What Remains (2 page)

Rupert chuckled and tossed the condom into the bin by the bed. “Wanna shift over? I’ve got time for a quick spoon.”

“I wanna reverse spoon.”

“Come on then.”

Jodi grunted drowsily, and they crawled under the covers, Jodi curled against Rupert’s chest. Rupert wrapped his arms around Jodi and held him tight, absorbing every twitch and breath as Jodi drifted off. Jodi wasn’t much of a sleeper—too busy with work and keeping the flat to his eccentric standards—and Rupert rarely got to hold him like this, wide-awake while Jodi’s dreams made his eyelids flutter and his tongue dance over his bottom lip.

It was entrancing, until he glanced at the clock.
Damn it.
Time had slipped away from him, leaving him twenty minutes to dash south to the fire station in Brixton.

Fuck.
Rupert disentangled himself from Jodi, mourning the loss of his warmth. Who wanted to tramp around bloody Brixton when they could hold Jodi close and doze all night, waking up from time to time to love each other a little bit more? God, Rupert’s heart wanted so desperately to stay.

Stop it.
Rupert retrieved his scattered clothes, dressed, and got ready to leave again. In his coat and shoes, he crept back into the bedroom and gazed at Jodi, still sleeping soundly. He kissed Jodi’s forehead, his cheek, his lips.

“I love you, boyo. See you in the morning. Be safe.”

Jodi awoke with a shiver. He reached for Rupert, but his heart already knew he was alone. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Waking up without Rupert’s comforting bulk wrapped around him was always hard, but it felt particularly depressing when it happened to be dark and cold outside. He searched for a word to suit his mood. “Bleak” . . . yeah, that would do. He preferred “desolate,” but applying it to himself made him feel like a twat.

A twat who’d fallen asleep, despite plans to be on the other side of London more than an hour ago.

Jodi forced himself out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. He was a little sore, but he took pleasure in the pain. Without the dull ache at the base of his spine, he would have wondered if he’d dreamt his snatched encounter with Rupert.

He took a shower, then wandered, nude, through the Tottenham flat he shared with Rupert. It was a small maisonette—poky and cramped when they were both home—but in Rupert’s absence it seemed empty and cavernous. His gaze fell on a photograph of them, taken last Christmas, cuddled up on the sofa with Rupert’s daughter, Indie. Jodi absorbed the warmth of the image. Rupert had the best smile. It was infectious and lit up his whole face. With his warm hazel eyes gleaming like embers in the fire, Jodi couldn’t look away. The only thing he’d ever change was Rupert’s haircut. He hadn’t known him before he’d cut the shaggy blond mop he’d sported in his younger days, but Jodi had dreamed about what it would feel like to run his fingers through those curls.

Give me something to tug on.

Jodi’s black mood began to dissipate. He felt bad for making Rupert late, but the guilt was almost worth it for the fuck-awesome sex. Closing his eyes, he pictured it: Rupert thrusting up into him, his cheeks flushed, every muscle strained—

The phone interrupted his dirty daydreams. He retrieved it from the couch and read another cheesed-off message from Sophie—his best friend—wondering where the fuck he’d got to. Cringing, he checked the time. Oops. He should’ve rocked up in Primrose Hill hours ago.

He erased the messages and hit Rupert’s speed dial, waiting for his voice mail to kick in as he stamped into his shoes, grabbed his coat, and headed for the door. The message tone on Rupert’s voice mail beeped. Jodi jogged down the stairs and let the heavy exterior door slam shut behind him before he spoke. “Hey. So . . . I’m sorry if I made you late. I was feeling a little needy, but in my defence, that new software is driving me round the fucking bend
and
Henry tried to kill me this morning. Ran over my foot, bloody dick-splash. Can you believe that?” Jodi manoeuvred his way through Tottenham’s bustling streets. He reached the zebra crossing and stepped off the pavement. “Anyway, I’ll see you in the morning, yeah? Bring your helmet home. I want to fuck you while you’re wearing it. Be safe, Rupe. I love you.”

July 26, 2014

Drip, beep, drip, beep, drip, beep.
Rupert counted the drops of blood as they passed through the device monitoring the pressure in Jodi’s brain. The doctors said clear fluid would mean an improvement. For two days now, there had only been blood.

A nurse appeared at Jodi’s bedside. She placed a plastic cup of grey tea beside Rupert, then sanitised her hands with the gel dispenser on the wall. “Do you need anything, love?”

Rupert shook his head. It seemed to be the only thing people said to him anymore. Didn’t they know that all he needed was for Jodi to live? To wake up, get better, and chase this nightmare away? Didn’t they know there was nothing else?

