Chapter Text
Niall ducks into the barn.
Outside, the wedding keeps going. The wet click of glasses meeting, somebody calling Alby by his full name.
He’s in a barn with shit on the floor and hay dust on his shoes, sweating through a linen shirt that cost more than his first car. He inherited it from Ruben, because Maura never needed a car, but it doesn't fucking matter, okay?! The shirt sticks under his arms, the collar has gone soft from his neck.
There are winter flowers outside because Niall asked for them. In June, white branches, dark berries, ridiculous little sprays tied with silk. He had thought it would be funny, or touching, or haunted in a manageable way. He missed Ruben, wanted to share the event with him, is it wrong?
Alby is out there in his suit. Alby with his careful fucking hands. Alby with the old scar tugging one side of his mouth when he smiles for photographs, Alby who deserves a proper husband who doesn’t vanish into farm buildings with his pulse banging in his arse.
Niall presses his hand to his stomach. It twists again, low and mean. He thinks, stupidly, that people shit themselves when they hang. Everybody knows that if they’ve ever been a nasty boy with access to older boys, or just Rubes, he was well enough by himself.
That makes him smile, actually. Of course he’d still be worrying about manners at the end. Sorry the groom has had an incident in the converted barn, please enjoy the cake, there are vegan options near the back.
He sees the rope.
It hangs from a peg beside the feed bins. It has not arranged itself for him. It is not fucking foreshadowing. It is farm rope. Useful stuff, the kind of thing a men grab without thinking.
Niall walks over and takes it down.
It’s heavier than it looks. Fibres catch at the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He turns it over in his hands, rubs one dirty part with his nail, gets a line of dust under it.
He knows the shape of the thought at once. He has known it for years, only usually it comes at three in the morning or in hotel bathrooms or during applause.
No note.
Maybe notes are not necessary. The fucking book was my note.
The fucking book was my note. Cosmo. The bathroom. The lake. The house with the boy walking towards a door. All those fucking pages dressed up as fiction so Northbank could sell them with a tasteful cover. What else is he meant to write now? Dear Alby, sorry about the wedding. Dear Ruben, you got there first and made me feel late, you absolute fucking cunt.
He loops the rope once around his wrist. His hand looks older like this, with veins up and brown marks.
Outside, somebody says his name.
Niall freezes.
Niall. Niaaaall. One vowel dragged under the door and chewed up by hay.
He breathes through his mouth, one hand on his knee, rope dragging against his trouser leg. The photograph in his pocket presses into his thigh.
Sad old pervert. Wedding suit, wedding ring, but still with one rotten little relic. He gets two fingers under the lip of his pocket and touches the edge of it. The corner has bent because he keeps bringing it places and pretending he doesn’t, interviews, hotels, bookshops, toilets, now his wedding.
He pulls it out.
The print is small and mean-looking in the barn light. Too dark at the edges. A developer streak near Ruben’s shoulder. Niall knows every fault in it better than his own face. The bed, the mess of sheet, the shirt on him too big at the neck, Ruben’s bare shoulder half-turned towards the camera like he’s about to tell it to fuck off. A bad photograph. The best thing in the world.
There you are.
Ruben says it in his head, low and rough and embarrassed by itself.
There I am too.
Niall’s thumb goes over the white border. He can see the room around the picture without needing the picture to show it. Ruben’s camera on the dresser with the strap hanging down. The mug on the sill. The drawer not quite shut. Photos tucked into the mirror frame and Mona still there, bare shoulder turned from the camera.
Mona.
His ribs remember her before he does.
Three days ago on the street, she had seen him through traffic and twenty-six years of not seeing him, and the first punch had caught him in the cheekbone hard enough to flash white behind his eye. The second went into his ribs, then another, then another. Small fists, bare knuckles, a wedding ring on one hand. Her bag slid down her arm. A cyclist put one foot on the road and stared. A woman lifted her phone, then lowered it, then lifted it again.
Niall had not lifted his hands. He had stood there in his good coat, a grown man with a famous face and Ruben’s photograph in his inside pocket, letting Mona drive her fists into whatever part of him she could reach.
"We were meant to have a secret wedding on that fucking Christmas," she had screamed. "Do you know that? Do you fucking know that?"
"Mona—"
"No. No, don't you Mona me, you piece of shit. He told me. Christmas. Secret. Just us. Then you came back from fucking Oxford and three nights after he was fucking dead."
Her fist hit his mouth badly, more teeth than skin, and pain ran bright up his nose.
