Strays

by Garrett Leigh

  Lenny lost himself to the sea of sweaty bodies and throbbing bass. He closed his eyes and raised his arms above his head, let his body move of its own accord, and ignored every shout and grasping hand that came his way, even the ones he knew, not that there were many. His ex-coworkers from Misfits had barely acknowledged him, and Pippa’s crew had migrated to the bar, apparently intent on catching the last of Tom’s generosity. Lenny didn’t look long enough to see if Nero was among them. He danced to the other side of the floor and stayed there, hugging the speaker, until his mind was devoid of everything except the pounding beat.

  He could’ve stayed there all night. Perhaps he did. It felt like hours and hours had passed by the time strong arms hauled him away.

  “Come on,” Nero growled. “I wanna go home.”

  Dazed, Lenny let Nero hustle him outside. Took the bottle of gin he offered and swallowed a healthy swig. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Don’t give a fuck.”

  Fair enough. Lenny drank more gin and gazed at Nero through eyes that felt brand-new. His ears were ringing, but his mind was clear. Dancing. Yeah, baby. Worked every time. “Do I look happy now?”

  Nero lit a cigarette. “Wouldn’t know.”

  “Liar.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yup. You know me better than you think.”

  “How’d you know what I think?”

  Lenny stepped closer and plucked Nero’s smoke from his fingers. “I’m guessing, ’cause that’s all I’ve got. Humour me?”

  Nero cupped Lenny’s face in his heated palm. “Okay . . . so, I think I know you, but then you change, and I have to start again. I can’t figure out if you’re the cleverest person I’ve ever known, or a brat who just won’t let me be.”

  “Maybe I’m both.”

  “Maybe.” Nero dragged his thumb under Lenny’s eyes, smearing the makeup that was bound to have smudged by now. “I love this, though. You’re beautiful without it, but I couldn’t stop staring at you tonight. You ain’t no wallflower, mate. You’re like . . . a pink dandelion.”

  “Are you comparing me to a weed?”

  “It’s an East End thing. My nana said dandelions were healing and they meant happiness. Good job really, ’cause we could never afford to buy her posh flowers.”

  “My dad bought my mum flowers from Harrods every Friday—expensive ones to make up for the fact that he’d spent all week with his mistress in Hampstead. Frankly, I’d rather have the dandelions.”

  “Me too, but that’s a cockney thing.”

  Lenny stared at Nero, but too soon, a commotion up the road broke the loaded moment—a fight, by the sound of it. Nero took Lenny’s arm and guided him in the opposite direction. Lenny let his pensive silence hang and drank more gin. By the time they reached the underground, he could hardly put one foot in front of the other.

  Nero lifted him onto a train and deposited him on an empty seat.

  “How can you be so gentle when you’re as drunk as me?” Lenny asked crossly.

  “Imagine how gentle I’d be if I was sober.” Nero dropped into the neighbouring seat and tipped his head back, stretching his long, elegant neck. “Besides, I’ll never be drunk enough to hurt you. I’d kill myself first.”

  Nero’s eyes were closed, but his dark words still hit Lenny like a train. He sat up and climbed into Nero’s lap, paying the half-empty carriage no heed. “You scare me when you say stuff like that.”

  “I’ve never said that before.”

  “I mean your tone. It’s like you’ve got a shadow you can’t escape.”

  “Just the one?”

  “Open your eyes, Nero. Please?”

  Nero opened his eyes. Bloodshot and drunk-blurred, they were as hard to read as ever, but a flash of resignation in them made Lenny feel reckless. He gripped Nero’s hands, stroking his thumb over the stump of his missing finger, and pressed their foreheads together. “Tell me who you are.”

  “Why?”

  “Nero.”

  “Why?”

  The temptation to bang their heads together was strong. Lenny pressed harder into Nero, like he could push Nero’s every hurt out the other side. “I want you to be free.”

  “I am free.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Nero shifted Lenny from his lap and stood. “Why are you so convinced you know what’s going on in my fucked-up head all the time?”

  “I’m not convinced of anything.” Lenny spoke quietly even as Nero’s words lanced his heart. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know you at all, and it’s fucking with my head.”

