“It’s not the book!” Nick shouted, apparently having lost what little control he’d had left. “Christ, it doesn’t have anything to
do
with the book!”
“Then what is it?” John yelled back, tossing the book on the table. Raising his voice after what felt like weeks of being quiet in case he disturbed Nick, was a huge relief. “Because you’re damned well not the same as you were this time last year, I know that much!”
Nick went quiet then, wrapping his arms around himself. “I know. You’re right. But I can’t -- I just can’t.”
“Can’t what? Christ, Nick; I want to help if I can. But give me something to do that isn’t just keeping my distance from you, because that’s the one thing I have trouble with.” He took a single step toward Nick and then stopped. “And it’s all you want from me, seemingly,” he said flatly, reading no welcome in Nick’s face.
Nick brought a hand up and covered his face, taking a shaky breath. “It’s not that. I just…I need some space, I guess.” He looked at John, clearly upset.
After staring at him for a long moment, John nodded and turned away. “Then I’ll give you what you want.”
He grabbed his coat from where he’d left it just a few hours earlier, and left the house. He didn’t bother to look through the kitchen window to see what Nick was doing.
He’d be sitting at the table, writing.
* * * * *
Nick managed to keep it together until John left, but it wasn’t easy. It had been getting harder and harder, actually, and from John’s outburst it was obvious that he wasn’t being fooled.
When the car had gone, Nick sat down at the table, shaking. More than anything he wanted John to come back, to put his arms around him and hold him, but he couldn’t have that, so he needed to focus. Focus on what he’d been doing whenever John wasn’t in the house.
The laptop was sleeping, but at least today he had an Internet connection, even if it was so slow that sometimes he wanted to scream. It was one of the first things to go when the weather was bad, and the lack of it had put him in a shitty mood on more than one occasion. And of course there was no one to take his moods out on but John, who didn’t deserve it, so Nick had been doing what he could to keep his distance. Obviously, it hadn’t been enough.
Or maybe it had been too much.
Steeling himself, Nick opened a browser window and started searching the news.
Chapter Two
John pushed open the pub door and headed for the bar. A pint, yes, because he couldn’t stand there swilling Coke like a wee kid, but he wanted something to eat more than anything. Something hot that he hadn’t had to cook himself. The sandwich he’d eaten just wasn’t enough if he was going to go out on the sea.
It was early and the bar surface gleamed, still wet from the cursory mopping Geordie, the landlord, had given it. He glanced up as John approached, his eyebrows lifting in surprise.
“What, you again? Shall I set you a bed up in the corner, then?”
“No,” John said shortly. “I just want something to eat.”
“Well, Mary’s cooking up some lovely steak and kidney pies, but they won’t be ready for another twenty minutes.”
John picked up a menu from the bar and stabbed his finger at it. “It says here that hot food is served daily from noon. It’s --”
“Eleven fifty-eight by my watch. So you’ll have to stay hungry for another two minutes. Unless you want to share my packet of crisps?” A hand came from the left to rest on John’s shoulder for a moment, an opened bag of crisps landing on the bar, its contents spilling out onto the wood.
Geordie smiled sourly and placed a pint in front of John. “He’d probably sooner have this.”
John ignored him, turning to stare at the man beside him and then frowning as he tried to put a name to the smiling face. “Andy --?”
“
“Well, I can see that.” John couldn’t stop the answering smile from spreading across his face. “What the hell are you doing back here? Thought you were like the midges, and only came to annoy us in the summer.”
“Are you always this welcoming to people who’re willing to share their food?” Andy grinned and sat down on the stool next to where John was standing. “Here, have some crisps and tell me what you’ve been up to in the past year and a half.”
Geordie accepted the coins John shoved across at him, and rolled his eyes. “You’re looking at a changed man.”
“No, he’s looking at a hungry one,” John said, scowling. “Will you put my order in, or should I yell and hope Mary hears me?”
“I’ll tell her to hurry,” Geordie said. “That way I’ll see the back of you sooner.”
Honors even, he moved away, leaving John and Andy in peace.
