all the very best of us string ourselves up for love
Part 2: Miserere
Right. This part is really more of a background/set-up than anything. Relationships begin, end, unite, and go on hiatus. All small Roman numerals take place in 1981; large RN take place in date they're labelled. All characters are original apart from Dimitri, who has a more peripheral role here. Be warned, it is long.
prologue | part 1
1981
i.
They meet in a small fishing village outside Whitby, when Nicholas Brighton is twenty. She thinks he has a smile that puts the sun to shame; he is dark-haired and aquiline-profiled, with a spark of kindness in the brown of his eyes, a gentle disposition.
Andrea is glad of his tenderness; she has never quite been able to reign her emotions into such a soft form of affection. After two weeks trepidation, she is the first to kiss him - outside a pub in the weave of steep alleyways that stagger to the sea. She feels the high arc of his cheekbones round under her palms as he smiles against her mouth. He tastes of the evening's ale; beneath it, a sweeter tang, the smell of honey and the musk of fresh rain on the cobbles. His hair is slick with water, curling along his temples; he pulls away, stutters bodily, takes a moment to open his eyes.
“I'm slightly frightened of you, do you know that?” he asks, mirth in his eyes. His hands on her shoulders, palms broad along the edges of her jacket.
She quirks a smile, “A brave thing to admit, but it can't hurt,” she whispers, touching her nose to his. He laughs, startled; their next kiss is roughened, clarifies into passion. When she runs her hands to the base of his spine, his breath goes sharp into the air.
_
They traverse the North York Moors; in that windswept, barren place she says she has never felt more at home. Her hands are cold; her face colder. She smells of damp wool and woodsmoke; in the gray of the day, her eyes look very blue.
+
1988
I
His five-year-old self does not know the difference between her smiles and her silences. When she leans over the sink, elbows locked, eyes to the basin; when she unconsciously twists the ring on her left hand so the inside shines new, or she looks at the waves too long. His father jokes once that living by the sea was never a good idea for her; she'll be driven mad by it. She smiles and abandons the dishes, then, goes outside with soap suds still lining her fingers. Paul watches a match being lit; the glow of an ember, and her back hunched to the cold.
His father looks at him, carefully pries the door open and slips out, leaving it slightly ajar. The smell of cigarettes and brine catch in Paul's nose.
She's stood, leant against the railing paper-thin, still wearing an apron over her burnt orange dress and no shoes, dark hair loose over her collar.
“Go back in,” she tells her husband quietly. He watches her hold the cigarette, arms crossed, palm open. He steps up close, holds her shoulders, cheek pressing her hair.
“Do you hate it here?” he asks, voice low in her ear. “Andrea, truly, I know you nev- ”
“I like it here. Isolation is calming,” He sees her force a smile. “I may just be a country girl at heart.” He pulls back so that he can see her face more fully, but she is giving nothing away. She lifts the cigarette to her mouth, end glowing between her fingertips. “Don't worry about me, Nicholas.” Her voice has an assuring calm to it, but he can see the slight unsteadiness in her hands.
They are silent for a moment, her shoulders tense under his palms, fighting a shiver. “Things will become more settled soon,” he says, wrapping his arms around her, folding her to him. “We'll go to Dover. See the real cliffs.” He feels her relax, head settling back on his collarbone. Her wrist is thin up to her face; cheek formed into the same curve that he can already see in Paul. Cigarette smoke pushes out into the night air, cold, clinging.
She smiles, genuine this time, bashful; stays silent, nods. He suddenly wants to bury his face in her hair, never let her go; he feels her frame wane in his hands, so he holds tighter, steps as close as he can.
“Nico,” she whispers, turning in his arms. He stares at the shadows in her face, sharp along her jawline; falling over her forehead with the sweep of her hair. He reaches up and pushes it off her face with an open palm, tangling his fingers in the curls. Her hands splay on his shoulder-blades, falter at his spine.
It seems easy, somehow, like she is nineteen again, stood on a breakwater watching the boats dock. His arms wrapped her waist then, too, anchoring her to the sea-spattered ground, the lighthouse a periodic flash on their vision. An insistence in her and the calm of his hands telling her to wait.