  “So? What do you want me to do about it? Tell you my life story so you can sleep at night? ’Cause trust me, Lenny, it don’t work like that, ’cause there ain’t nothing I can say that’ll give you the dreams you deserve.”

  “What dreams are they?”

  “Not mine.”

  Nero’s dark, hard gaze softened, but only briefly. Lenny stood too and fell into him as the train swayed, but Nero pushed him away.

  “I know what you’re saying, Lenny, ’cause I’ve heard it before. You’re telling me you can’t be with me because I’m a closed book and I won’t share my feelings, and that makes you think I don’t care, right?”

  Nero’s tone was mocking enough for Lenny to flinch. “I never said you didn’t care.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve assumed I don’t.”

  “That’s not true. I know you care about me, about Cass. You give a shit about the people who give a shit about you.”

  “If you gave a shit about me, Lenny, you’d leave me alone.”

  “Leave you alone?”

  “Leave this alone. Whatever. You can’t fix this. The damage is done, and it ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Nero.” Lenny grabbed Nero’s arm as the train rumbled to a stop. “I’m not trying to fix you. How naïve do you think I am? I’m just saying we can’t go on like this. I want to be with you, in every way, I fucking love you, for God’s sake, but—”

  “You love me?” Nero’s bitter laugh cut Lenny to the bone. “Pull the other one, mate. I don’t know jack about whatever picture you’re trying to paint, but you don’t love me. I’m a stranger, remember? And that ain’t going to change.”

  The train doors opened. Nero wrenched his arm from Lenny’s grasp, slipped through the doors, and walked away.

  Lenny watched him go, mouth open, heart shattered. His brain hadn’t read the mess between them as concisely as Nero’s apparently had, but as Nero disappeared into the crowds at Liverpool Street, he knew with a painful certainty that Nero was right. Without trust, they had nothing, and as long as Nero kept his soul under lock and key, nothing was all they’d have.

  Lenny went home. What else was there to do? Stumbling drunk and missing the chunk of his heart Nero had taken with him, he couldn’t think of a sensible alternative.

  Not that sensible was a priority. Back at Pippa’s, he swiped a bottle of vodka, scrawled a barely legible IOU, and weaved his way upstairs.

  In the flat, his hazed mind half expected to find Nero already there, smoking on the fire escape, or sulking on the couch, but the flat was dark and silent. And horrible. For the first time since Nero had shaken him awake at the start of the summer, Nero’s cosy home felt like the last place on earth Lenny should be.

  Vodka in hand, Lenny roamed the small space, drifting from the living room to the bedroom and back again, before he retreated to the fire escape, taking Nero’s customary place at the railing, staring out at the city below. His fingers itched for a cigarette, but they were in Nero’s back pocket.

  I could roll a joint. But without Nero, that felt wrong too. Which left Lenny nothing but his own thoughts for company, and those led to nowhere but the devastating realisation that he’d pushed Nero too far. Why couldn’t you let him be? But as guilt scorched painfully though his veins, Lenny’s heart knew tonight had been inevitable. The shadows around Nero’s soul were thick and vast, and the fear in his eyes had been there long befo
re Lenny had ever known him. He loved Nero—how could he not?—but it wasn’t enough. Nero needed more.

  He needs a friend.

  Lenny set his vodka bottle carefully at his feet and went inside. He hadn’t touched his phone in months, not since he’d taken the sim card out and buried it at the bottom of a pile of old clothes, but with his wages building up in the bank, he had plenty of money to load it with credit.

  He retrieved it and the iPhone charger Nero kept by his bed, and wandered into the living room. The phone activated a minute or so after he plugged it in, and a series of messages popped up, all from different numbers. The first could’ve been from anyone, or a wrong number, but the second, and then every one after, confirmed that they were clearly a hangover from the dark days when the buzz of his phone had haunted him.

  Lenny deleted them one by one, but his thumb lingered over the last: Your hair reminds me of the dolls I’ve burned.

  Ew. Absently, Lenny fingered his newly pinked locks. Previous letters and messages had often mentioned his hair—mainly lamenting the colour, or that Lenny had chosen to wear a hat—but threatening to burn him was new . . . or old, Lenny supposed. The messages were all dated and timed at the moment they’d come through, but they’d likely been stuck in cyberspace for months.

