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There is … a feeling, sometimes, deep in his ribs, when Bertie looks at Harold Mukherjee. Something small and intangible, but there nonetheless. A little flicker of … of something, some great unknown.
He has some ideas, privately, about what it might be. Still, that doesn’t mean he has to acknowledge it.
He’s always known that he liked boys, and he made his peace with it long ago. But this particular boy is so incredibly out of his league (and therefore off-limits) that it doesn’t even bear thinking about.
“I’ll see you after Christmas, then?”
Speak of Harold Mukherjee, and he shall appear.
“Of course,” Bertie replies. “News Year’s Morn, you’ll have me back here again.” Harold arches one eyebrow – because of course he can do that – and Bertie grins.
“Well, alright. The day after New Year's Morn,” he amends, “I’ll need New Year’s Day to recover from the frankly tremendous hangover I plan to give myself in order to deal with my family.”
He’s only half-joking. If it weren’t for his sister Daisy, Bertie wouldn’t be setting foot in his family home for the Christmas holidays. You try looking your mother in the eye when your best friend killed the man she cheated on your father with.
He’d much rather be spending Christmas here, at Oxford, sitting by the old-fashioned fireplace with Harold and mercilessly attacking Harold’s younger brother and his friend – who both get to spend the holidays here, lucky bastards – with snowballs, than sitting next to his sister as they both pretend they don’t know they’re a “disgrace to the family name.” (In Bertie’s professional opinion, and he knows Daisy agrees, the family name did a perfectly good job disgracing itself even before both the heirs came out as gay, thank you very much.)
He checks his phone, and winces at the time.
“I have to go, or I’ll get caught in traffic and never make it home,” sighs Bertie. He doesn’t want to leave.
Harold gives him a crooked smile in return, and Bertie feels it again – like he’s standing right on the edge of a precipice and the smallest wrong step could send him plummeting over the edge, or like there’s tinder in his chest and someone is holding a match only a centimetre away.
“Drive safely, Bertie,” Harold says softly.
And the tinder ignites, a spark that quickly turns into a flame that spreads through his entire body. He thought it would feel like burning; a forest fire consuming and destroying him until he’s all burnt out. But now that he’s alight, Bertie realises he was wrong. This fire isn’t the sort that destroys forests and leaves nothing but ash behind. This is fireplaces and campfires and hot drinks, warming him from the inside out.
He thought it would feel like burning. Really, it feels like coming home.