“Ange, look at me.” She hears a raw lilt, there, voice edging on his larynx. She looks, and all she sees is raw concern, drawn out in bronze etching. “What is this?” he whispers, his fingers hovering over her cheekbone. “What is it doing?”
She doesn't snap back, but he can feel the returning tension twist its way into her limbs. Her hands bind behind his neck, making him lean down. The ball of her palm is hard into the hollow at the base of his skull; she kisses him, delicately, at odds with the force of her hands. She pulls back. “I don't know what it's doing. I don't have a reason.” It sounds like honesty, but her eyes don't take light like they used to. He wants to ask more, to fix something, but it is all buried so damn deep down that he can't begin to scrabble through. He goes to hold her face, keep some semblance of affection; she leans her forehead on his, touches their noses, so that he can't meet her gaze anymore.
+
ii.
He asks her to marry him on the road to York. It is near enough to Christmas: the road is sluggish with snow. In that freezing, dusky evening that seems without a sunset, he stares at the oddly-glowing moors and breaks the silence with his question. The radio shuffles and wavers, goes to static as it loses her attention. He is afraid to look at her face for fear of the expression there; he feels her fingers touch the back of his head, linger against his neck.
“Course I will, you daft man.”
The smile he gives at her response is unattainably bright; on the deserted road he stops the car, leans over and kisses her, feels the buzz of her laughter against his mouth.
_
That first wedded evening, in the tiny attic room they'd rented, the radio plays a muffled old song;
she stares at him in the dim light, pushes the hair from his forehead. His eyes are a strange hazel, the fine, poised features of his face gauntly shadowed. He still wears his waistcoat, shirt sleeves beneath rolled up; her hands slip against the silk on his back.
They dance in the small space where the eaves will let him stand straight, turning small circles in front of the window, the movement catching as a reflection on the glass. He feels her breath slow; her palms flatten against his shoulder blades. The muscles shift under her hands as he hugs her tighter. “I love you,” she whispers into the comfortable silence, her eyes bright. Touches her fingers to his jaw. “I love you.”
+
II
Two days before he is set to once again leave for Devon, he wakes to an unburnt fog over the cliffs; Andrea is gone, but her ring sits prominently on her beside table, refracting the day's weak light. No note, no explanation needed. He remembers how she'd looked at him the night before; the iron grip with which she'd held him. He immediately knows what has happened, where she's run.
When he goes downstairs her coat is no longer by the door; her wellingtons gone, each drawer of her dresser carefully emptied. There is a pot of tea left on the stove to warm. Paul sleeps on in his room, for which Nicholas is grateful; the boy doesn't even wake when his father picks him up, carries him out into the cold morning.
He locks the door behind him, takes the car up the tiny track of a road that leads to the cliffs. The headlights bounce uselessly off the fog, and he silently curses her through his fear, for doing this today of all days. But his heart jumps when he sees a shift in the mist, and he slows beside her, skirts along her determined gait. The car rumbles in protest of its slow progression; she doesn't look at him.
“Andrea, where are you going?” he asks, leaning out the window.
“I've no idea. I'm not coming back with you, though.”
They reach the end of road, the lone brick barn facing the sea, abandoned to the birds. He stops the car, grabs her arm. “There's nothing that way for miles.”
“Maybe I'll stay in one of the coastguard cottages. I don't know, Nicholas - I'll get a bus to Dover, go to Paris. Italy. But you and your duty, your damn military loyalty, I can't live with it.”
“I can tr - ”
“Please, don't be gallant,” she pleads. “I see how much you love being on those boats. You're never happy landlocked. I'm not calling it selfish, Nico, I'm just telling you it's not the lifestyle I want.”
“But you'll leave Paul to it?”
She pauses with something like guilt. “Yes,” she says quietly.
“I always knew you were somehow self-concerned,” he spits, feels a rare anger flash through him, quick and hot. “What is it? Have I done something to offend you?”
She looks up at him, confused, uneven anger ridging his shoulders. “You joined the navy a month after we got married,” she says, acerbic. “It meant you haven't been around enough to be in a position to judge.”
“Perhaps not, but does that really justify your leaving?” He scoffs, scurrilously disbelieving.
