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Joe let the door close without care for the colourful stained glass panels in the front door and the way they clinked when it slammed shut. He flinched back, internally chastising himself for doing exactly what he chided Andy for every time she came over for a visit or the odd book drop-off after hours. He dumped his bag onto the chair standing under the coat rail and tried to toe off his shoes without sitting and bending down which would, without doubt, further the beginning headache currently nestled behind his temples. On the shoe cabinet, next to the picture frame and the small, perpetually empty bowl that had been supposed to be used for the keys, was a stack of envelopes, leaning against the frame. The very first on top of the pile read ‘Human Resources.’ Joe groaned and sat down after all, the dress shoe laces adamant to stay in their tied form, even after he pushed his heel to the cabinet’s edge.
He left the shoes on the carpet, his eyes and mind too strained to care about the meticulous tidiness usually upheld in the hallway. There was no one else who could trip over them, after all, not once he was home on a Friday evening, shutting the world out for the weekend.
Joe left his rain-damp jacket on the coat rack, pulled the belt out of his suit trousers and flung it over his bag on the chair. The bag had dug into his shoulder towards the end of his trip home from the university, making it harder for him to hold back the headache that had emerged during the last stressful office hours he had squeezed in spontaneously when his students asked for extra time to ask questions. He had worked it out and ended up offering additional support and guidance to his students on their final term assignments and papers.
The kitchen was empty when he walked past the door that was left ajar, with a pot of leftover pasta and sauce still sitting on the stove. Joe stopped for a moment and filled up a glass of water for himself that he finished in one gulp and refilled it again immediately to take farther into the house. Moving through the hallway and into the living room, he relished in the feeling of the soft carpet underneath his feet.
They had decided on the room distribution long before they had signed the purchase agreement for the house. The kitchen, bathroom and living room had been easy enough but once it came to bedroom, workspace and the surplus room upstairs, they had needed to sit down together and discuss where they saw themselves going.
Joe sighed, exhaling through his nose. He was about to sit down on the sofa and open the latest monography on pre-renaissance art in the orient he had bought himself, when he heard the quiet shuffling of paper and muttered words from the semi-closed off corner they had designated as their working space.
‘Nicky, is that you? Are you home already?’ Joe opened the last door on the ground floor and stepped into the office.
The glass doors opened into the garden, allowing them the most beautiful view from their desks as they worked. They had different preferences, Joe was more likely to open the doors and windows as the sun set and warm, orange rays tinted the garden whilst Nicky loved the sound of heavy rain on the stone veranda and the solemn silence their little haven was enveloped in, as birds sought shelter and hid in the trees hedging off their property. He loved the smell of petrichor, the scent of fresh water on dusty, dry ground, let it waft into the house and let it settle into the carpet under his desk where it stuck for a few minutes even after the windows and doors were shut.
Their office was their shared workspace, put together by both of them which meant that Joe’s modern, minimalistic worktop sat across from Nicky’s old, dark, heavy, solid, antique pine bureau, a monstrosity Joe had called obnoxious repeatedly, but it had been Nicky’s first purchase after he got his habilitation. He had been so proud of his find in the farthest corner of the fifth antique shop he had dragged him to, his eyes lighting up and his words full of references of authors and writers, scholars he had read and studied, men and women who had sat at desks like the one he had moved into their office with Joe and Booker under rapid-fire complaints and Andy’s gleeful laughter when they set it down on Booker’s foot by accident. His corner and the shelves alongside the wall had turned into Nicky’s pride and joy, the piles and heaps of books that had found their place on the shelves around him, almost like children that he needed to keep close-by. He had added paintings in heavy frames on the wall where Joe went with photographs of their vacations together, one or two pictures that could be described as artistic and one shot of the two of them through a shower of petals and grains of rice, laughing and with their hands clasped tight.
‘Nicolò, don’t play hide and seek with me,’ Joe looked around the room, taking a deep breath of the fresh air he had had a lungful of on his way back home but that was made sweeter by the absence of rain pelting down on him and the additional security of Nicky’s smell that immediately filled his nose, ‘Nicky?’
From behind the pile of books and papers, with his glasses pushed into his hair and the tell-tale red impression of where he had dug the ball of his hand into his cheek, Nicky appeared, his lips captured by one of the secret smiles he kept for Joe and nobody else. His hair stuck up in places, a sign for the stress he had put himself through, long before pushing his glasses up to pinch the bridge of the nose. Joe loved that he possessed the ability and knowledge of years that allowed him to trace back the steps his husband had taken in his work that led him to look as dishevelled as he did.
‘Joe, you’re home late, what happened? Did they rope into extra office hours again?’ Nicky got up from his chair, dropping his glasses onto the pile of papers he had been grading all day, making use of the one day without classes he had per week.
