Simon
There are tables and chairs out in front, but Baz and I end up drinking our tea sitting beside one another on the floor. We're in the cozy not-quite-a-nook where Ebb has set up her tea things and her generous stock of paper towels.
My hand feels warm in Baz's cool one. I feel good. Even the butterflies feel safe enough to have gone to sleep, leaving me calm. I let myself savor the simple experience of sitting on the floor beside Baz, watching him drink his tea. (Which he takes with three sugars and plenty of cream. Which is even funnier than his flossing.)
I turn my head so I can see him better. He looks almost soft. His hand curves to hold the round cup. His neck curves as he leans his head back slightly to rest on the wall behind us. He looks pale, and tired. But not ragged, not sharp, not broken. He catches me looking at him and smiles. He smiles. He doesn't smirk. I've seen him without clothes, but I've never seen him naked like this.
He runs his thumb in circles over my palm. I shiver. Then I blush. Then I smile. We sit there smiling at each other in the soft quiet. I don't know how long we sit here like this. I feel the fabric of my life expand and shift around me. This is a stable point. A moment of perfect balance.
His smile tugs at my mind and I think of the picture in Ebb's album. Where he's glowing with the easy joy of a small child who knows he's loved.
I have to show it to him. The album. If I don't show it to him now, it'll transform. It will become a secret I never intended to keep. It will be something I can't ever show him, because I should've already shown it to him.
Baz
"There's. Um. Something you need to. Something I need to. To show you," says Simon awkwardly, as he stands. I already miss the soothing warmth of his body beside mine. But I watch with patient curiosity as he walks to Ebb's desk and lifts up a book.
I can't suppress a warm sigh as he settles back down beside me. I lean into his warmth, and he smiles a small smile and kisses a small kiss just above my eyes.
He forgives me. He loves me.
I tilt my head, shift my chin, touch my lips to his. He runs his tongue along my bottom lip, which he's taken slightly into his mouth. I let my lips part, I breathe. And we kiss. It feels different from when we first kissed. Better. Up until this moment, I would've denied anything could ever be better than that moment. But it is. It feels certain. It's like something's been decided, and now there's no doubt. We get to do this. To have this.
He pulls away slowly. There's something in his eyes I can't read. He pushes something into my hands. It's the book he'd stood up to get. It was only seconds ago, but the kiss erased everything else and I'd already forgotten all about it.
"What is it?" I ask.
"It's a photo album. Ebb's album. She showed it to me after you came by to order the. Um. Muffins?" His voice stumbles a bit on the last few words, and I look up from the book. He's avoiding my gaze.
I've destroyed the memory of the moment he opened my gift. A moment of openness and joy and love. I told him later that I didn't want him. I distorted what had been beautiful and made it ugly. He may forgive me, and it might all turn out ok. But I can't unbreak what I've already broken.
I stole his pleasure in believing he was loved, his comfort in knowing he was wanted. He has nothing and I stole it from him anyway. Because I break everything. I want to say this but I can't. I've run out of words. And I've run out of strength.
I kiss him instead.
He meets my eyes again, kissing me back. But only for a moment. He places his hands on mine, over the book. We open it together.
The first few pages are filled with the young smiling faces of people I don't know. I flip through those pictures quickly. Then there's one of Ebb and a boy who looks exactly like her. I turn a few more pages, wondering why on earth Simon thinks I need to see this. And then my fingers freeze along the edge of the old fashioned, plastic-covered sheet of photos. There's Fiona. With. With… Ebb? And her arms around the boy who looks like Ebb.
"Ebb knows Fiona? But how? How did she know her? How did she know me? How could she have known that Fi is my aunt?"
Simon
Baz's voice is filled with wonder, not suspicion. I wish we could just stop here and head home and never find out what lies in the remaining pages of the album.
"Yeah. Ebb knows stuff she really shouldn't know. She's like the spiritual equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. It can get creepy." I rub my hand across the back of my neck. I know it makes me look nervous. But that's ok, because I am nervous. I hear myself say "there's more, Baz." He accepts this, and turns his attention back to the book.
I watch him turn the pages. It's hard to know what's going on in his head. His face gives so little away. Maybe I should give him some privacy? Not watch him look through these? But then how will I know if he needs me? Rationalization or not, I go with the instinct to keep my gaze fixed on him.
Soon he stops turning pages. I peer over his shoulder. There's a picture of Ebb with a beautiful woman. Tall. Pale. Dark. She's not smirking or doing that eyebrow thing in the picture. But she somehow gives the impression that she was doing exactly that, just before the photographer caught her on film.