“I don’t remember you having such a short temper,” Andy said, but it didn’t sound like a reproach. “Here, I’ve a table over near the window -- come sit and keep me company. Unless you’ve a mind to bite my head off for the slightest thing?”
Andy looked the same as he had the last time John had seen him, for all that more than two years had passed. The lad was a good six or seven years John’s junior, but he’d always had a world-wise air about him, and that hadn’t changed any more than his physical appearance had. As they sat down at the table, Andy picked up his own pint, half empty, and raised the glass to John before taking a sip.
“I’ll try not to bite any of you,” John said, half regretting his choice of words when Andy’s eyes lit up with speculative amusement. Andy had made it fairly clear on his earlier visit that he’d have been happy to do more than flirt with John, but back then John had been resolute about keeping the fact that he was gay a secret. Andy on the mainland would’ve been more than tempting; on the island he’d been off limits.
It’d taken Nick to change that, but John really didn’t want to think about Nick right then. Smiling into Andy’s brown eyes, a shade darker than his thick, straight hair, he returned the toast. “Here’s to good weather for your visit. What do you have planned?”
“Oh, you know.” Andy shrugged as if he really didn’t know. “I mostly just wanted to get away for a week. Life’s been pretty hectic.” He leaned back in his chair, watching John with interest. They were about the same height -- John had remembered that from before -- but Andy was more solid, muscled, and the T-shirt he was wearing underneath his open leather jacket was pulled tight across his chest to emphasize the fact. “I was actually hoping I could get someone to take me out fishing, but I haven’t had a chance to ask around and see who’s doing that these days. But what about you?” Andy looked at him shrewdly. “What have you been up to? If you don’t tell me -- even just a story, because it’s not as if I’ll know the difference, will I? -- I might get suspicious. Think that you’re hiding something.”
Andy had always been disarmingly frank, John reflected, making up his mind how much to tell him. “You could say that the story is that I’m not hiding anything these days.” Andy made an encouraging noise and John settled back in his chair. “A year last May, I met someone and we…well, I’m living with him now, here on the island, in what used to be his uncle’s house. His name’s Nick; he’s an American.”
And he sees ghosts, had me falling in love with him in under a week, and I’m losing him
, John finished silently, feeling a sting of regret as he remembered how it had been for him and Nick. “So…no more hiding.”
“But something’s not right.” Andy finished his pint and wiped his upper lip. John lifted an eyebrow at him in a question. “You’re not talking like someone who’s happy where he is. Go on, then. Tell me I’m wrong.” He said it as if he knew he were right, but not as if he got any pleasure from being so. He shifted forward in his chair, leaning against the table, watching John’s face.
“Things change.” John took a sip of his beer, not really wanting it. “People change. It’s nothing we can’t sort out. He’s just working a wee bit much these days, that’s all.” Even he found that unconvincing, but he didn’t know Andy well enough to spill his heart to. It’d been hard enough with Michael.
Andy just nodded. “I’m still sorry. Things aren’t always easy, are they? It’s a shame.” He looked regretfully into his empty glass. “Good to have everything out in the open, though. It must be an easier life in some ways.”
“I wouldn’t have agreed with you at the time,” John said dryly. “And it’s not all that much better now. My mother damn near disowned me, the minister still crosses the street when he sees me coming, and if you find yourself in the gents after I’ve bought you a refill, well, there’s usually something written on the walls about me. Geordie cleans it off, but he might as well save himself the bother.” He shrugged. “But, aye. It was worth it.” He’d never doubted that. Worth it to be able to live with Nick, openly. Worth it to wake beside him in the night, with the breeze carrying the salt-scent of the sea through the window to where they lay. Worth it to walk through the town with Nick’s arm slung casually around his shoulders.
No regrets that he’d shattered the image of himself that the island had accepted for thirty years in a single, crowded week. None.
