Chapter Text
Weak sunlight eked through overcast skies, unhelpful against the November chill that nipped at Barnabas’s dark overcoat. He shifted on the park bench where he sat, his reddened fingers scrolling through email after vexing email that could have been delegated elsewhere. It wasn’t like Sleipnir to let the mundane drivel of lesser members of his company slip through his fingers like this, yet here he was. Reading it.
Absorbed as he was in a fantasy of razing the product of his many years of blood, sweat and grit to the ground, he did not recognize that a one-hundred-pound wolf was barreling towards him at what could have been the speed of sound until it was very much too late to dodge it.
And so the animal careened into him, knocking the breath entirely from his chest and almost taking his consciousness with it.
“Torgal!” Distantly, a man’s frantic shout cut through the ringing in Barnabas’s ears. He pulled himself back from the brink; the wolf-dog had extricated himself from Barnabas’s front and was now sat politely by his feet, eyes bright as he stared at something in Barnabas’s lap.
Looking down, he surveyed the damage: his designer coat (Sleipnir’s insistence) was freshly ornamented with streaks of mud, and its matching scarf (also Sleipnir) stank of dog breath, masking the delicate sage and sea salt cologne (again, Sleipnir) he wore. Finally, his gaze came to rest on the rubber ball that rested between his thighs.
“I am so sorry.”
Barnabas’s gaze wrenched up, and he caught an eyeful of the man he supposed was the cretin’s owner. Panting and red-faced, mussed hair that looked like it desperately needed a comb’s swift intervention, stubble that lined a well-sculpted jaw. A scar that went down one side of it, jagged and imperfect. Eyes the color of the ocean, twisted into an expression of deep remorse. His eyes traveled down, and even through the battered sweatsuit the man wore, it was obvious he cultivated a built frame to complement his size.
“Are you okay? I—I can pay you for dry-cleaning. Torgal, heel. I’m so sorry—he knows better than that.” The man wrung his hands together as he spluttered. “Do you need me to take you to a clinic? He hit you pretty hard.”
To Barnabas’s utter surprise, what sharpened his gaze was not the keen edge of ire, but a pique of interest. At any rate, this man had saved him from the doldrums of corporate emails. Big apologetic eyes bored into his own, and Barnabas was hit with the ludicrous assumption that this man did not at all match his rough exterior.
He stood, abrupt and swift. Extending a hand outward, he said, “Barnabas Tharmr.”
The man seemed to take Barnabas in at last. The platinum wristwatch, the tailored—and mud-stricken—clothing, the polished loafers. His earlier offer recontextualized on his face; in all likelihood, he could not afford whatever dry-cleaning service Barnabas frequented.
Still, he took the hand Barnabas offered, and his firm, calloused grip sent sparks between Barnabas’s fingers. It contrasted pleasingly with the guilty upturn of his thick brows.
“Clive Rosfield,” he returned, “and Torgal.” He gestured to the behemoth beside him.
“There are more hygienic ways to make an impression,” Barnabas said. He released Clive to press the offending rubber ball into his open palm.
“I—yes, sorry.” Clive pocketed the ball, and his free hand reached up to tousle his hair even further, absent-minded. “He’s very friendly, and trained. The ball slipped when I threw it for him, I had no idea he would tackle you like that.” After a pause in which he seemed to oscillate between decisions, he continued, “Please, let me fix this. Do you have Venmo? Cash App? I’m not sure how much—”
“Money isn’t necessary,” Barnabas said, brusque with finality. He was no more attached to the clothes on his back than he was to the changing of seasons. It was all etchings that belonged in the background of a theater set, filler for the sake of decorating the void.
Visibly, Clive deflated. “But what can I do to—” A sudden caterwaul of some hideous ringtone smothered whatever Clive meant to say. Glancing at his phone, Clive immediately answered, his face paling to an ashen hue in an instant.
“Hello? Yes, this is—where is he?” Even the quality of his voice had changed from the worried attention he poised at Barnabas to stricken panic. “Yes, I’m only ten—I’m on my way.”
Perplexed, Barnabas could do little else than watch as anxiety built up like shaken carbonation in Clive, his whole body rigid with it. He swiftly latched a leash to Torgal’s collar and, as if he realized Barnabas still existed, he said, “I’m so sorry, I need to go, it’s an emergency.”
In a flurry of movement, he spun and took off, sprinting into the frigid breeze like his life depended on it. Barnabas watched him go until he disappeared behind a distant street corner at top speed.
