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“I mean, comfortable with taking my room. Comfortable with me kissing you. You need to tell me if I overstepped. I don’t want you to feel you have to oblige me in such things to keep your job. That’s not how this works. If you’d rather take a step back, I will understand.”
He’d be devastated, but he’d understand.
“Your job remains. The offer of my old room remains,” Albie added. “No pressure for anything more.”
Percy opened his mouth to say something but decided on a shy smile instead. “I’m not adept at talking about such things. Don’t take my inexperience as reluctance, Albie. What I lack in confidence...” He shook his head. “I’ve never been shy about anything in my whole life. Until you. You look at me a certain way and I...” He met Albie’s eyes then. “I lose the ability to speak, to think.”
“So that’s a yes, then,” Albie hedged. “To being comfortable with me.”
Percy scoffed out a laugh, his cheeks dark pink. “Do you not remember before?” Then he whispered, “I kissed you, remember? I mean, you shoved me against the shelf and all, and my insides near caught fire, but I distinctly recall me being the one who...”
Albie hummed. “Kissed me?”
Percy huffed, flustered. “Why must you do that?”
“Do what? You can talk about kissing but I cannot?”
“But when you talk about it, I...” He waved his hand. “I lose all sense and reason. And now Des and Robert think I can’t make porridge, but I’ll have you know, it has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with how you... what you...” He groaned and looked away again.
Albie chuckled and went over to him, trailing his palm across Percy’s back, his shoulder. “How our bodies touched,” he whispered. “Where no one has touched me before.”
Percy sucked back a breath, whining on the exhale, his hands wringing the cloth he was holding. “You need to go do something else, go be somewhere else, while I clean up this mess. I can’t... function properly or think clearly, and when you talk like that...” He turned around and looked up at Albie. Was he mad? He looked a little mad. “Talking of such things right now isn’t helping. You’re coercing me to think of things I should not be thinking about.” He pushed Albie out of the kitchen. “Go. Leave me to finish this in peace.”
Albie laughed, but he went willingly enough. “Fine. I’ll go. Just know that I’ll be thinking those things wherever I am.”
Percy groaned and went back into the kitchen. Albie heard the clatter of pots and plates, so he did what Percy had asked, and left him to it.
He stood at the door to his father’s room. It’d been closed since Marcy had been kind enough to strip and wash the bedding when they’d got the news of his passing. She’d said it helped with the cleansing and goodbyes, and Albie hadn’t given it much thought back then, but he sure appreciated it now.
He wasn’t sure he could have done that.
With his hand on the door handle, he took a moment to close his eyes, to prepare himself, and he opened the door.
The room was cold, the air stale. He shouldn’t have kept the door closed, but for the life of him, he couldn’t bear to see the room empty.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find. The ghost of his father, perhaps, telling him to get on with living, not to waste a minute.
That was madness, and Albie knew it. He didn’t even believe in ghosts.
But boy, it sure would be nice to hear his voice just once more...
The curtains were drawn, the bed was made. A pair of shoes neatly pointing to the wall by the dresser drawers, his dinner coat hung behind the door.
And silence.
So much silence.
There was a gentle rap on the door. Albie turned to find Percy watching him. “Are you... is everything good?”
Albie let out a sigh. “Yeah.”
Percy stepped into the room, and it felt like a breakthrough over the threshold. The silence was gone; it wasn’t so cold.
“First time back in here?” he asked.
Albie paused for a moment. “I had to pick out his burial clothes, and Marcy washed the bedding, but it’s been closed since.”
Percy came and stood beside him, and he slipped his hand into Albie’s. A lifeline if Albie had ever had one.