That has to be Baz's mother. Daphne must be his step mother. I struggle to remember the name Ebb used. I'm pointlessly furious with myself for not paying more attention. Story of my fucking life. It was something Russian sounding. Natalia? Nadya? Natasha. Tasha. That was it.
He's running his finger lightly over the picture, tracing the line of his mother's standing form. "Ebb knew my mother?" he asks, voice just on the edge of hoarse. "Ebb knew my mother. How? What does... oh."
He's turned the page. There's a series of pictures of Natasha and Ebb and Natasha's belly. It's the happiest I've ever seen Ebb look. Natasha is glowing, one hand over the bump and the other around Ebb. Baz is so quiet now that I have to monitor his chest to see if he's still breathing. I reach over and take his hand. He doesn't look at me, but he doesn't pull away, either.
"Natasha- your, um, - she was Ebb's... Ebb came to New York to be near her. I don't remember all the details, just that Ebb loved her. And that she took Ebb in and made her feel. Safe?" I'm probably projecting a little, but I'm also probably not too far off. "She loved you, too, Baz. She knew you when you were little."
I turn the page for him. There's a picture of Ebb holding a very tiny newborn Baz. Tasha stands, looking tired and happy beside her. Ebb is beaming like she'd swallowed a lighthouse. Then there's Baz and a cake with one candle, his hands holding fists of frosting and a look of pure delight on his open face. I put my hand to his face in the picture. Then to his face, his real face, his face in the present. It's wet, and I move closer to him.
My uncertainty has melted. I feel sure of my arms as they slip around him. My chin sits gently on his shoulder. I look with him, at the pictures of himself as a baby. He turns another page, and there are more photos. One of Fiona and Ebb, looking strained. Another with Fiona holding a two-year-old Baz, both of their faces transformed by laughter. A sweet picture of Ebb walking beside Baz, his chubby hand wrapped around her long finger.
Then time is going by quickly in the pictures, skipping straight through birthdays and Christmas. Then pages of other people, people we don't recognize. And then pages and pages and pages of Tasha. Only Tasha. Followed by the edges of pages that were violently ripped out. And then nothing.
I take the book gently out of Baz's shaking hands and wrap myself around him. He stiffens for a moment, then relaxes into me and hides his face in my chest and cries. His crying peels something off from inside me and leaves me raw. I bury my face in his hair and say nothing. There isn't really anything to say. I hate when people try to say something when there's nothing to say. And I'm not great at saying things in the best of circumstances. He doesn't seem to mind my silence. Or maybe he just doesn't notice.
Baz
Simon holds me. He doesn't falsely reassure me, or apologize emptily. (What does it even fucking mean when people say oh, I'm so sorry about your mother? I fucking hate when people say that.) I'm grateful for his warmth and silence.
I haven't done this in a long, long time. Cry. Like this. In loud gasping sobs that break open every time I think they've quieted. I haven't held someone while I cried since I was five. I'm shocked to discover how good it feels to have someone to hold onto, as the sadness rips itself out of me through my nose, forcing its way out of the tiny corners of my eyes.
Eventually I'm just resting against Simon's chest, feeling his fingers in my hair. He wordlessly reaches up and hands me- a roll of paper towels? I burst out laughing. That kind of laughing that happens after you've been crying. The kind that inevitably turns into hiccups.
He smiles, unsure of how to accompany me in this transition between my emotions. He shrugs. It's really quite a versatile gesture. Invaluable for someone who can't trust himself to speak. I can see why he relies on it so much.
"Do I really look that soaked?" I hiccup incredulously. "Paper towels?"
"Ebb cries a lot," he shrugs. "She doesn't believe in tissues." He's still unsure about whether or not he should smile. Then he gives in and laughs, because it's pretty goddamn hilarious.
I pick the photo book back up from the floor beside me where Simon had placed it. I open it again. This time I know what I'll find. I'm prepared for the feelings. Now that the first, primal crush of memories has burned itself out, I'm curious to actually look at the photos themselves.
It's strange to see Fiona so young, open, free. I'm sure she was a sarcastic pain in the ass back then too. But it's obvious in the pictures how different she was, when the razor edge of herself was still buffered by hope. I glimpse my own future, starkly silhouetted against the images. I can see it, and I don't want it. I don't want to be left with nothing but blades and bones.
I slip my hand into Simon's and breathe. For the first time I can imagine that there's another route my fate can follow. With solid softness, with warm steel. With a layer between myself and the pain, one that creates space for peace.
I start pointing out the people and landmarks I know. I show them to Simon. I take him on a two-dimensional tour of the house I grew up in. It's strange to see my bedroom transformed by the running-backward energy of old pictures. I point out the gardens. Mum with her flowers. Mum with me. Mum with her flowers, holding me.