As a curious hint of whiplash rolled over him, Barnabas felt a single unbidden laugh escape into the open air. He looked down at his ruined clothes, and then the fingers that had meshed with Clive’s. A minute or two, that was all it took for his stagnant day to upend, flip on its head. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been masked in anything but a pristine veneer of perfection.
He fished his phone from his breast pocket and clicked the only contact he deigned to save. A suave and smooth voice answered before the end of the first ring.
“Yes, director?”
“Fetch me from Kritten Park.” He smudged a wayward clump of dirt between his fingers like an artisan would a vibrant streak of oil paint. “I will require a bath.”
Sleipnir knew better than to ask questions without invitation, so from the time Barnabas stepped into the backseat of his deeply tinted Porsche to the time his assistant parked before his villa home outside the city, they were blanketed in unobstructed silence. Without thinking, Barnabas found himself flexing his hand every so often, as if chasing the ghost of the wiry touch that had lain there.
As he climbed marble patterned steps to wide double doors, he rejected Sleipnir’s attempt to peel his jacket away for laundry. He entered his home, and a wave of temperature-controlled heat washed over him to chase off the cold. He did not turn on any lights as he stepped across the tile, and his footsteps echoed in the empty, dimly lit open space of his foyer, all the way to the bedroom tucked neatly behind his unnecessarily extravagant living area.
Only once he was alone and secure in his room did he delicately unwrap himself from his soiled coat. He placed it with gentle care onto his ornate desk, folding it twice. Bits of caked mud flitted to the floor, marring the dark tile with nature’s brown. He adorned the folded coat with his scarf, less muddied but dirty all the same.
The rest of his clothes went into a bin in the bathroom. He turned a golden knob on the glossy porcelain tub and let the sound of rushing water consume the airy interior. As the tub filled, he watched his reflection come into view, ripples at first that steadied into a liquid mirror.
Streaks of dirt lined his face, artlessly stuck to his beard and skin. Not only was his nose red from the cold, but shallow scratches from the dog’s claws made raised lesions across his cheek. The rest of his skin, every pale inch of it, remained immaculately groomed.
The only difference he noted—beside the dirt—was a change in luster of his blue-gray eyes. As if he was really looking at himself for the first time in a very long while.
This was the man Clive Rosfield had met. Grimed and off-kilter. And yet he had taken pause, however short-lived, to focus genuine amends on this passerby, unaware of his station. It was not the fumbling attempts of a subordinate who feared he had wronged Barnabas, but something altogether more visceral.
He stopped the water and climbed into its warm embrace. One swipe over his face left dark whorls where it had run clear. As the mud permeated the bath, spread thin in granules that pooled at the bottom, a thought struck him as if whispered so just he would hear.
He would not mind seeing Clive Rosfield again.
Kritten Park looked the same as it did at this time yesterday. The noon sun could not penetrate the thick gray clouds that hung overhead in a dense haze. Joggers, mothers with strollers, couples hand-in-hand all passed in and out of Barnabas’s field of view, inconsequential.
An hour passed, followed by another. The sands of time moved at a cruel glacier’s pace, as if it knew he was in wait. He did not check his phone, though it buzzed every so often to vie for his attention on company matters. Matters that paled in comparison to his reason for sitting on the same bench on which he had been accosted just the day before.
The vacant sun had long since departed, its light replaced by that of artificial streetlamps, by the time Barnabas stood and called for Sleipnir.
Each passing day was a similar fruitless toil. Ever professional, Sleipnir chauffeured Barnabas to and from the park without prying. Not even when he made alterations to the schedule, asking to be brought alone in in the early hours of the morning until the deep recesses of night.
For five days, Barnabas waited. And then, on the sixth day, he received his remuneration.
Today he wore a haggard baseball cap, red and black to match the opened flannel that overlaid a plain white shirt, tucked into the same sweatpants he’d worn the week prior. The dog, Torgal, was leashed and trotted by his side, tail wagging.
He did not notice Barnabas, far away as he was. To rectify this, he stood and walked in measured steps until Torgal gave a greeting bark, and Clive’s attention snapped to focus where it should.
“Clive Rosfield,” Barnabas said. His lips quirked as surprise and recognition flickered across his features.
“I—Barnabas, hello,” Clive said, and unmistakably, a lopsided smile lifted his cheeks. “Fancy meeting you here again.”
“Fancy that.” He eyed the dog. “I see you have Torgal on a leash today.”