  Fuck it. Lenny deleted the last message, and his focus returned to the task at hand. It took a while to find the debit card he’d stored for payment, but after a few tries, it was good to go. With shaking hands, Lenny tapped in Nero’s number and saved it. His finger hovered over the Call button, but his nerves failed him. Couldn’t handle the humiliation of an unanswered call. ’Cause an unanswered text is so fucking different.

  Lenny silenced the devil in his heart and opened WhatsApp. Nero used it to keep in touch with the staff groups Jake ran for Urban Soul and new messages showed on his lock screen, meaning they were impossible to ignore.

  Hey so . . . I’m sorry I fucked up. Again. Please come home. I’ll leave if you want me to. Just please . . . come home.

  It’s Lenny, by the way.

  Lenny stared at the screen. Smooth, man, but with his only card dealt, there was little he could do but curl up on the couch and stare at the tiny grey tick, waiting for the second one that signalled the message had been delivered. Nothing happened. Lenny wondered if Nero was on the Tube, or perhaps out of battery. The latter option made Lenny feel sick. At least if Nero read his message and chose to ignore it, Lenny would know he was okay.

  Ten minutes later, a second grey tick appeared on the screen. Lenny released a shaky breath and sank back into the sofa cushions. He closed the app, made sure the alert-tone volume was turned up high, and set the phone on the arm of the couch. The ball was in Nero’s court now. If he chose not to respond, or asked Lenny to follow through on his promise to leave, so be it. Lenny owed Nero that, and so much more.

  He closed his eyes. Sleep seemed a distant dream, but the megaton of booze he’d drunk had other ideas. Lenny’s body sagged, and his chin dropped to his chest. He fought the inevitable, but the spinning blackness of a vodka-laced coma took hold, and he slipped into a blank doze.

  His Years & Years ringtone woke him sometime later. He fumbled for the phone and answered without looking at the screen. “Nero?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck.” Lenny searched for words, his sleep-addled brain unprepared for the unlikely possibility that Nero would call him. “Are you okay?”

  “Erm . . . dunno. Probably.”

  Lenny sat up. Nero was clearly as drunk as when they’d parted ways, but beyond that he sounded utterly exhausted. “Where are you?”

  Nero didn’t answer straightaway. There was a faint clanging, and then the flick of a lighter. “I’m at work.”

  “Which work?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Any hope in Lenny evaporated. If Nero didn’t want Lenny to know where he was, he likely didn’t want to see him. “I just want to know you’re okay.”

  “I’ve never been okay, mate. Cass coulda told you that.”

  “So why didn’t he?”

  “Dunno. Ask him.”

  “I can’t do this, Nero. Just come home, okay? I’ll go somewhere else.”

  Silence, then a sigh so heavy that Lenny’s heart broke a little bit more. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “How can I stay? You won’t talk to me, and . . . I—” Lenny pressed his thumbs into his eyes. “I can’t live in silence while you tear yourself apart. It’s killing me.”

  Lenny didn’t know how true it was until his voice cracked and weeks—months—of pent-up frustration boiled over. Tears coursed down his face, and he fought to keep his wracking sobs inside. “Nero, you gave me my life back, but I need you to live too. Can’t you see that?”

  The eerie quiet on Nero’s end of the line went on so long Lenny feared he’d gone, then another bone-weary sigh reached him, and defeat weighed heavily in the air. Lenny hung his head, the tears still coming, and let the phone slip from his ear. If Nero couldn’t hear him now, he never would, and what did that mean for both of them? Lenny couldn’t imagine this strange new life without Nero, and even as the walls of the flat closed in on him, knew his heart would never let him leave.

  “Lenny.”

  Lenny sniffed and looked at his phone. Somehow, Nero was still there. He brought it back to his ear. “What?”

  “I’m gonna drive the bus home later when I sober up. Go to bed. We’ll talk when I get home.”

  “Talk?”

  “Yeah . . . talk. I can’t be who you want me to be, Lenny. Maybe by tonight, you’ll understand why.”

  Nero really did hang up this time. Lenny’s heart plummeted painfully into his stomach, and the first strains of a blistering hangover brewed as he stared at his phone’s blank screen. He’s coming home. He wants to talk. Ten minutes ago, it had been all Lenny had wanted, but now the prospect filled him with dread. “I can’t be who you want me to be.” Was that Nero shutting them down? Until he came home, Lenny had no idea, and the impending wait felt like the end of the world.