The pictures capture the erosion of their friendship. Pictures of daily life are replaced by pictures of holidays and special occasions. Their love remains intact. Happiness shines through, whenever something transpired that brought them both into the frame of the same lens for a frozen moment.
Then come the pages and pages and pages that testify to Ebb's grief after Mum was gone. The missing pages reflect an inner world being ripped apart. I know that feeling too well. I relive it every night.
We set the album beside us. Simon and I sit together in the floury, fragrant fortress that Ebb built in this cold city. Exhausted. But together. Despite the intensity of seeing those pictures, I feel good. It feels good to share it with him. It feels like a stayed execution. I get another chance. He's giving me another chance. I won't screw it up. I won't ever hurt him again.
I lean into him, gratefully absorbing his endless warmth.
Simon
Baz tells me about each of the pictures, as though introducing me to his family. It's sweet, and chastely intimate. When we get to the last few pages, he falls silent. I stay wrapped around him, and he leans into me, and we sit like that for a while. He seems ok. I wait for him to say something more. To explain it all. He doesn't say anything.
Finally, I ask. "What happened to her?" A tentative whisper.
He twists his neck to look at me in surprise. "She was killed during a break-in. In my bedroom. During the night. I assumed you knew."
I shake my head, taken aback. I hold him tighter. I know it's the least of everything, but I can't stop myself from asking, "why? How could I have known?"
"Well, it's one of the first things that come up when you google me. It was written up a lot, because of. Well, because she was. I mean, our family. So. It was. It became a big story."
He's leaving his sentences half spoken. It makes me feel close to him. I know what if feels like when that's what happens to the words. When they're lined up neatly in your head, but stumble all over each other on their journey through your mouth.
I know how rare it is, for words to elude him this way. And I suspect that I'm the only person he's ever let see him like this. More than anything else he's said and done today, this convinces me that he really means it. He really cares. He wants to try. I want to let him.
"Baz," I say to him. "I've never googled you." Not that I never thought about it. I did. But, that kind of thing. Surveillance, monitoring. It feels really twisted to me. It's a line I never want to cross.
Baz
I snort with disbelief and turn so we're facing one another. "But you followed me around for a year! You got me thrown out of school."
Simon blushes. "It's not the same thing at all!" He protests. I raise my eyebrow, but allow a small smile to play on my lips. I don't actually want to upset him. Not after we've finally reached some sort of peace again. Not ever, really.
"No? Pray tell. How do they differ?"
He laughs in relief at my tone. If possible, he blushes even deeper.
"Following you wasn't. I mean. There's, like, there's a difference. Looking stuff up about someone, so you know things about them. I mean, just to know? Like, surveillance? That creeps me out." He's struggling to find words, and I don't interrupt him. Which I count as a personal victory over my worse instincts.
I'm a little uncomfortable, though. Having done exactly that when I found out he was my roommate. To me, a Google search is patently less invasive than following someone around all the time. But I hold my tongue for once, and listen.
"Following you. It was. I was scared. I was. Worried? I thought you might. I mean, that you could've. You might get hurt or need help or something? I know it's stupid. Because what could I do about even if you did? But it was like, I had to know. I couldn't stand not knowing. If you were ok. I couldn't figure it out. What to do. I thought. I mean, it was stupid. Which I know now. I thought the dean would help. That she'd let me help, that I would be able to help. I was so furious. When she just. When she didn't. When it just. When you just. That wasn't what I thought would happen. Then you weren't there, and I didn't know where you were, or if you were ok, or if I'd made things worse instead of better. I just. And then this fall. This year. I was your. You were my. But you hated me so much. And I still didn't know. Like, if I couldn't see you, maybe something bad could be happening and I'd never know and I would never be able to live with not having done anything just because I didn't know. Fuck. I know this is all so stupid. I understand why you'd hate me, I guess, but I didn't want you to. To hate me. And I couldn't just ask you, because you hated me. And so."
I still don't get it. It makes no sense to me. But his face is so red and splotchy and his fingers are tearing through his hair and this isn't what I want at all. At all, at all. On the other hand, I can't tell him to stop talking. Again. Once a day is probably enough.
So I wrap my arms around him, and his voice quiets and his eyes close. I rub my nose experimentally against his and I smile when his head tilts and his lips open. I feel him relax against me. I can feel the heat receding from his face as his acute embarrassment fades. I can feel a different heat filling him.
Then he looks at me and asks, almost aggressively, "so, you're not mad anymore? You're ok with it?"
"Yes, Simon," I say as lightly as I can. "You can be obsessed with me whenever the fancy strikes you." He grins, just slightly. "So," I add slyly, "now that you've caught me, what are you going to do about it?" His eyes gleam and the world fades as he proceeds to quite thoroughly answer the question.