"And the note," she said. "Not one fucking word for me. Not one! I was his girlfriend and there was nothing! All of it was you! You, you, you! This fucking thing! Niall Kennedy!"
Someone behind her had said, "Miss, that's enough."
Mona turned on them so fast they stepped back.
"His mother tried to kill herself after," she shouted, and turned back on Niall. "Did you know that?! Course you did. Course everyone told you, poor Niall, poor clever fucking Niall! She lay there brain dead and then she died too! And what did you fucking lose? Oxford?!"
Niall could not get air properly.
"I fucking loved him," Mona said.
Not shouted that time.
"I loved him! I loved him and he's three metres under the ground and the note's got all this touching and kissing in it. What the fuck was that about?!" Her face twisted. Snot at her mouth. Mascara under one eye, old and grey. "You were brothers!"
His jaw clicked shut.
Brothers.
Ruben had put him in his clothes that night and shown him how pictures appeared out of dark. That's brother stuff, except everything else.
Stupid magic, sink magic, chemicals and brown water and Ruben acting like he wasn’t proud when the shape began to come through. Brother stuff.
What stays is Niall in Ruben’s shirt saying, because he was warm and stupid and seventeen, Maybe memories don’t only have to be behind you. Maybe some of them are still in the future.
Smart fuck. He’d said it like it might be useful if Ruben kept it on him. Ruben had gone quiet, and Niall had mistaken quiet for taking it. Ruben got out of bed that same night, and by morning he was gone. Properly fucking gone.
Niall tightens his fist around the rope until the fibres bite.
“Fuck you,” he says.
There’s no proper target. Ruben, himself, the future, that happy little idiot in the bed thinking a sentence could help.
Outside, Alby laughs.
That’s the trouble. There’s still Alby. Alby outside with a ring on and a scar on his face and maybe a plate of food he won’t eat because he’s noticed Niall is missing.
Niall imagines walking back out.
The version arrives whole enough to hurt. He hands the rope to some caterer and says something awful. He finds Alby by the winter flowers. Says, I went strange for a minute, love, but I came back. Alby goes angry first, then grips Niall’s face in both hands in front of everybody.
The sound outside changes.
Gravel under a boot. A door somewhere behind the barn opening and closing with care.
The rope slips from his wrist and lands against his shoe.
Niall looks at the doors.
#
Ruben had been awake for hours. Grey came into the room by the curtain, the basin, Niall's sock on the floor, the film strip clipped above the sink with Lori's cheap peg. There you are. There I am too.
He had kept his mouth shut. Niall heard things in sleep when it was inconvenient.
Ruben wiped his face with the heel of his hand and found it wet. He wiped harder, until the cheek burned. The bed had gone cold where he sat up. One sock on, one bare foot on the boards. A splinter near the bed leg caught the skin under his heel, and he pressed down until the little bite sharpened.
Fourteen came up before his name. Boxing Day. Maura's card unsigned until tea time. Shirt collar too tight. His father knocking once, then that low pleased voice saying wee thing.
Ruben's breath had tried to keep itself tidy. Hips pinned, shoulder against the wall, hand crushed under his chest until the fingers went dead. The push and drag inside him stayed in the muscles. His body clenched against it, then around it, and after all these years his fingers still curled when the wrong floorboard answered under somebody's foot.
Afterward, blood on the paper. Enough to wipe again. Enough to wipe until the burn spread and the split complained. Enough to stand over the toilet with his trousers at his knees and spit in the sink because there was nowhere else to put his mouth.
His hand went down his side and under the back of his shorts before he had the sense to stop it. Two cold fingers pressed between the cheeks. Checking, stupid cunt, checking for a mark. He pressed harder. His mouth opened wide and no sound came out.
He folded over his lap with his hand still there. The crying came through his nose in short, blocked pulls. His throat locked around it.
Pretty good with you, his father had said once. And every other wee cunt.
Ruben yanked his hand out and wiped it down his thigh. His palm left a damp track on the fabric. Twenty-three. Twenty-fucking-three. Niall's bare shoulder showed above Ruben's shirt, and Ruben's stomach braced before his head caught up. Stair creak. Don't wake your mam. Bed heat. Wall. Movement. He pressed his knuckles to his mouth until his teeth cut the skin.
Niall's hand had paused at Ruben's hip. Ruben had moved into it. Bit the inside of his cheek when Niall got too careful. The next morning the cheek had opened again over breakfast, copper under his tongue while Maura scraped toast. Niall had looked at him across the table with those big wet guilty eyes, and Ruben had wanted to knock the cup out of his hand.
