Page 64 of Bare
'I don't know what I am.'
'That's all right. You don't have to know tonight.'
The lamp stayed on. The room smelt of sex and woodsmoke and the lube that had dripped onto the sheets. Rory's heartbeat against his back, steady as a clock.
'Stay,' Rory said. Not a question.
Neil didn't dress. Didn't check his phone.
'Yeah,' he said.
The first whole night. They fell asleep with Rory's arm across Neil's ribs, Rory's palm still flat over his hand, and woodsmoke still in their hair.
Morning. Grey winter light through the curtains. Neil woke first, the internal clock that had never failed, not once, not in thirty-three years, and lay still.
Rory's arm across his chest. The real, physical weight of a sleeping man's forearm. The hair on Rory's arm tickled his own skin. The body beside him, radiating through the sheets. The breathing, deep, slack-jawed, undefended.
Still.
He'd never woken up next to another man and been allowed to lie there. The car parks had no mornings. The marriage had mornings but the body beside him had been wrong, wrong in the way a left shoe is wrong on a right foot.
This fit.
Completely.
Rory's breathing, deeper than Gemma's, the chest rising with a different rhythm. He lay in the grey light and noted the differences.
He stayed for an hour. Watched the light change. Rory's face in sleep was younger, less guarded. Mouth slightly open. The muscle at the hinge of his cheek had gone slack. Neil had never seen it slack. The sheet had slipped to his waist. The tree tattoo on his ribs rose and fell with each breath.
When Rory woke, he didn't know where he was. His eyes opened to the ceiling first, unfocused, the slack confusion of someone surfacing from deep sleep. A beat. Then the room came back to him. Then Neil.
His eyes found Neil's. The mouth curving before the rest of his face caught up.
‘Morning.’
‘Morning.’
‘You stayed.’
‘I stayed.’
‘How long have you been awake?’
‘A bit.’
‘A bit. Watching me sleep.’
‘Observing. There's a difference.’
‘There's not a difference. You've been lying there watching me sleep like a man in a film.’
‘I've been lying here for an hour appreciating the noise. You snore.’
‘I do not snore.’
‘You snore like you've been sleeping in a studio with turpentine fumes for ten years.’
‘That's not how snoring works.’
