Thicker Than Bone

22nd January 2015-2

Home—for now—was Devonshire Avenue.

Devonshire Avenue was a wide, leafy avenue in Nottingham, with lines of cars that would have been clean, if not for the leaf litter on their shiny paintwork, and—in the midst of overgrown hedges and squat bungalows—a large white house split down the middle to form two slightly smaller houses. In the left-hand one lived—

“Hello, dear.”

Phyllis Pemberton.

“Afternoon, Mrs Pemberton,” Ali said, smiling genially at the little old lady who peered at him over the fence. She always materialised the moment she heard him, a thin wraith with a heavy walking stick and a cloud of fluffy white hair. “Have you seen my partner?”

“Ooh, couldn’t say, dear,” she said, and that wizened face twisted into a smile. “He said I had to keep it quiet, he did.”

Ali laughed. They rented their house—the right-hand one—from Mrs Pemberton’s grandson, and when Ali had first seen the doddery ninety-year-old hobbling home from church, he had been worried she wouldn’t like gay people next door, or Yazid in general.

Goes to show, really, what Ali knew.

“And if you don’t start feeding him up, young man, I have plenty of granddaughters who would take him off your hands,” she warned, and Ali chuckled.

“He’s getting there, Mrs Pemberton,” he said politely. “He’s got another check-up at the hospital next week, and then if that’s clear, too, we’ll go out and celebrate.”

Her face softened. “Horrible disease,” she murmured, and clucked her tongue to herself. She shuffled back along her garden path to her bench in the sun, where she basked and spied on all the neighbours, and Ali let himself into the deathly quiet of the right-hand house.

“Yaz!” he yelled. “I’m home!”

Yazid was home, despite the quiet. His trainers were under the hall table, and Moxie was indoors, sprawled out in a patch of sunlight, belly up and basking. She purred when Ali stooped to pet her, but otherwise didn’t move. The scrunched-up and used bus ticket had once been on said table, but had drifted to the floor when Ali closed the door. Yazid just didn’t—couldn’t, maybe—go anywhere without leaving traces of himself. Like other people left DNA, Yazid left a…presence.

“Yaz!” Ali called again.

Silence. And a strange silence. There was a familiar blue bag open in the living room doorway—Harry’s baby bag. Yazid must have been babysitting little Tanya, but the silence said the noisy toddler was long gone. The washing machine was humming to itself in the kitchen, and the post had been cleared off the mat but…still silence. No boyfriend. Huh.

Ali shrugged and headed upstairs. He’d probably gone to the shops, or popped out for a drink with Kevin and Harry. Yazid was slowly getting more sociable now, and it meant he was irregular sometimes. Ali shrugged out of his work shirt and rummaged for a T-shirt, intending to change, text him, and go and join him in wherever-today-ville. If he could find a clean T-shirt so close to laundry day, but anything was better than the itchy crap work made him wear, and—

“Gotcha!”

Ali shrieked as claw-like hands seized around his waist and he was bodily hoisted into the air. “f**k!” he yelled, writhing, but Yazid had momentum and glee on his side, and dumped Ali gracelessly on their bed. Ali squirmed, twisting over only just in time before his out-of-control other half followed, and he was trapped between Yazid and the mattress.

“Hi,” Yazid said, and beamed.

“Bastard!” Ali retorted, shoving at that chest, then groaned as a hot mouth found his jugular and sucked. “Urgh. Still a bastard.”

“Mm,” Yazid hummed. He smiled against Ali’s skin before pushing up on his elbows and grinning at Ali from close range. “How was work?”

“Less fun than this,” Ali said, grinning back in spite of himself. His head was spinning a little, but Yazid was a warm anchor, and Ali didn’t mind being off-kilter if Yazid was around. He was weirdly calming, for such a manic freak.

“Mm, and no shirt, lucky me,” Yazid pointed out, dropping his head briefly to kiss Ali’s chest. He was damp and hot, fresh out the shower, and Ali hummed at the pleasant sensation. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“I was changing, then you and your grabby hands interrupted,” Ali said snottily, wriggling his own hands free until he could cup them around the base of Yazid’s neck and pull his face in for a kiss. “Mm.” This was a game—what had Yazid cooked at work today? Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes…“Were you experimenting?”

“Yup. New menu,” Yazid said, and c****d his head. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”

A cool feeling began to inch its way up inside Ali’s chest. “Er…”

“Today? The twenty-second? Anniversary?”

Ali’s face flooded with heat. “Oh my God…I—I am so sorry, I just…today was so busy at work, and then I went straight to the blood drive, and…”

Yazid laughed. Yazid did a lot of that these days, and it was so powerful to see the flash of teeth and the creases that formed around his mouth that the stumbling excuses were stopped in their tracks.

“Don’t worry, just remember now, fake you knew all along, and let’s get ready to go out.”

Ali ran both hands through that thick, dark hair and watched it ripple under his fingers and fall back into place. “Go out where?”

“Wherever,” Yazid said.

“Wherever? What a plan.”

“You and me and plenty of sucking face—and other stuff, if you fancy it.”

Ali rolled his eyes, and rolled them over to bracket Yazid’s waist with his knees, push back that fluffy hair, and kiss his temple. “You’re mental,” he half-praised, half-scolded. “It’s the anniversary, we have to go somewhere. And be romantic and shit.”

Yazid’s grin softened. “A whole year.”