She raises her arms in deference. “You're away months at a time, and when you return it's all happy families until you go away again. It's deluded to think that way, Nicholas,” she hisses. “I say I like it here to keep up the image, to keep you from worrying because I know how bloody important the leave is. But I hate you being away, I hate not having the support; I hate having Paul ask me day in and day out when you'll be back.” She takes a breath, and he sees her shoulders tremour with crying. “I hate - I hate that I clean the house for your return, only to have you stride in and put clods of dirt across the kitchen floor, and when I hug you your coat smells of diesel petrol.” She pauses, stifles a disbelieving laugh. Swipes across her face with her palm, speaks from behind her fingers. “I hate the work, and the worry, and the waiting.”
He swallows, edges away from the car toward her. “I'm sorry - I care, I - ”
“No. If you touch me, my resolve will go. And I need to do this, Nico.”
He lowers his arm, nods slowly. He feels far too aware of the child asleep in the backseat of the car, small enough to curl into the vinyl without touching either door. He furls his hands in his pockets, tries to ignore the swell of protectiveness in his chest. “Fine,” he says, the defeat finally seeping in. “Fine. You've said your goodbyes to Paul?”
“As best I could,” she says, her gaze finally meeting his; she speaks with nostalgia. “He sleeps so deeply, bless him.” She looks on the verge of tears again, her pale face flush with holding it back, blushed by cold.
He tilts his head, watching her carefully. Takes three heavy breaths. “Where will you go, love?” he asks, his voice thick with something still verging on pleading.
She closes her eyes, readjusts her coat around her. He knows she won't tell him, for all his trying. “I'll be all right,” she says instead. She hates the sheer tolerance he has, the ability to bear up to any circumstance; is jealous of it, in some twisted way. Yet his face still holds betrayal on the edges of his eyes, tight along his jaw. She watches his fingers hover over the car's door handle, but he won't disturb Paul - he has sense enough not to involve him in this.
“At least go somewhere I know you're safe,” he says. “I'll - ” As he moves toward her again, he staggers on the idea, half-formed and far too saintly. “I'll even be forgiving enough to give you a lift to the station.”
She sees the trademark look of earnestness in his eyes, steps up to where he's backed against the car bonnet. “Sweet man,” she whispers, brushing her fingers over his temple. His breath leaves his chest involuntarily at the contact, her freezing hands, her face suddenly so close. That longing feeling revisits him, that protectiveness within his nature. His body stutters, slackens at the spine.
“Andrea, no, you ca - ” he says, voice pitching in the wind.
She rests her hands on his shoulders, presses her cheek to his. He is trapped between the car radiator and her body; despite the warmth of her against him, the slow tick of the cooling engine, he feels cold boned, his arms locking around her back. The wool of her coat scratches under his palms, the tempered swell of her breath beneath. She pulls away, touches her fingers to his mouth, before he can speak, before he can kiss her; her eyes are calm, telling him with undue assurance that she's going.
As she walks the heaviness of her suitcase puts her body off-kilter, shoulders tilted into the road. He watches her disappear past the barn, shakes as he opens the car door. The sound reverberates loudly as he slams it shut. Paul wakes.
Nicholas hugs the boy to his chest; he is warm and smells of sleep. His hands curl into the collar of Nicholas' jacket; he presses his face into his father's neck.
“It's all right, lad,” Nicholas says, waits until Paul's breath slows to a steady rate before he lets the air out of his own lungs. His crying comes in thin, ragged gasps that bloom against the cold windscreen, fall muffled into Paul's hair.
+
iii.
On their honeymoon, they go to France. Angoulême. In that unspoilt landscape they live a rustic three weeks; the French language suits her. The sun puts freckles on the edges of his eyebrows, a deep tan in the set of his forearms. He seems to smile every moment of the day. He revels in this land's simplicity, adores the image of cottages perching the verdant hills for miles in tiny red-roofed clumps.
Their neighbour is an aged farmer from Haute-Vienne. His hands are thickly calloused, his face rounded and warm. He calls Andrea 'la petite ange' every time he sees her; remarks that Nicholas must be a king to have married such a regal woman. The couple blush, bashfully intertwine their hands, as he winks and laughs in his knowing, warm way. When he sees them again he remarks joyfully, “Ah, le roi et sa reine sont ici!” In Poitou-Charentes' fairytale landscape, Nicholas feels inclined to believe him.