Clive’s hand clasped the back of his neck, tinged with a bit of nerves. “He usually is—and especially after the other day. I really can’t apologize enough about that. Your coat, did you still…?” He trailed off, as if remembering that Barnabas had rejected his offer for recompense.
“No, I had it cleaned,” Barnabas lied. “It took some doing, evidently.”
There was a gap as Clive digested that. Then, “Really, if there is anything I can do… And I’m sorry for rushing away so suddenly, by the way. My brother had this medical emergency, he’s okay now, but—anyway, listen to me, apologizing up and down. Sorry—I mean, well.”
Deciding it would be best to give some sort of friendly gesture here to fill the moment that stretched out between them, Barnabas smiled, a slight tug at the corners. “No need to apologize. Though in fact, if you would like to make amends, I find myself a little parched at this hour.” It was one of a few invitations he had deliberated once he saw Clive again. He checked his watch for a flare of emphasis; just past noon.
Clive’s demeanor shifted as he reacted to the idea. “Bit late for coffee I’d say,” he said, and Barnabas could discern the minute relief in his voice. “Would a pint do instead?”
“It would.”
“Great,” Clive said as his smile grew. It was fascinating all over again that he did not appear put off by this wholesale stranger asking to be made right by him. Not only not put off, but encouraged by it. “I know a nice pub around here, just a five-minute walk, if you don’t mind. It has a patio for Torgal.”
“I don’t mind,” Barnabas agreed.
“Then I’ll lead the way. Come on, boy,” Clive said as he flicked his wrist to tug Torgal back in the direction they had come.
Barnabas fell into step beside Clive, and he found himself appreciative of the unhurried gait he set.
“So are you new to the area? I haven’t seen you around.” Small talk. It had been ages since Barnabas participated in its banality, not since he discharged the last secretary who tried it on him. Though as he contemplated what he should say, he noticed that he didn’t mind the superficiality this time around.
“I’m trying out a fresh spot,” Barnabas decided on. “The last park I frequented will be born anew as the next Starbucks on the block.” It wasn’t remotely the truth. The first park he ever stepped foot in spat him back out smelling like wet earth and dog.
Clive supplied a good-natured hybrid of groan and laugh, and Barnabas waded in its timbre. “Absolutely incorrigible, that Starbucks. When will it end?”
“When every last park is ground under its heel, I imagine.”
Another breathy laugh.
Their supposed shared enmity toward Starbucks carried them all the way to the pub Clive had in mind, nestled between chain restaurants that dwarfed it in size. After hitching Torgal to a bench in the back patio, they entered the tucked away establishment, and Barnabas found himself surrounded by patrons that looked a lot more like Clive than they did himself, all frayed plaid and sneakers.
“Clive!” A beaming blond bartender waved animatedly from behind the counter. “I usually don’t see you for another few hours, at least!” His gaze swung to Barnabas, who stood with his fists tucked in his pockets, and met his level stare. “And who’s this?”
Clive met the hand the bartender had outstretched, grasping it and shaking the hold from chest to chest in an overly familiar way. “This is Barnabas—he’s new to this side of town, courtesy of a rude Starbucks some way east. Torgal saw fit to introduce us last week, at the cost of his coat.”
The bartender nodded sagely. “I’m gonna pretend I understood half of what the fuck you just referenced. But anyway, the name’s Gav, and any friend of Clive’s is a friend of mine.”
Barnabas pulled his eyes away from their handshake and nodded. “Pleasure.”
“All mine!” Gav had the bright sort of enthusiasm bartenders exuded as second nature. “So, what can I get you lads started with?”
“A pint of the usual,” Clive replied, then glanced to Barnabas for his order. “And…”
“One of the same,” Barnabas finished.
It earned them a quick round of jovial snaps from Gav. “One usual and one of the same headed your way, then!”
While he busied himself with their glasses, Barnabas studied the interior. Warmly accented booths lined the perimeter, creating space for two dilapidated pool tables to fill the center of the single room, which had attracted a group of college students like flies to honey. The far wall towards the back patio sported a dartboard that looked as if it had seen better times. Pinup posters were hung haphazardly all around, and although they didn’t bother Barnabas, it clashed with his initial perception of Clive.
Clive nodded nowhere in particular, evidently misjudging Barnabas’s impression of the place as he said, “Gav’s the owner here at Silver Bo. Inherited the place from his parents a ways back and done a fine job of running it ever since.” He glanced where Barnabas’s stare was fixated on a scantily clad woman bending low over an oversized whiskey glass. “Could probably use some updating with the décor, though,” he added with a pointed cough into a closed fist.
