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The back of Arthur’s neck feels clammy.
He is not sure how his hands feel other than numb. Most of him is, all but for the way his skin feels stretched out and tight over the canvas of his bones. Someone had told him once that shock felt like falling feet first into freezing water; a seizing of the body and a sensation like asphyxia. Arthur can breathe though, so he does. In and out, he is, if anything, overly aware of the rise and fall of his chest. His lungs are the only real part of him left.
The waiting area hums with the quiet chatter, a steady flow of patients and staff coming and going in the background. Phones ring at intervals, voices over the intercom drone in codes, and the linoleum floors betray the material of people’s shoes. Every so often a voice is raised or a siren wails but in the end it is all drowned out into white noise. Arthur makes no effort to move or listen, caught listless and alone and beyond any help.
Time dilates; he isn’t sure how long it has been when a man sits next to him. Arthur barely notices him there until their arms brush and the stranger speaks.
“Do you have a filter?”
Arthur does, and slowly, blinking away the sore dryness in his eyes, he comes back to himself. Wordlessly he reaches into the inner lining of his coat and pulls out a beaten pack of filter tips. The man takes it and the first thing Arthur really notices about him are his hands. The second are his shoes.
A lone woman sits across from them, empty seats at either side of her, one of them a small table-width apart. It does not occur to Arthur that the stranger could have sat there instead of cramming himself into the narrow joint seat to Arthur’s left. He is broad all over and deceptively thick around the knuckles for how carefully he handles the rolling paper and tobacco between his fingers. There is a faint residue of ink in the whorls of his fingerprints, like he’s been booked although you would not think so by the look of him, not at first glance. The brogues on his feet are worn-in but freshly polished and the wool of his kilt is pressed into perfect pleats. His shirt is the only thing that looks worse for wear with the sleeves shoved up his forearms instead of folded and stained with something that soaked in and dried out in blotchy patterns. Whiskey, maybe, or rum; even vaguely concussed still Arthur can smell it on him. Stale alcohol and sweat.
His thoughts blur again and he feels vaguely nauseous. The thought that he might throw up is a muted concern but his face feels hot. He shuts his eyes against the sudden inertia he feels becoming aware of how stiffly he is holding his body. He should find a bathroom and wash his face. He should gulp down a bottle of water even if he cannot keep it down.
Something knocks gently against his arm and even if the nausea does not abate the feeling like freefall does for long enough that he can turn his head without feeling dizzy. His eyes fall on a hand-rolled cigarette and a beaten carton of filters, held towards him between two fingers.
“For the filter,” the stranger explains.
Arthur takes it without thanking him and the next thing he knows they are standing in the cold, the light of a streetlight pooling under their feet. The hospital from a distance is only concrete and glass. The harsh fluorescent lights are blurred by a drizzle so light that it sits on the exposed skin of his wrists and on his cheekbones like mist. The stranger who chose to sit beside Arthur only looks at him from the corner of his eye and the rim of his eyelashes by turns, taciturn and unobtrusive.
“Alasdair.” He offers his name without a lead and promptly focused on the fag between his lips, cupping the flame of his lighter and breathing in the first drag like it’s water and he’s parched.
Arthur takes the lighter when it’s offered and fiddles with the flint for long enough that Alasdair reaches out to light his cigarette for him. He breathes in the smoke and lets it sit in his mouth long enough for Alasdair to step back before exhaling.
“Arthur.”
He sounds rough. On his next drag he tries to swallow the smoke and exhales in a coughing fit.
Alasdair waits it out, taking slow drags and letting the smoke slip from his lips and nose with practiced ease.
“You're not a smoker.” His voice is low and rolls deep with the tilt of his accent.
Arthur’s eyes water.
“No,” he agrees with one last hitch before his breathing settles.
He brings the filter back to his lips.
The cherry’s gone out. Alasdair relights the ashen tip and levels a quiet instruction. Slow and deep. When Arthur exhales it is good and steady despite the itch in his throat.
They smoke in silence until the minutes are ash on the ground and they toss the butt ends into a metal-grid bin.
“I’m trying to quit.”
It is an empty confession. It bears no weight on his opinion on the man or Arthur’s choices. Looking at him, though, Arthur can believe it.