Two years later, it is her idea to name their son after him; that charming man living far inland, amongst the sunflowers and orchards, as though fabricated from a dream.
+
2003
III
Dimitri tries to sleep on the train home, but the world moving past distracts him. He has the gritty feeling behind his eyes of exhaustion; every time he blinks he can feel it thicken. He watches the people around him - an old couple huddled across the aisle, the woman opposite him with a beret and matching gloves resting on the seat beside her. Her hair is bright red, wild, her eyes shut, but flickering with a fretted sort of sleep.
He takes the tube from Waterloo, with a tense knot in his stomach at being underground. It is like being in a submarine; he hates the confined space, the smell, the lack of consideration for height. And all he really wants is to be home.
When he is once again above ground, he calls his sister. She is shrill with surprise, distracted by a cacophony of voices he can hear in the background. She sounds hurried. “Listen, Dee, I'll come round later, yeah?”
He hears Marc's lilting voice in the background, insistent. “Sorry, we're late,” she says. “But I'm glad you're home, and you're all right. Love you. Bye.”
He has seen Sophia with Marc Citerri. They make a good match: he of medium height and build, curly dark hair, hazel eyes. Quiet, but kind, with a trustworthy face; good-looking, in an unconventional way. And his sister, with her fine-boned beauty and little physical hesitancies, as though publicly shy of her obvious affection. But the way Marc looks at Sophia matters. The way they smile at each other, and leave their gazes lingering a little too long.
_
“She's in Edinburgh,” Paul says, giving a vague conceding smile. “My mother is in Edinburgh.” His father stares at him, sunlight streaming against them in thick, dusty swathes. They never sold the house; return is like a pilgrimage, to the overgrown garden and dusty furnishings, throwing windows open ceremonially to the outside world. Providing breathing space, the air a thick mixture of wheat and brine and stale disuse.
Paul looks up at him from where he's sat against the wall. Nicholas thinks he seems almost pitiful, wrists crossed over his knees, jutting ankles showing under the cuff of his fraying jeans. But his eyes gleam, look up from under his eyebrows with expectation and derision. He threads a postcard through his fingers, rumpled at the edges. Nicholas catches a glimpse of a city lighted by night, from atop the castled hill, granite glowing in the streetlamps.
“When did she tell you?” Nicholas asks, strained. He stands in an oblong of yellowing light, figure leant against the peeling doorway. “Is that the only contact she made?”
“The date's on the back. And yes, this is the only contact,” Paul says quietly.
There is a long pause between them, Paul straightening himself against the wall, pulling the sleeves of his sweater over his hands in discomfort. “Go see her,” his father says suddenly.
Paul looks up, face sharp with surprise. “What?”
“Do you think she'd write to you if she didn't think something would come of it?” His father steps further into the room, sits restlessly at the kitchen table.
Paul drags himself up from the floor, feels the brick catch against his back. “So it follows that I should go all the way to Scotland?” he asks, disbelieving.
Nicholas glances at him over his shoulder. “Well, she won't want to see me,” he says softly. His eyes are sorry, his desperation tightening the diction of his words. “You have three weeks leave, go for just a few days. Please.”
Paul looks away from his gaze, quick; puts his hands in his pockets uncomfortably, feeling the cold of the house seep through him. He leans his head against the wall, stares at where the wallpaper is peeling back with damp. He hears his father sigh, perched on a chair across from the window with his head in his hands.
Paul takes the keys from the counter, weighs them in his palm. “I remember being there,” he says suddenly. “In the car. When she left.” He pauses. “I wasn't asleep.”
Nicholas gives a low scoff. “I know you weren't.”
Paul stares at his profile, the silvering of his hair under the dusk light. He moves forward, tentatively sets his hands over the other man's shoulders; leans down and puts his face close. “I've grown up doing everything for you, you know,” he says quietly, touching their cheeks, smelling salt beneath his father's clean smell, the cling of old woodsmoke in his jumper.