Ali felt a matching smile start to spread across his own face, and stroked his fingers through Yazid’s hair yet again. It had grown back in even thicker than before, glossy like it, too, was celebrating the win. One year. Twelve months. Three hundred and sixty-five days since that very first negative test result.

And every single one of them waiting for the break to be over, and…and yet the test results kept coming back clear. Again and again. And Ali hardly dared hope it was over, but…

“I am,” he whispered, “so f*****g proud of you.”

“For what?”

“For beating it,” Ali murmured, and dropped a light, open kiss on the corner of Yazid’s mouth. “For winning. And staying with me, despite all the s**t that came with me, and…just winning.”

Yazid shook his head faintly. “What s**t?”

Ali rolled his eyes. “Uh, you know what shit.”

“Yeah, but your crazy fucknut of a brother aside…I needed you to beat it. Wouldn’t have done it without you.”

Ali’s flash of humour subsided, and he stared avidly at Yazid’s face, as though re-learning it. “Love you,” he whispered.

“Why are you so sappy?” Yazid asked.

“You started it.”

Yazid snorted and grinned again.

“What do you say,” Ali whispered, tracking his lips in little kisses up the side of Yazid’s face, “that we stay in, get the takeaway of your choice, say f**k your healthy regime for once, and pretend for one night that it’s just us, and it’s been six easy years, and cancer doesn’t exist. Just you and me and a clothes ban.”

Yazid laughed, and pushed Ali off to slide sideways onto the mattress. “You’re already halfway to a clothes ban,” he said, and heaved himself up off the bed. He was still leaner than Ali strictly liked, his skin still oddly naked from the way he’d lost all his body hair through the chemotherapy and it had grown back in—unlike his head hair—thinner than before. But he was finally better, and to Ali he’d never looked more beautiful.

“Well if I ever bought a nudist beach, I’d keep you chained up on it,” Ali said haughtily, and reached out for one of Yazid’s hands. “Takeaway, long route home, lounge in the back garden with Moxie until it gets too cold and dark?”

“What happens when it gets too cold and dark?”

“I don’t know, maybe you turn into a pumpkin,” Ali sniped. He caught Yazid by the hair again for a quick kiss before dropping his work trousers—to a low wolf-whistle that still, after six years, made Ali flush—and finding a pair of light jeans. “You’re a letch. C’mon, handsome. Mrs Pemberton still thinks I’m starving you.”

“Nah, get all my protein off you.”

Ali rolled his eyes. He tried to pull Yazid out of the bedroom by the hand, but found himself being hauled back, and then being hugged from behind by…well, in theory by a man, but in practice it felt like being smothered in…in cuddle.

“We have to get dinner,” he coaxed.

“Nooo,” Yazid wheedled. “I want to stay in and play.”

Ali tried to ignore the gentle warmth that stirred in his blood at the words. “You wanted to go out earlier.”

“That was before you came home and were all harsh to me,” Yazid whined. “Now I have to service you. Like a good boyfriend. Or you’ll get bored and run away.”

Ali sniggered, stroking one of the arms wound around his waist like a trap. “Play later, eat now,” he ordered. “I’m down a pint, and you’re still down two stone from your pre-chemo weight. Even Kevin called you scrawny the other day. C’mon. Let go, and let’s go.”

“But—” Yazid started, and was promptly interrupted by the peal of Ali’s ringtone.

“See?” Ali said, pinching Yazid’s arm. “Divine intervention. G’wan, put Moxie out and we’ll go and get some food.”

Yazid kissed the side of Ali’s head before sliding away. Ali rolled his eyes at the petulant, imploring gaze he was given, and ordered, “Go!” while fumbling in his pocket for the ringing phone. “Hello. Yaz, go.”

“Alasdair, sweetie.”

“Hi, Mum,” Ali said, dropping onto the end of the bed. “Alright?”

“No,” Mum said slowly. “No, I…”

Ali blinked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s your brother.”

A cold feeling washed through Ali’s stomach, like an icy ulcer. Tony.

“You know he’s not been well,” his mother continued in a weak, faltering voice. Just like the one she’d used when Dad had—

Oh.

“Cancer,” Ali said.

“Yes,” his mother whispered, reed-thin. “He…he refused to see a doctor, you know what he’s like, but he collapsed this morning and…well, I was just informed. I’m at Leeds General now. He’s…like your father. Not the same, but…”

Cancer. Lung cancer, for Dad. Lung cancer that had aggressively and rapidly turned Ali’s big, loud-mouthed, overweight, clumsy father into a skeletal shell. And then buried him.

“How bad?” Ali asked in a hollow voice.

“Leukaemia,” Mum whispered.

Leukaemia not quite like Dad, but…not unlike him either. Cancer was cancer, wasn’t it? It was all the same stuff.

Exactly like Yazid, though.

“They’re running more tests, but…it doesn’t look good,” his mother continued. Her voice was barely audible, and Ali had to strain to hear her.

Tony had leukaemia Tony had cancer. Tony had a bad cancer—if that even made sense—and what with Granddad’s pancreatic and Dad’s lung…

Tony might die. His older brother might die.

And a vicious wave of f**k you rose up in Ali’s chest. A bitter sense of justice being finally served to that low-life piece of s**t he was unfortunate enough to have to call his brother. Tony had cancer, and if anyone f*****g deserved it, it was Tony Barraclough.

“Good,” Ali said. “And I hope it f*****g kills him.”