“And this Nick, he’s working now?” Andy asked. John nodded, and he went on, “I’ll offer you a proposition then. I’d very much like to buy you lunch -- no, don’t answer until you’ve heard me out -- as a way of thanking you for taking me out fishing. For old times’ sake.” Not that there were any old times to relive, as John and Andy barely knew each other and this afternoon’s conversation far eclipsed all the conversations they’d had in the past when totaled together. “Please,” Andy added. “I’m feeling a need to get out on the water, and I’d much rather go with you than a stranger. I’ll behave myself, I promise. No falling overboard and I’ll take the fish off my own hooks.”
“There won’t be much out there,” John warned him. “I was planning to go out myself, just for a while, but I can’t promise you’ll catch anything.” Andy shrugged, clearly not too disturbed by the idea, and John tapped his finger against the side of his glass, thinking aloud. “We could go over to Creeth; that wee island off to the west? There’s a bay there where my dad once caught a salmon that damn near broke his rod, as well as his line. That storm might have brought the fish into the shallower water; we could try it, anyway.”
“I’m not much of a fisherman in any case.” Andy looked toward the bar, where Geordie was pulling pints for a few of the locals that had just come in; Geordie caught his eye and nodded. “Steak and kidney pie, then? Sounds like just what we need in this weather.”
“Aye, it does,” John agreed, and sat back as Andy got up and went to the bar, ordering and paying for their lunches.
He came back soon, tucking his change into his pocket and bringing another pint with him. “I’m happy to buy you another, but it doesn’t look as if you’re certain you even want that one,” Andy said, nodding at John’s mostly full glass. “It’s not mad, wanting to go out fishing at this time of year?”
“I had more than I should last night,” John told him. “And if we’re going out, I’d rather be sober. It’s turned out nice, but the sea’s not all that forgiving to someone not paying attention. And the water’s a bit cold to be swimming in.”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me to,” Andy promised. His expression was bland enough that it was difficult to tell if he was being suggestive; John chose to believe that the comment had been innocent enough. Andy frowned. “You’ve not been put off it? Since your Da died?”
John shook his head. “The sea’s too much part of my life for me to turn my back on it. My father had friends, aye, and a cousin, who drowned, and it never stopped him.” He didn’t tell Andy, but out on the boat was where he thought about his father the most; remembering past fishing trips they’d taken, with nostalgia rather than grief the uppermost emotion.
And that was something else he had to thank Nick for. He’d had the chance to say goodbye to his father properly; take one last look at him as he’d been in life.
Their food arrived, steaming gently and smelling wonderful. John dug in, enjoying Andy’s talk, lighthearted and centered mostly around Andy’s work as an engineer. He took jobs in far off places John had only vaguely heard of, working flat out for weeks at a time, before scooping up a hefty paycheck and then taking a long break.
His last job had been to help build a suspension bridge in the Austrian Alps, working to finish before the onset of winter, and his bonus from an early completion had allowed him to take a few months off work.
“Been just mooching around,” Andy said, mopping up the last of his gravy with a piece of bread. “
“Well, if it’s peace you wanted, you’ll find it out on the water.” John finished his drink and nodded at the door. “Want to go?”
“Do you need to let Niall know where you are?”
“Nick,” John said shortly. There was something just a little knowing in Andy’s eyes. “And, no. I told him I was taking the boat out.”
“But you didn’t know you’d have company.” Andy grinned at him and winked. “Guess we both got lucky.”
“Don’t count on catching anything.” John stared at Andy until he was sure the man had got the message. “Right. Let’s be off.”
* * * * *
Nick didn’t realize that it had grown dark outside until his head started to ache from the strain of reading in poor light. Sighing, he saved his file and closed the laptop, rubbing his eyes.
He’d spent the day doing research of various kinds and trying to sleep, something that he’d been avoiding because he was never sure when John would be home and another thing he’d been trying to avoid was too many questions that he didn’t have the answers to. Progress on his book was slow mostly because so much of his time was spent on other things, although he hadn’t been lying to John when he’d told him that writing was surprisingly fulfilling. For the past few weeks it had been the only thing keeping him going, really. The only thing that he had any control over, the only thing he was any good at.