He should say something. Thank you, at the least, but his mouth is wet and tastes like newspaper curling in the fireplace. His face and hands feel foreign and some part of him asks what the man standing with him sees; if he can tell that Arthur is only half-present, some part of him gone and lost in the halls of the hospital looming at their backs. Even now he cannot tell whether he is losing time and awareness of space again or if they have really been standing outside for as long as he feels they have. At least here he feels cold and he shivers with it the way only a living thing can.
Alasdair feels comfortable enough in his shirtsleeves and he is close again, only a pace away from Arthur. He reaches up to touch his own stubbled jaw with a knuckle.
“You have blood, here.” His eyes are very intent. Arthur can’t tell their colour in the half-light.
He reaches up to mirror Alasdair’s reach and feels for the spot in the dark. His hand comes away wet and lightly stained. There is not a lot of it. It must have dried in the hours he has spent sitting in the waiting room with no one to point it out to him. The rain and his fingers smear it away. The collar of his shirt must be stained.
“Who are you waiting for?”
It is not the kind of question you ask of a stranger.
“No one,” Arthur answers with the kind of honesty you spare a stranger. “He is dead.”
“Family?”
“My brother.”
Alasdair hums.
“You should go home.”
“I live in Kent.” Arthur blinks hard and tries to refocus his eyes when his vision mists over. He is not crying, it is only that his eyes are so very sore.
“That’s six hours by train,” Arthur explains like it means anything.
“Visiting, then?”
“Yeah.”
“He wasn’t expecting you.”
“No.” Arthur tries to remember what Daffyd had said to him over the phone the last time they spoke. Whether he sounded angry or sad. He can’t recall, suddenly, and he thinks that will haunt him for the rest of his life. “No he wasn’t expecting me.”
“Do you need to make arrangements?”
Arthur shakes his head.
Dai left instructions.
Alasdair shifts his jaw like he is carefully considering his next words but in the end all he does is nod. “Ok.”
He looks like he wants another cigarette. Dai used to rub his thumb against his pointer finger whenever he got a craving, the same way Alasdair is doing now. Arthur wonders if this is the kind of thing the people who love you notice and see mirrored in strangers once you are gone. He thinks he will be seeing Dai again but only in these small gestures, done by strangers, and his chest feels hollow.
“I’m…” Alasdair glances away. “I need to get home. If you need somewhere to spend the night…” He leaves the thought unfinished and shakes his head absent-mindedly. He does not strike Arthur as someone used to uncertainty. ”You shouldn’t stay here.”
Arthur would have to be completely out of his mind to accept his offer and he is, so he does. “Ok.”
Arthur packed some clothes and a book into a rucksack before riding north. He had also dallied by the closet before leaving for the station, second-guessing whether he should bring his winter coat or a parka with him, knowing Scotland would be all rain and high winds. Now his clothes and his coat lie on the floor of Dai’s hallway, dropped carelessly after he let himself in with the spare set of keys his brother had left with him the last time he’d come to see him in Kent. All he has are his wallet and his brother’s denim jacket, snatched from the coat rack at the last possible second as he rushed as he rushed to catch up with the emergency team trying to stabilise his brother on the landing. It is fleece-lined and worn in, and it smells like coffee. Dai had been working as a barista. Arthur will have to call his workplace in the morning and let them know that he is not coming in to work.
Alasdair tells him to wait by the door and comes back some indeterminate amount of time later with a sheath of paper and a coat Arthur had not noticed on him. He nods towards the parking lot and Arthur follows after him, calm and dazed and feeling more awake now. It is not until they are sitting in Alasdair’s car, a mud-splattered Mazda, that he asks. “Who were you there for?”
Alasdair’s mirrors are set for someone else’s height. He has to twist his waist, elbow against the backrest of his seat, to back up from the narrow parking spot.
“My brother,” he says, and offers nothing more. Arthur looks at the blurring light through the passenger window and does not pry.