“No can do, Clive,” Gav chimed in. He ceremoniously placed two pint glasses atop the counter, filled to the brim with rich amber topped by a generous head of foam. “The place stays vintage. Mum’d rise from the grave and kill me herself if she caught wind I touched a damn thing.”
Clive paused halfway between handing Barnabas his glass. “This is your mother’s interior design?”
Gav shrugged. “She always said it attracts the kind of clientele that’ll keep a tab open. Speaking of which, I’ll open yours until you tell me otherwise.”
Exasperated, Clive pushed out a shallow breath before he thanked Gav and led Barnabas back outside.
“Don’t mind Gav,” Clive said once they settled back in at the table, Barnabas across him on a wooden bench. The patio had a picnic feel to it, admittedly still as worn in as the inside had looked, but homier. “He tends to come on a bit strong.”
A noncommittal hum passed between them as Barnabas’s answer. A lull stretched out to follow it, more noticeable with the lack of patrons outside, after which Clive raised his glass to Barnabas with an expectant gleam in his eye. Taking the hint, he took his own mystery beer and tapped it with Clive’s above his head.
“To unexpected coincidences,” Barnabas toasted. “May they keep us forever on our toes.”
It seemed to be the right thing to say, judging by the slight inclination of Clive’s head. “Hear, hear.” And then Barnabas was gifted an unobstructed view of Clive’s stretched and taut neck as he tipped back to gulp down the first swigs of his drink, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in a seasoned rhythm. His eyes had slid shut in some sort of private pleasure by the time he set the glass down, half consumed.
Barnabas’s own drink, in comparison, remained at arm’s length. Not wanting to spoil the mood, he waited until Clive returned from cloud nine to ask, “And what exactly am I about to grace my palate with right now?”
Satisfaction was practically radiating from Clive in waves. Barnabas found himself filing that away for later: Clive’s love of beer, or at the very least a good drink. His fingers itched to grab a notepad and write it down, keep the information safe.
“Just my favorite lager on the planet,” Clive replied breezily. “Let me know what you think.”
Barnabas was in no way a beer connoisseur. He hardly drank at all; thin tendrils of a long-ago memory seeped in from the edges, and minutely, the all-consuming shame and remorse his teenaged self had suffered resurfaced, and he could see his mother sitting in their small living room apartment, a ruler in hand ready to beat the drunk out of him as he stumbled through the front door.
He sipped. Not the tentative, puckered lip pose of a novice, but let it cascade down his tongue and into the back of his throat. The affronting bitter carbonation was all he tasted at first, but once he placed the glass down and let the flavor settle, an afterimage of citrus blossomed in its wake.
“It has hops,” he parroted from his more alcoholic-inclined contemporaries. “And a sophisticated aftertaste.”
Again, winning comments. Clive beamed. “I’m glad you like it, then. Cheers,” he said, and tipped the glass Barnabas’s way again before taking another enthusiastic glug.
Good thing that Gav had opened their tab, as Clive wasted no time in putting them away. By the time Barnabas emptied his glass, Clive had lapped him three glasses over. If Clive felt inebriated at all, it did not show. His speech stayed lucid and his eyes never gained the fog that came with consumption.
Another note for the journal. He wondered how many it would take to get Clive slumped forward, susceptible to suggestion. He would carry him out, hold him close, feel his physique through layers of fabric. It hit him, then, that he was curious what Clive smelled like. Dog, perhaps, since Torgal seemed to be a constant nuisance at his side. But that couldn’t be all.
At some point, Clive made a bid they should head inside for a round of darts. And who was Barnabas to refuse? So Clive rewarded Torgal’s expected patience with a few pats before they headed for the only indoor piece of wall real estate not claimed by half naked women.
“You ever play before?” Clive asked. He inspected his darts up towards an overhead light with one eye closed, and Barnabas’s stomach lurched with how sickeningly endearing he found that to be.
“Of course,” Barnabas replied, which was true. It had been his mother’s game; he could see with perfect clarity the dartboard in the meager dining room, how he would often be tasked with winning against her before she served him dinner. He ate many cold meals as a child…at least, if he managed to win.
“Confident, are you?” Clive asked, and maybe he was slightly tipsy after all, because it came out as something akin to a tease. “Let’s make it more interesting then.”
