign on the entry and retreated back into his lair, firmly locking the doors behind him.

"Ahhh," Robert breathed, shutting his eyelids in brief delight. "Alone at last!"

It was a lovely late morning, and Robert could've sworn he heard the larks sing as he lifted his lashes and gazed up dreamily into his lettuce-tosser's earnest eyeballs. A ridiculous notion, but there it was.

"You're insane," he was informed. "Utterly off your head."

"Yes. No!" Robert insisted. ""I'm Robert, and I don't know your name but I think I love you. In fact, I know I love you. Can we please go now?"

It was then, finally. A bolt of lightning, a mystical tsunami wave of realization, what struck him. There and then occurred the singular moment in which one Robert Frobisher, sometime small-time composer and general reprobate uni student, became aware he was not merely confined to himself, sum toto. No, there was no more of that old worn-out concept of singularity left within him.

"I meant it, see?" Robert went on, rather desperately, when the man only stared at him, not moving, frozen in place. "I love you. I believe I've always loved you. And here you are, finally. It's a bit like Fate, isn't it?"

'Selfish' had fled away, gone away, gone, never to return again, Robert realized, and this was new. Brand new and shiny-bright, and he desperately wanted it. It was…was something else, was what was burgeoning in his gut, his chest, his nether regions. Something new, that was it, nearly indefinable. Or something so old Robert boggled, blinking slowly. But not that ancient, either, he thought. Not when the reversed Fool signaled Transformation—so that irritating girl Lydia always prattled on over—and literally everything was always dying, all the time; was always changing.

"And…and it's a bit like death when you don't agree immediately, you know that? It's hurtful. I'm hurt."

Robert poked the man gently on the breastbone. It was beautiful well made and warm beneath the lab coat.

"Please. You're killing me, by not coming with. You should come. I'll find you lettuces, lovely ones."

It was exactly like death, Robert was bloody well certain. It was the air in his lungs stretched too thin and he, standing stark and exposed, hung up on the 'other' and the 'other' was neither his old self nor what he created out of the fabric of the old him, the one who existed—barely—before meeting Mister Lettuce Bowler.

It is new, it is different, Robert thought. And my life hangs on the bitter edge of someone else's borders; I can almost hear the mournful wail.

In that moment, Robert realized he'd become dependent, all at once: an adjunct person. 'A bad egg', Lydia had said that last time, storming out. He'd not minded it, then.

"Look, I'll go down on my knees, right here, right now."

But maybe not such a bad egg? Robert knew he was Special. Unique. He'd been told often enough.

"Anything you like. I'm not a bad bloke," he went on, dropping his gaze and blinking fast as he regarded the man's rumpled trousers. "I know I'd do anything to know you better than I do now. Anything you like."

Not. Not…quite so much an evil genius, as Hillary had claimed, just peculiar. Peculiar, his mate Ian had said once, in a way that was beguiling.

"And I'm not truly mental. I'm only—they say I'm creative, at Caius." He raised his chin, daring to look up and up, fixated on the man's mouth, and the beautiful way his lips were curling up, just a little, at each corner. "A genius. They're right; I am. I'll write a song for you, one day. I promise."

Excepting…the splintered silence was terrifying, rather. Robert blinked up at his grand discovery, his life-changer—the instrument of his regeneration, and licked his suddenly dried-out lips.

"I said 'please', didn't I? I'm sure I did, just now, so please, again? I am begging you, do come with. Don't go. Don't leave me, not now."

"Oh—oh, god."

Fractional, it was. The moment. Not even a metaphorical ginger cunt-hair wide in breadth, not even the space of a full breath, not even the time it required to hear a single note of music, or but it panged in Robert's chest something awful, the feeling.

"Because who?"

"Who?" the man echoed, light eyebrows gathering into a frown. "What, what? Who'd'you mean, 'who'?"

"Who?" Robert demanded, growing more frantic by the instant. "You!"

"I—I!"

There were stars busied with exploding, and so was Robert's head.

"WHO!" he roared, wrenching the blond bloke nearer, by dint of flinging his arms about his kneecaps. "Are you?" he asked of the rumpled trousers pressed against his forehead. "I must know, I must! How have you even done this to me? I can't understand it—and you don't care, do you? You don't even give one single fuck, do you?"

"A…f-fuck?" the man yelped. "For you? I've never seen you before, not in all my life!"

This wasn't going well at all; Robert was well aware he couldn't afford that. The urgency, the need. It wasn't usual, and it wasn't going to simply pass off, like the fevers he'd been plagued with constantly as a child. But nothing was, in Robert's life; more the opposite.

"Yes, a fuck! And that doesn't matter, if you've seen me before—you're seeing me now, aren't you? Just explain, explain to me, please. Who. Are. You? Why do you throw lettuces and what else will you throw, if you could? Will you throw me, if I ask you to? Out the window, off the eaves? Or will you keep me? Will you shag me, if I want you to? I need to know!"

"You...you do? H-Honestly? B-But…but."

For Robert, it was as if the universe itself were gaping, cracked apart, and only this one bloke might save it from shattering—and Robert along with—and if he didn't, if he didn't dare take that step forward, bridge that gap with those long, long legs of his, then well! Well, then. There'd be the ruination of Robert, then, and mayhap worse.