Niall shifted under the blanket. The shirt pulled tight across his shoulder, showing the knob of bone and the faint mark Ruben's mouth had left last night. Ruben's hand lifted. It got halfway to the bed before he made a fist and put it back on his own knee. The skin there jumped under his fingers. He swallowed once, then again, and his throat clicked.
Sitting made the crying climb. Standing made his legs loose. He stood anyway. His hands shook, so he shoved them under his arms and held his own ribs until the tremor hurt.
Morning put itself together downstairs before it existed. Kettle. Cupboard. Maura's little cough before his name. Ruben, love. Do you want toast? Her hands on the butter knife. I wished you paid fucking attention. He could see himself taking the plate from her, saying something ugly, wanting to put his head in her lap with the same mouth.
Then Niall waking. Soft for one second. Court not back yet. Alby not back yet. Blood, letters, all the sorrys not back yet. Bambi at seven with cake on his mouth. Bambi at seventeen pretending not to stare. Bambi last night, wet-haired and stupid, holding the film up to weak light while Ruben tapped the blank square. There you are. There I am too. Niall had smiled, and Ruben's tongue had gone useless behind his teeth.
The drawer stuck. He pulled too hard; wood complained. Niall's breathing changed. Ruben froze with one hand inside the drawer until the little sleep rasp steadied again.
The cassette player was under receipts, dead lighters, a button, and a pencil stub chewed soft. Tape already inside. If We Make It Through December. He had pressed the pen hard enough to dent the label. The song sounded thin, batteries dragging the guitar sideways. He got one almost-laugh, then his mouth flooded. He slapped a hand over his mouth when a noise tried.
Tomorrow: face on, woman under him, head checking the door. Niall touching his wrist by accident. Kids at the centre asking where he had been. Court walls. That lad, Alby, living somewhere with his face rearranged. Ruben making jokes. Ruben fucking someone. Ruben hurting someone. Ruben waking with blood in his spit because he had chewed himself open again.
He found paper under Niall's book. The margins were full of tiny marks, cramped and serious. He nearly smiled. A pen from the mug spat blue ink on his finger. Dear Niall sat there in clean little schoolboy words. Dear Niall, your brother has made a final prick of himself. Dear Bambi, don't look in the bath too hard. Dear Bambi, look anyway, you nosy clever bastard, you always do.
He wrote Sorry. The S jolted wrong halfway through. He stared at it until the page blurred, then wrote around the rest: Alby, court, letters, hands, softness. The pen dug a dent where Don't follow me anywhere went down. On Live first, the paper tore a little.
Niall scratched his cheek with the back of his knuckle and settled deeper into Ruben's shirt.
Doctor Who came up from nowhere. The plastic thing with the scarf, lined up with the annuals and badges. Ruben upstairs with the toy in his hand and heat in his face. He had snapped the arm first, then the head, then more. Niall had gone white when he found it. A shard cut his thumb. He hid the blood in his fist.
It's fine, Niall had said, and Ruben had called him a lying wee prick and left the room before he made it less fine.
The tin was under the shirts. Coins, lighter, old blade, not looked at long. The scrap from the community centre treasure hunt, some kid's drawing of him with a crown and one giant hand. King of Glasgow. Big ugly grin. Niall would have laughed at the hand. Ruben shut the tin before he could hear it properly.
The room kept ticking in pieces. Bad cassette. Niall breathing. A board somewhere downstairs. His foot found the splinter again and pressed.
He went back to the bed. Niall was warm at the collar where the shirt had slipped. Ruben fixed it higher with two fingers. Skin brushed skin. Niall sighed into the pillow, and Ruben bent over with both hands on the mattress while the crying moved through him without sound. Once, twice, the bed dipped under his fists.
Bambi, get up. I am out of jokes.
The words sat behind his teeth. Niall would sit up too fast. Niall would touch him. Niall would make some ridiculous broken noise and try to hold the morning together with those long clever hands. Ruben gripped the mattress until his wrists hurt.
Niall made another sleep sound. Ruben took his hand back before he touched him again. Drama society little arsehole.
Ruben wiped his nose on his wrist. Snot on skin, tears in his mouth.
His voice cracked when he whispered,
"Stay asleep."
He swallowed the break down and tried again, lower.
"Stay asleep, Bambi."
The note stayed on the dresser. The film hung over the basin. The cassette kept dragging December through bad batteries. The room was cold.
At the door, he looked back once. Niall in his shirt. Ruben opened the door carefully and let the hall take him by the feet, cold through the sock and colder through skin.
"Merry Christmas, Bambi. And all the ones after."