Barnabas felt himself freeze in place, then force himself to inspect his own darts with a feigned air of nonchalance. “How so?”
“Well,” Clive trailed off, as if he hadn’t thought that far ahead—yes, four beers over an hour definitely landed him in tipsy territory. “Since I’m technically the one who invited you out…guest rules. You pick something as a prize.”
How thoughtful. Barnabas knew he would win, however skilled Clive thought himself at darts. What this came down to was what he could get away with asking for. He had to shove down the instinct to come on too strong, bury it away deep. There would be time for the feeling that burned at his throat like acid, eager to open Clive up and figure out what made him tick. He needed to build up to the payoff or it wouldn’t work.
Play for your supper.
“Your number,” Barnabas said. He turned toward the board with fluid ease and fixed himself in a perfect stance, his wrist and fingers exact as they launched the dart in a vicious line aimed spectacularly on-target. “So I can trounce you at darts again sometime.”
Sparks flashed in Clive’s too-blue eyes, like the embers of a fire kindling to life. The urge to wrap fingers in his unruly hair and shove him against the wall nearly blindsided Barnabas; he dug his nails deep into his palm instead, almost hard enough to break skin.
“You’re on,” Clive said with the sort of confidence he could only have without knowing what he was up against. He set his dart loose, and as Barnabas suspected, it missed the mark. Never mind a game against his mother, this was going to be like pilfering candy from a child unawares.
As the game marched past their opening throws, it became increasingly apparent that Clive was fighting a losing battle. Barnabas willed himself to commit every pout, every rearrangement of form, every curious gaze he raked over Barnabas to memory. The attention Clive set on him now had a different, more appreciative quality to it, and Barnabas felt like he could hold the sun in his hands if he just reached up and grabbed it.
Clive was leaned up against the wall, resigned to his fate when Barnabas made his winning move. Not a single throw had been misguided, each one striking true as his blood thrummed with expectation. It was the first step of many.
“I believe I owe you this,” Clive said, head bowed over a napkin. After he was finished scribbling, he handed it over, and Barnabas took in the inelegant, barely legible chicken scratch. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pay our tab, and definitely not lick my wounded pride.”
Barnabas let a smirk poke through as he tucked the napkin away. He would add Clive’s contact later; there was no rush on that end. He let his eyes track Clive about the room as he waited. In a brief retelling of his loss as he slipped Gav his card, the tender clapped him comfortingly a few times on the shoulder. Barnabas’s smirk faltered and fell away.
Brisk exchange over with, Clive returned loose and chipper. They stepped back out into the nippy breeze, though somehow the cold felt less oppressive than it normally did, the sunlight just a bit brighter where it broke through the constrictive cloud cover.
“Next time I won’t go so easy on you,” Clive promised. He bent to free Torgal from his ties to the bench and wholly missed Barnabas’s reaction to next time.
His expression sorted itself by the time Clive righted, leash in hand. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Clive regarded him then, a deliberate look that Barnabas wanted to invite to linger as long as he liked. He almost said one thing, then seemed to change course. “I’ll see you around, then.”
You will. “Take care.”
That earned him a playful salute, one that panged something deep within him as he gazed at Clive’s plaid back growing smaller in the distance. For a minute or two after he disappeared from sight, Barnabas stood there alone, basking in the unmistakable unfurl of a novel emotion he had long since thought beyond his grasp. It was like he could smell spring in the air, tender morning dew dotting fresh grass as hummingbirds flitted between young flowers, more than welcome after a long and lifeless winter.
Slowly as if to savor it, he added Clive’s number to a new contact. The lack of a picture irked him; he’d see to righting that soon. He would text Clive so he had his number eventually, but he had other more pressing concerns to tend now.
“Sleipnir,” he greeted over the phone, again before the first ring completed its mechanical clangor. “I’ll send you my location in a moment. Come pick me up, and see to it that my schedule is cleared for today as well.”
“Certainly. Shall I stick with the same story?”
“Yes, tell them my personal project has begun to bear fruit.” He traced the pocketed napkin idly with his thumb, back and forth over the etched grooves. “No disruptions.”
“Very well, sir.”
Preparations were in order. The game would soon be set, and Barnabas rolled a red dart he had snagged from the pub between his fingers, as if he could transfer the essence of Clive’s touch from it. Excitement whirred beneath his skin, currents of electricity that roiled under a tepid surface.
Show me more, Clive Rosfield.