The nurse let him be and got on with Jodi’s fifteen-minute observations. Rupert watched her for a while, scrutinising her face for any sign of change, but eventually, his gaze returned to Jodi: his coal-dark hair and scruffy hipster beard. The geometric tattoo on his neck. The tiny mole on his cheek, just visible beneath the wide bandage around his skull.

Rupert shuddered. The accident had been like a perfect storm. Eyewitnesses said Jodi had stepped onto the zebra crossing, eyes down, his phone tucked under his chin. He’d never looked up, even when the stolen car had come roaring round the corner, sending other pedestrians scrambling for safety. It had hit him at fifty-four miles an hour. The impact had hurled him twenty feet and thrown him facedown in the middle of the road. Two cracked ribs. His left arm fractured in three places. Rupert closed his eyes.
And his brain so badly damaged he might never wake up.

Nausea ran through Rupert. He forced himself to open his eyes, and ran his gaze over Jodi again, tracking every wire and machine, absorbing every bruise and scrape, but nothing changed. He couldn’t count the tubes jammed into Jodi’s body, wouldn’t count them, because if he did, he’d have to accept that they were the only thing keeping Jodi alive. That without them, he’d be dead.

Rupert took Jodi’s hand. A familiar warmth tickled the chill in his bones. Jodi had always made him feel warm inside, from the heady heat of their first, tentative naked encounters, to the comforting acceptance that had cloaked him the moment he’d realised Jodi loved him too.

But the warmth felt different now, marred by the sickening dread that their dream had been cut short. Rupert closed his eyes and found himself at the fire station, jogging down the front steps to come home, only to be intercepted by two police officers he knew well.

“Rupert, there’s been an accident. Get in the car. We need to take you to King’s.”

Rupert blinked. King’s College Hospital was in Camberwell, barely a stone’s throw from the station. Why the fuck would anyone need to drive him there? Besides, it had been a quiet night in South London—no major incidents, and all the crews were safely inside, or on their way home, like him. Perhaps they had come to the wrong station. “Karen—”

Karen touched his arm. “Rupert, I’m sorry, love. Jodi’s been in an RTC. He’s been airlifted to King’s. You need to come with us so we can take you to him.”

They rushed Rupert to King’s in a blur of blue lights and sirens. Minutes later, he found himself at sea in the bustling efficiency of London’s busiest trauma centre, searching desperately for any sign of Jodi. It was half an hour before a nurse told him he’d already been transferred to intensive care.

The doctor up there had been blunt.
“Jodi was brought in by helimed at nine o’clock last night. He’d been hit by a car as he crossed the road outside what I believe to be your home. The impact cracked his ribs and broke his arm in three places, but the severe head injury he sustained when he hit the road is causing us the most concern . . .”

Bleeding, pressure, coma. Death. The doctor had said then—and still said now—that Jodi might not survive, but she was wrong. Jodi wouldn’t die. He couldn’t, because aside from his propensity for anarchy, Rupert wouldn’t bloody let him.

December 26, 2009

Jodi stumbled out of Tottenham’s dodgiest gay bar. He tripped over the kerb and dropped his wallet and phone straight into a murky puddle.
Oops.
Lurching, he retrieved them. His wallet looked salvageable—not that there was much in it after tonight—but his phone was butt-fucked. He sniggered. “Butt-fucked” was the name of the sparkly pink powder he’d been snorting all night, a legal high, apparently, though it hadn’t had a big effect on him, save his wobbly legs and a bad case of the giggles.

Still swaying, he stuffed the wallet in his pocket and considered his phone. The screen was waterlogged. He swiped it a couple of times, but nothing happened. Damn it. He’d dropped three phones in the last year, and the death of number four was probably a sign that it was time to go home.

Luckily for him, home was a five-minute walk away. He left the dodgy bar behind and drifted along the pavement, weaving between the revellers who’d come out to party on a frosty Boxing Day night. He crossed the road outside the chicken shop, in a world of his own until a commotion ahead startled him.

A fight had broken out in front of the pub the footie boys favoured. Three blokes on one. Jodi winced. Shit like that never ended well. He bypassed the commotion, looping a bus stop, letting the curses and screams wash over him. Trouble in Tottenham was nothing new, but as he left it behind with half a mind to mention it to the next pub’s security team, a shout rang out above the others and made him look round in time to see a doorman enter the fray—a tall, blond doorman who was just about the hottest bloke Jodi had ever seen.

Dressed in black, he waded into the fight and seized two men by their collars. “All right, all right. Pack it in.”

He sent the first two men flying, launching them in separate directions. The altercation seemed abruptly over, both men stayed by the doorman’s fierce glare, but the third man was less obliging—or more stupid. Either way, the doorman appeared unmoved as the remaining attacker picked up a bottle and charged him.