  He dropped his phone on the floor and flopped back on the couch. The recent nights when Nero had got up and left him in bed, Lenny had found him in this exact position the following morning, passed out in front of Storage Hunters. It wasn’t a programme Lenny had ever watched, but it always seemed to be on. He found it and curled up on the sofa with the remote. His brain felt too wired for sleep, but as the sky outside began to lighten, his body gave up. Sleep consumed him. He longed for dreams of Nero, but none came.

  Lenny woke at lunchtime to streaming sunlight and an empty flat. He paced around to be sure, but came up blank. Nero wasn’t home, and there was no sign he’d come back and gone out again while Lenny had slept.

  Despair nearly sent Lenny to his knees. He went to the bedroom and retrieved his phone. The screen was blank—no messages or missed calls. In desperation, he checked WhatsApp, but Nero had been offline since he’d read Lenny’s message eight hours ago.

  Logic told Lenny that Nero had likely fallen asleep in Vauxhall, stretched out on the couch in the newly refurbished office. With the business mere weeks from launch, there’d been plenty of Urban Soul staff who’d done just that recently. But not Nero. Wherever and however late he’d worked, he’d always come home. Every night. Until now.

  Lenny rang Nero’s phone, his heart clattering against his diaphragm, but the call went straight to Nero’s automated voice mail. Cursing, Lenny hurled the phone across the room, sweat beading his brow. His hands shook and his stomach churned. Damn you, Nero. How had they gone from the safest Lenny had ever felt to this . . . insanity?

  Fuck this.

  Lenny jumped in the shower and rinsed away a night of sweat, booze, and tears. His body ached, and his head thumped a constant reminder that mixing drinks and angst never ended well, but the temptation to curl up and die in the bathtub was outweighed by a primal need to hunt Nero down and put this shit to bed once and for all. He dressed in
the first clothes he found, grabbed his Oyster card, and charged downstairs. The side exit would’ve taken him straight outside without having to face anyone, but habit took him past the office and straight into Steph’s path.

  “Ow!” Steph recoiled and rubbed her shoulder. “Where are you off to in such a hurry? I hope it’s to the bar to pay for the vodka you pinched last night.”

  Shit. Lenny had forgotten about his IOU. “It’s not pinching if I pay for it, is it?”

  “Bloody hell, you’re as bad as Nero. At least you’re not wearing last night’s clothes, though.”

  “What?”

  “Nero,” Steph repeated, eyeing Lenny like he’d crapped in her handbag. “He crawled in an hour ago, but I’ve had to send him into the kitchen.”

  The kitchen? Lenny frowned. Cass had lost the bet to run the kitchen the day after the staff night out, and his misfortune had given Nero the entire day off—a day Lenny had hoped to spend in bed, together, before his tiny world had imploded. “Nero’s working?”

  “Yep. He looks rough, but that’s what you get for staying out all night pissing around with that stupid bus—”

  Lenny pushed past Steph and hurried along the corridor. Civvy clothes in the kitchen during service was strictly forbidden—unless you were Cass and did whatever the fuck you wanted—but Lenny didn’t care. A wrathful Nero was better than no Nero. Hell, any Nero was better than nothing, despite Lenny’s ever-present certainty that whatever affection Nero held for him just wasn’t enough on its own.

  “Whoa, Lenny, man.”

  For the second time in as many minutes, Lenny charged headlong into a coworker. This time, it was Jolen, who seemed far less bothered than Steph had been. The quiet man simply stepped aside, though Lenny was sure that his grin was the same as the one he’d flashed last night when he’d left Lenny and Nero kissing on the bar’s smoking terrace. Bastard. Did everyone know Lenny was head over heels in love with Nero? Everyone except Nero?

  Lenny didn’t have time to contemplate a sensible reply. He stumbled into the kitchen in time to catch Nero roaring at an unfortunate waiter.

  “I don’t give a fuck whose mistake it was! Get it out of my fucking sight!” Nero shoved a plate across the pass so hard it was only the waiter’s trembling hands that kept it from flying out the other side and shattering on the floor.