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Public transport had always made Canute feel either sick or sleepy. There was no middle ground, he was either lulled into a half dream like state, or breathing deeply to stop the rising tide of acid licking at the back of his throat. But this day, a hot day, a hazy day in the precipice of summer it was both. Sickness wurred inside of Canute’s stomach like the nutribullet of his boyfriend on a health kick and his eyes lulled in the heat of the tube.
Sunday nights were always strange, as if with each station the train would pass into another dimension. Friday nights and Saturday nights were full of life, sometimes it smelled like beer and vomit and other times men would hit on him until he opened his mouth and a low creek of a voice would tell them to piss off. But on the whole, those days were nice. It was always fun to witness life, be it a hen party or a bunch of students drinking from crinkly plastic bottles pretending that what they were drinking was nothing other than lemonade. Monday mornings were different, they were depressing. Working folk were stuffed into the moving steel cans, and would sway like seaweed in the current with every motion. They were all packed so tightly if there was a particularly hard stop and one person went stumbling down the carriage, mutterting a littanly of apologies then so was the next person, and the next domino in front of them.
But Sundays, Canute couldn’t even begin to describe a Sunday. There was something that happened around 7pm every Sunday night. Maybe it was something in the air, a weekend somewhat devoid of smog in central London. He thought about that film, The Mist but rather than the monsters appearing in the mist, they were left in its wake. He stared at one of the monsters, and his gut not only sank, it was being drowned. Someone had tied weights to his stomach and held it down with two large hands around it’s throat. The monster was compact with eyes that glowed red when the sunset caught them in the spaces between tunnels. Canute shifted in unease and rolled his fingers into loose fists on his knees. He looked around the tube car, everyone else blissfully unaware of his impending terror on the District and Circle Line.
Canute calmed his breathing and looked peered over at the man, the monster and could feel time itself being sucked from the moving tin room. It sucked out precisely three years and eighteen days, right back to the first time he’d seen the man, the monster. He hadn’t felt this way three years and eighteen days ago. The tube had been busier and the light that filled it between the spaces of people was white hot, rather than the sickly red that filled it now.
The man had been a comfort back then, even when he didn’t know his name. He’d clung to the pole in the centre of the tube, and like now, Canute had looked at him a little way away from him on the seats beyond the fold out ones. The man’s shoulders were tight and hunched and while he wasn't perturbed by the fact, it was clear that he wasn’t comfortable. When the train raced overground the man had answered his phone.
“Hi Mom”, the man had spoken in a Danish accent so close to his own they could have grown up together but they didn’t.
‘ Ah ’, Canute had thought to himself, three years and eighteen days ago. They were the same, he and this compact little stranger that had begun scowling at the passengers that bumped into him. “ Watch it !” had been their first words to one another but Canute followed with an apology in Danish, that sent the stranger’s scowling eyes owlish and twinkling.
They’d exchanged numbers and quickly bonded over the fact they were two norsemen in London. The stranger, Thorfinn didn’t even speak much English despite coming to work for his uncle here. He’d always told Canute that he didn’t need to speak it, that he wouldn’t be there for long. But, like their relationship, his abilities grew quickly and intensely and Thorfinn’s demeanour on the wonky streets of London grew from hostile to ambivalent.
Those were the best days, when the burning tree’s bled into the late Autumn sun, where the buildings cast long shadows, swarthing the people that walked below them. The air may have been bitter and the sky lit up with a thousand colours of the 5th of November, but this was far from the autumn of their relationship. They spent them together, either bundled in duvets watching a horrible film that Thorfinn had picked out for the two of them to watch, stood in the kitchen talking about home whilst Canute made soup from scratch, or even holding hands while they made their way down the river to a pub that Thorfinn had read about on Reddit.
Then Thorfinn’s autumn sweater was bundled in the back of Canute's closet. It was spring as soon as it had been winter. Thorfinn befriended a northern man whilst at work, a goofy man named Einar who was as good with his hands as Thorfinn was. Thorfinn seemed happy, by the sixth month mark. The city was infamously lonely but Thorfinn had managed to escape that. Canute however had become lonely. As Thorfinn’s attention had shifted from him he’d grown distant from himself and bitter in the fact that Thorfinn’s light was not only warming him anymore.
It changed far quicker than Canute could actually recall. One day they were arguing about getting Korean food for dinner and the next Thorfinn had simply acquiesced without a bite back. Thorfinn became uncharacteristically pleasant and easy to be around. It was especially unnerving considering that Thorfinn regularly started fights with men 3 times his size. Their relationship suddenly felt like guarding a flickering flame in a hail storm and Thorfinn did nothing but look at it as the wind whipped around Canute’s freezing fingers.
Canute ended it, one day when he had come back from university and Thorfinn’s hair was still damp from the shower and the steam still lingered in the air. It went without a fight and that’s what hurt the most. They’d found an oasis in the lonely desert of the city together, and Thorfinn simply said ‘oh’ , when the last drop of water had dried.
As much as Canute wanted it to stop and mourn, life carried on. The traffic didn’t stop, visitors didn’t cancel their flights nor did the guards outside Buckingham Palace wear black in mourning of his loss. Life carried on, relentlessly. Thorfinn left England to stay with his Mother in Iceland. Canute resented the fact that this had all felt like the Earth had been shot down from the solar system to him, and it seemed like just another Tuesday to Thorfinn. That was until the phone call. A shaky of a green phone on a black backdrop, the time, 1:03am nestled in the corner. For a while Canute had regretted not answering that call, the sliding doors of fate closed when he made that decision and all he wanted to do was pry them open again. But soon after then, it felt like the train had left the station. For the first time in months he felt content, happy to move onward, happy just in the knowledge that on occasion Thorfinn still thought of Canute as he had thought of him.
And then, once the wilted head of the flower had been plucked away two new heads grew in its place. Canute watched online as Thorfinn found love in a dark haired girl with a permanent scowl but with kind eyes. He even found love himself, with Edmund, a man far kinder and better suited to himself. The flowering hydra only existed because of those few months they’d spent together and over time, those two flowers would become six. The bush would grow until the flowers became so lush and heavy the stalks could barely stand. That was the feeling Canute now carried with him, not anger or a deep yearning, but a saudade contentment and gratitude for the seeds they had planted together.
Finally, Edmund poked at Canute’s leg and he looked up to see the platform of their stop flicker into view. They passed Thorfinn, who’s once monstrous presence was now calming as he tapped absently on his phone. Looking towards the doors Thorfinn’s face twitched, a small but still noticeable, smile pulling at his lips.