His father clears his throat, too loud in the room. “Don't think I'm not grateful, lad,” he says. At close proximity Paul can see tears clinging to his eyelashes, hear the thickness in his voice. He lets out a slow, singular breath, turns his face inward; his father's hands come to hold his own, pressing the keys sharp into his skin.
+
iv.
Andrea has never thought he would look so strikingly handsome in a uniform. Perhaps it was their time apart, but she feels a sort of desperate love upon seeing him again. They meet on the esplanade, where he hugs her so hard he lifts her off the ground; he smells different, but his voice is the same, he feels warm and whole and smiles at her with bright, unfettered affection.
He is clean-shaven, his hair shorter, the formality of his dark military coat adding a broadness to his shoulders. “You're staring,” he says, with a gentle laugh. In the warmth of lamplight, he looks the picture of fit, strong youth; she realises that after eight weeks away, she has missed the kind spark in his eyes.
_
They feel they are barely given time before he has to leave again. That fourth morning, he stands in the kitchen in his uniform shirt and trousers, run his hands to her waist. “We have to get used to this,” he tells her. Stares at her with earnest eyes, close, gold-lined.
“I will eventually,” she concedes, “given some time.” She turns away from him, begins arranging things on the countertop. “You'd best get going, anyhow,” she says over her shoulder. She knows he is staring at her with that damned puppy-dog expression; can see him in her peripheral vision, hands loose at his sides, the crisp white of his shirt and the slant of light along his face. Silent, unmoving. She gives an exasperated sigh, pushing a set of tins as far back into the cupboard as her height will allow; feels his hand around hers, his own height an advantage, setting the tins down for her. She retracts her grip. His breath is close against her ear; she turns a fraction toward him, shoulder bumping his chest.
“Go on, Nico, you'll be late,” she says, gaze somewhere along his ribcage. Slowly, he pushes her hair from her face, leans down and kisses her temple. Her eyes close, for a brief moment, at his forgiving affection; he leaves and she sags against the counter, shuts the cupboard and puts her face in her hands, cries.
+
IV
Somehow he doesn't expect it, but when his mother sees him, her face is not immediately recognitory. Edinburgh suddenly feels grim and cold, unwelcoming even with its jovial strings of Christmas lights.
The tense line of her shoulders reflects in the mirror behind her; he sees himself, rumpled, vaguely tired-eyed. He feels out of sorts, dazed by the train and the tedium of long travel; his stance seems wrong, at once too hopeful and too defeated. He shifts uncomfortably, shuffles his feet out of soldierly conduct. After a pause she smiles; lessens her grip on the door. He watches her stand a little straighter. Hears her breathing, steady.
“Paul.”
He has often been told he his more like his mother; now, in front of him, he can see the physicality of it, the raven hair and its strange contrast with light eyes. He's seen pictures of his parents at his same age, in faded, muted tones of Kodachrome; one, photographed in front of an isolated cottage: a man standing in the doorway with arms spread wide, the woman beside him curled over with laughing. Dressed ruggedly in jeans and gumboots, he with a burgundy shirt and she a blue scarf, their hair bright with sun. On the back of the paper, in tight block letters: FRANCE, 1981.
“Did your father tell you to come?”
It isn't guilt he feels, nor anything as self-deprecating as shame. Rather it is something more cloying, pitilessly clawing at the bottom of his stomach, churning its way out of him in sorry glances.
“I've had the postcard for weeks. Dad found out, and - and then I came here.”
Her head bows; the expectancy in her eyes is blinked away. She purses her lips, and he watches the sigh in her lungs shake down through her fingers. “You're in the military too,” she says blankly.
He isn't sure what to make of that statement. It's almost a question, but whether specific or objective, her closed, cryptic nature momentarily infuriates him. He tilts his head, watching her judiciously.
“The way you stand,” she explains. Her voice holds a raw edge, warbles on something serrated. “It's - you move the exact same way as he does.” He watches her hand clench, as though debating whether to touch him. He takes a step forward; she turns in that moment, so that they are stood close, so that it is easy for her to hug him, perched on her toes with her weight balanced on his shoulder. She speaks with a new quietness. “How is he?”
Answers evade him. He lets the air escape his lungs, feels something akin to panic in his chest, a pleading in his mind to stop this horrible hurt, to put things right, to rephrase it all. “He's okay,” he whispers.