The drive through the city is quiet and winds down as they cross from well-lit streets into the stillness of Leith. Alasdair’s flat is a sandstone tenement with weathered walls. He parks a street away and lets Arthur climb up the stairs ahead of him, silent and steady. There is one bedroom and a bathtub built into the wall of the bathroom. The lightbulb in the living room is missing and there is a pile of folded laundry on the living room couch, some more hung to dry by the cold radiator. It does not smell like Alasdair smokes indoors and the kitchen is clean aside from the dishes stacked in the sink. Alasdair pours them both tea, dark and hot, despite the lateness of the hour and offers Arthur a pair of sweatpants from the laundry pile and the first shower. When Arthur comes out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, damp and red-eyed, he finds Alasdair sitting listless on the couch, staring at the ceiling like there is an answer in the empty socket and the light he hasn’t gotten around to replacing.
The couch is not wide enough to host a sleeping adult for the night and they are both too tired for pretense. Arthur takes the left side of Alasdair’s bed and falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, lulled by the breathing of the stranger beside him and the unassuming warmth of his body.
They sleep in past midday and wake up comfortable in each other’s space, aware that the other is awake but unwilling to leave the bed and its comforts. Alasdair sighs tiredly into his pillow; Arthur cannot see his face but they are so close that he can feel the way his body seizes, like he is bracing himself for the day or balancing on a knife’s edge. Men like Alasdair, Arthur has learnt, are deceptively strong. It makes them seem prone to anger and incapable of sorrow.
Pressing himself to Alasdair’s back is no more inappropriate than inviting a stranger into your bed in a daze of grief. They are past the discomfort of overt over-familiarity. The tip of Arthur’s nose is cold and fits neatly into the crook of his shoulder. Alasdair’s sobs are silent and bitten-back. He breathes through his nose like he is not used to crying and only seems to catch his breath when Arthur’s hand finds the soft curve of his stomach over the cotton of his shirt. Arthur holds him without judgment and takes comfort in his heartbeat as it slows and steadies to match his. He keeps holding him long after that.
There is no awkward pause when Alasdair finally slips free from his hold to sit up in bed. Arthur just shifts to join him and then sits across from him in the kitchen to share burnt toast and tea like they have known each other for longer than a night. The ink has washed off of Alasdair’s hands and Arthur’s feel warm wrapped around the ceramic of a kitschy mug. They drive to the hospital and Arthur listens from the corner of the room as the story of Alasdair’s family unfolds in raised voices and accusations. Curious eyes in now familiar shades of hazel fall on him but his presence goes unexplained. Alasdair stands at arm’s reach from him when the shouting is done and offers no apologies or justifications. Arthur does not expect them and simply keeps him company, waiting in the hallway while Alasdair makes his peace with a man who shares his nose and the set of his brow and might never wake again. They find coffee and food in the late afternoon, and idle by a park until Arthur rallies the wherewithal to walk up the street to his brother’s flat to face the aftermath of his loss. He does not trade in his brother’s jacket for his own despite the early morning chill when they are finally ready to leave, Arthur’s rucksack in tow; he’s warm enough with Alasdair’s jumper tucked under the denim.
On his third morning imposing Arthur offers to leave which Alasdair dismisses with a grunt and a half-cooked argument under his breath. After that, Arthur does not bring it up again and for the rest of the week, while he settles Dai’s affairs, he shares his bed and does his share of the work around the house despite Alasdair's coarse insistence that he doesn’t have to. Arthur does not try to argue and just carries the laundry into the bedroom rather than leaving it to pile up in the living room. He cooks them at least two square meals when he has a mind to and lets himself sink into Alasdair’s bed in the early afternoon when the grief bears on him so heavy that he feels like he’ll never be able to breathe normally again. Alasdair comes home early once and finds him like that. Wordlessly, he sits on the edge of the bed and only after Arthur shifts does he reach down to bury his fingers in his hair. Some evenings they watch movies, others they spend apart. Alasdair rolls cigarettes out of habit, to scratch the itch, and leaves them by the windowsill to grow stale.
They get on with it. Slowly, unremarkably. Arthur hides his smiles and is slow to laugh until something settles in him and he can think of Dai without feeling the ground sway beneath his feet. Alasdair’s brother wakes up in gradual starts and in a year’s time relearns the words he needs to credit himself for his brother’s ease. Arthur graduates and chases jobs and slots his favourite books into Alasdair’s shelves. Alasdair makes space for them and space for his clothes in the closet and keeps him close at night in the bed they share.
Life carries on.