"…Oh."

Saved! Just with that one word, and it was barely even a real word, more of a sound, a sigh. Just a parting of lips over the ghost of a breath and then the licking of those especial lips right after; the man may've even bitten down on his lower one. There was an indent after, Robert saw it; the moistened pink turned to white. Saw it and wanted it, and wanted to bite down, all of himself, till there was blood maybe—and they shared it. But that was the future, that might never be. And this was Now, in Cambridge, in a pesky little Tesco's. And? And? But that sound! It was—and Robert would swear evermore and after, all the years after—that sound was the particular one which saved him: Sixsmith's 'Oh'.

"I see, now."

Robert didn't know the man was named Sixsmith, then. That came after, and nearly twenty four hours into their acquaintance. A bit of a weird footnote, that knowledge, but then Robert was accustomed to notation, writ subscript, so it was all right. It really was.

"Oh. Ah. Yo0u're one of those…those students, aren't you? The arty ones?"

A person might practically hear the gas being lit, the light dawning, the abrupt understanding in the man's voice: he'd gone and twigged it, the intrepid lettuce-tosser. Robert couldn't restrain himself; he punched at the air, leaping up.

"Yes!" he shouted, and nearly clocked the delightful fellow with his fist before he hurtled himself at him, full force. "You darling!"

"Hey!" They staggered back, the man taking Robert in his arms in the flurry. "Watch where you're going!"

"Oh—sorry, sorry! And musical, actually. I'm a composer."

"It's all right."

'Oh.'

What a truly marvellous noise, and exactly what was called for. The universe fell back together with a satisfying 'crack!' Inaudible to most people, naturally, but to Robert—or the other ones with ears. Not that there were many of those sort, but every now and again…except enough of that nonsense, thinking of others when one had this brand new chap to think of! Robert was through with that miserable tangent and through as well with cluttering up his head with Ian and Lydia and Hillary. They could all go hang themselves if they wanted to, or maybe take a long leap down a cliff. There were far more important considerations to consider and one was the carrying away of this bloke on the double.

"But," Robert chattered on, insistent. "What have I been telling you, all this time; do you even hear me? Listen! Just please. Come, please—straight away, out of here. No time to lose!"

"Oh, well." The man shrugged, all at once amiable. "If you insist."

Robert exulted.

"I do, I do!"

Oh, but the biting of the lip and the sweep of razored blond hair, fringing down, sweeping across his stranger's eyelashes as he bent his head down to regard Robert. And so good to watch, to observe, to dwell fondly over, as if the man were a prized painting, a grand composition, a work of art, walking. So unutterably good. Best thing—best thing ever!

"I suppose…"

Calm, cool and quiet, and Robert caught his breath and held it, fascinated. Here was the real man emerging at last, serene and come to his senses clearly, but still nodding down at Robert courteously enough and going along placidly as Robert finally dragged him off, down the East Street, nimbly dodging the oblivious passersby as they went and allowing Robert to take all the liberties he fancied as they went.

Kisses, little kisses to neck and wrist and pats of collar and lapel; that was the tender Robert applied to his captive audience as they walked. Made a spectacle of them both he was sure, and didn't give flying frigging fuck over it. Nor did his new acquisition, the lettuce-tosser, who took it all in stride—literally. Which was precisely the sort of madness Robert most admired, really. The courteous sort, of course, but passionate, all the same.

"That I may," the man went on tentatively, not appearing to mind fond molestation as they walked, gradually increasing their pace as the crowds thinned and Robert's flat grew nearer. "Are you sure, though? About…about the lettuce?"

"I am, absolutely," Robert shot back, all a'bubble. "Go faster! My flat's right around the corner. And I want to fuck you, oh so much. Or you to fuck me—or we can maybe—"

Passion, it was. What everything was all about, in the end. Passion.

"Did you just hear that? My stomach rumbled. " The man, however, seemed to have not fully comprehended Robert's assertion about the wished-for shagging. He was yet back on the subject of luncheon. Or selectively deaf…or possibly shy?

"I am a little hungry—no, actually, very hungry," he mused, as Robert tucked their hands into a tight clasp. He instantly swung it, merrily, turning to glance over at Robert. "And maybe a little parched, and tea—tea would be—"

"Fuck the lettuce."

Robert was adamant; Robert was quite of the strong opinion the two of them had better things to think of, to speak of—to do!

"Fuck the tea." He turned his chin up jauntily and tossed his flopping hair back out his eyes from where the breeze had pushed it. He'd not let go of the fellow for a second. "Something stronger, I think. To start."

"Eh?"

"Let's say…let's say, oh—ah!" Robert beamed at his lovely unnamed fellow. "Melty chocs? I have those, I think. I can smear chocs on your cock, love. And then swallow you down, all one big gulp. It'll be exquisite. Better than lettuce."

"Heh?!"

"Passion, babe," Robert crooned, nodding vigorously, and dragging his pash-of-a-lifetime right up the grubby stairs to his flat. He kicked the door open; it was never locked anyway. "Let's go define it, yes?"