She nods. “Good,” she says, her eyes flickering to his. He smiles, and her face changes, turns to remorse. “That's the same, too,” she says, fingers light, hanging off his jaw. It makes him feel foolishly young, makes him want to tell her, about Dimitri, and Portsmouth, and how frightened he is of the inevitability of Helmand. How he knows he will hate the desert. He doesn't want to tell her for any commendation of bravery, but for the reassurance of putting it into words: for the reassurance of living, loving, of the menial and the mundane.
+
v.
She wakes the first morning as a married woman with his face close, her hair spread against the pillow in stark contrast with the sheet's whiteness. His eyes are closed, breathing regular enough for her to assume he's still asleep; his face is a delicate progression of angles, the muss of his hair falling over his forehead. She stares at the strength of his profile, its sleek straightness; revels in the feel of his limbs against hers. She runs a hand over his side, her palm cool against the warmth of his ribcage - his eyes flutter open at the contact, dark and feline.
“Nico?” she whispers, tracing her finger along his eyebrow, stopping at a freckle just above his cheek.
“Mmmm,” he murmurs, not yet out of sleep. Outside the day looks clammy, gray and dour, rain shining off the terracotta roofs.
She links their hands. She is not yet used to how much broader his palms are beside hers, how he can bend his fingers over her straightened ones. She looks at their twinned rings, the metal's dull sheen in the light. The sight of it leaves an expanse of something unsteady in her stomach.
He gives a lazy smile, nudges his nose against hers. “What?” he asks, low and resonate, sincere. His body is warm and lithe against hers, curling himself around her. She puts her palm, flat, into the sculpt of muscle where his shoulder meets his collarbone, feels the taciturn of his breath under the skin. He sighs, eyes closing again; they listen to the rain hit the window in a soft staccato. She looks to where his boutonnière sits on the sill, bright, bright crimson against the peeling paint.
“Nothing,” she says.
+
V
In London, Dimitri dreams. It is ragged, fluid at the edges, at once corporeal and uncertain. He is in a landscape he can't quite distinguish - cold, mountainous, but with the sort of arid quality to the night that belies desert - there's a fire, sparks throwing themselves high into the air; the sky is clear, star-lit.
There is someone across from him, shadowy, their head bowed. A man, by the half-cut line of his frame; his height folded, his hair cut close in a thick, glossy sheen. Russet, in the compromising lighting. Eyes an odd, golden ochre, the at once fierce and delicate structure of his face roughly hewn in the shadows. His features are cobbled to make something which would be statuesque in daylight, and is crudely handsome now. All Dimitri can see is the high plain of his cheekbones, the dark glimmer of his eyes, the crack of his smile, sudden and uncertain on his face.
He has fine-knuckled hands, squared fingers. It throws Dimitri off, the familiarity of him; his movements are something he recognizes, the economy of them, their sensible but graceful nature. It infuriates Dimitri that he cannot place them; he watches the man's hands, sees the worn tint of gold there, at his left, and the image suddenly clarifies.
Nicholas Brighton, his voice a comforting resonance. He takes Dimitri's hand, a broad, warm palm that cradles his; even in its gentleness he can feel the strength, between thumb and forefinger, the flex of it in his wrist. “You know my son. My Paul. Tell me he's all right.”
His eyes have an insistence in them that Dimitri cannot look away from. “I don't know,” he says, pulling his hand back. “I'm sorry. I can't tell you anything.”
His words put weariness on the other man's face, a limpness in his limbs. For the first time he looks aged and unsteady, his gaze to the flames. “He's told me not to treat him any differently than anyone else at the barracks,” he says. “Do you have any idea how difficult that is?”
Dimitri rubs his hands over his face, feels guilt tighten his chest. He wants to say something, but finds himself unable to manage it. Yes, his mind tells him. Yes, I know exactly. He calls me Deo, he's the only one.
He wakes to the cool of early evening, a passing siren shrill against the ache behind his eyes.
_
“What do you think?”
She finds Marc in the half-dark, staring at brightness of a halogen-lit wall in the second floor gallery. The paintings he has lined up glow under the light; it bounces back soft over his face. He leans back slightly, arms crossed in appraisal, glances out the window at the fading dusk. She can see the lines of tiredness under his eyes.
“I think it can wait 'til tomorrow,” she says, coming up beside him, putting her hand in the crook of his arm. He smiles slightly.
“Yeah,” he says, taking a step back, further into shadow. “How do you think your brother's bearing up?” Even though he speaks quietly, the roll of his voice echoes in the expanse of the room. She watches him blink, in the bluish light, frown and lift his chin in that half-curious, half-concerned way he has.
“I don't know. I'm going to see him now,” she says. “I just stopped in to say bye - you're sure you don't want to come?”
“No, its best just you.”
He steps over to her, stands close for a moment before taking her hands in his. His head is bowed, the tight black curls of his hair glossy in the bright lights. He looks suddenly boyish; she feels him trace her fingers as she stares at his face. “You know, I'm always surprised you manage to get every speck of paint off,” he murmurs. She touches his hair, just above his ear; rests her palm on his cheek.
“What is it? You're worried about something.”
He stares at her, his eyes darkening with the fading outdoor light. “Soph,” he says. “Marry me.”
She lets her hand fall. “Oh?”
He shuffles self-consciously, squeezes her hand. “I don't have a ring or anything. I know, daft me, proposing in the middle of an empty gallery with dust sheets and ladders everywhere.” He laughs, gives a bashful smile. “It's not very romantic, but then I'm not one for big gestures, am I?”
“It doesn't matter,” she says, breaking a smile. “I'll say yes anyhow.” She kisses him soundly, wraps her arms around his waist, looks at the golden-green of the skyline behind him. He is warm, his breath slow against her ear; she leans into him, the contentedness of their stance. They seem to stay like that for a long while, before he pulls away.
“Do you want a lift?” he asks, holding her shoulders. Sophia nods.
_
Dimitri spends the rest of the evening unsettled, nonsensically worried for Paul. His sister arrives and perhaps he is just grateful for the distraction, but he suddenly loves her for all her chaos and brightness and disarming laughter. He thinks he loves Paul for many of the same reasons. But when Sophia turns up on his doorstep, weighed down with shopping and her heart in the right place, he can't help but think he loves these traits more in her.
“I'm cooking you dinner,” she says, stepping over the threshold unceremoniously, tugging off her rain boots and handing him her bags.
“Soph, honestly I'm fine,” Dimitri says.
His sister straightens, stares him knowingly. He watches her appraise him, unzipping her jacket and smiling brightly. “Dee, I haven't seen you in ages, what's wrong with a chat?” she says, taking the bags back from him and standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Happy Christmas, by the way,” she calls, already halfway down the corridor to the kitchen. “Missed you.”
He's forgotten how conciliatory his sister can be. Her hair is scraped back messily, curled with condensation from the outside air. She catches him watching her from the doorway; smiles, before she senses his agitation, then comes across the tile and envelops him in a hug. It is a warm gesture, and Dimitri lets himself sink into the comfort of it, close his eyes for the briefest moment. She smells of linseed oil, paint pigment. A flake of gold leaf clings to her hair. He picks it out of her fringe gently, holds it up to the light with a smile. Sophia rolls her eyes fondly.
“The perks of conservation work,” she says, but her voice is warm. She's blushing.
He raises an eyebrow at her across the counter. “Something I should know?” he asks.
“No,” she answers, a little too quickly, then takes a breath. “Well. Marc - it was completely out of the blue, but - ” She bites her lip. “ - after two years he's charmed me into marrying him.”
This time, he hugs her. She laughs into his shoulder. “Oh, that's brilliant,” he tells her. “Brilliant.” He pulls away. Her eyes hold a fervour, a happy sheen.
After that, there is a lull in their conversation, an amicable silence filled with the sounds and smells of cooking; it almost feels like he is properly back home again, where he feels warm and contented. A glass and a half of wine later, she asks how his military life is going. He hesitates. Then laughs. “You've sort of stolen my thunder,” he admits.
“What do you mean?”
He stares at her for a long time, gives a slow, unfurling, shy smile. He watches her eyes widen, and feels the wine go to his head in a giddy rush. “He's lovely,” he says, contemplative, looking at his hands. “He's really, really lovely.”
tbc.