‘They needed some advice on the paper and the proper citing. I couldn’t leave them hanging, they are all scholarship students, they’ve all worked hard to get to this point and it might even help them propel themselves into the more sought after programmes.’
‘Was Nile there with them?’
Joe watched his husband move through the room, free himself of the desk’s heavy shadow and step into the greying light from the outside that fell into the room and gave it the familiar, homely air. Nicky shook his head as he approached, tutting at him and extending a hand in what Joe knew to be the compassion of a fellow professor who had gone through his fair share over overly long days and the stress of tutelage that left him sucked dry and devoid of any life still remaining in his veins and soul.
‘Working for a university is offering yourself to a greedy, insatiable vampire,’ Nicky sighed and let his hand come to rest on his cheek with his thumb cradling the tired spot under his eyes, ‘welcome home, my love. It’s the weekend, what are your plans?’
‘Did you finish grading your papers?’ Joe pressed a fleeting kiss to the palm of the warm, soft hand caressing his cheek, ‘or do you have more work still?’
‘No, no, I’m done,’ Nicky let the single thumb stroke over his cheekbone, ‘there is nothing else to be done tonight, except getting some dinner into your stomach and you into bed, amore mio. You look so tired and all knocked out. Your heart is light enough to be hurt by as little as a butterfly toppling off a flower and yet, you chose this profession in which the days grow longer without a student assistant to take some of the work off your shoulders.’
‘You don’t have a student assistant, either,’ Joe murmured and leaned into his husband’s touch, the wedding band cool against his skin, ‘and you spent all day today grading papers. I had the diversion of teaching a class on the economical factor of Quattrocento art, at least.’
He slipped his hand under the soft blazer Nicky insisted on wearing around the house, even if he did not leave for the university. Something about keeping his life under control. Joe had accepted it the same way he accepted the antique furniture Nicky added to the house every now and then, with complete disregard for the design plan Joe had come up with when they moved in, and the way he accepted it when Nicky decided to grow out his hair. He had not come to regret that decision, after all.
‘I saw the pasta in the kitchen,’ he mumbled into Nicky’s shoulder, ‘was that for me?’
‘What do you think, can you eat right now?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Joe inhaled his smell, the relaxed, familiar scent that he came home to every day, ‘can I just take you upstairs for a bit?’
‘Of course. Do you want to take a shower or just curl up?’
In response, Joe tugged on the blazer and ran his fingers into Nicky’s hair, relishing how soft it was as it slipped through his fingers, ‘Let’s just lie down for a bit. You can make me re-heated pasta later.’
He let himself be steered around the room as Nicky closed the windows and the glass doors and grabbed his well-thumbed Thomas Hardy off his desk. Once he was convinced the windows were shut for the night, he took Joe’s hand in his and interlaced their fingers, pulling him away from the workspace they shared. Joe followed him easy enough.
Their upstairs space was almost exclusively their bedroom and the spare, open rooms with lots of light and long curtains to keep out the sun when they felt like it. The design process for their bedroom, their most private room and space had been a long one with their tastes clashing again and again and Nicky at one point jokingly threatening divorce over the size of their mattress. It had scared himself more than Joe who had laughed about it and cuddled him into the new bed they had bought and assembled to become their new safe haven. Including the perfect mattress.
‘There are design and history books all over the bed again,’ Nicky looped his arms around Joe’s waist, dragging their linked hands over his stomach until they were warm and flat over his shirt, and rested his chin on Joe’s shoulder, ‘we should start another tidy up session soon.’
‘Last time, we ended up hiding from our responsibilities in the closet,’ Joe leaned his head back onto Nicky’s shoulder. Immediately, Nicky’s lips found a spot of skin that had been obscured before and latched onto it, sucking a soft kiss into the gentle arch of his throat.
‘Never again the closet,’ he whispered, ‘now come on, take off that blasted suit and make yourself comfortable. I’ll move the books into the armchair. Or literally anywhere else.’
Joe mourned the moment he let go of him to gather arms full of books that they had collected and gathered, more likely to begin and read a new book only to place it on top of the finished one than to make the move downstairs to put it back onto the shelf. Over time, between their manic bouts of motivation to clear and tidy the house, they stacked books and magazines onto each other, mixing their own with ones from the library only to fall into a panic when a late notice reached them. It worked for them, the constant to and fro of new books acquired and old ones rediscovered, a system of always changing and never-settling reading material that found its way into their classes and lectures, sometimes with post-it notes in the middle of a chapter that reminded the other to drink water or eat something.
Nicky moved around the room whilst Joe changed into his favourite sweatpants and a rather worn, soft t-shirt that made him feel warm immediately. He dropped a few books and crumpled clothes onto the beanbag Andy and Quynh had given them for their fifth wedding anniversary. They rarely used it except for the odd late evening when one of them moved there to watch the other get ready for bed with a good view into the adjoining bathroom. Joe sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling his feet up under his body.
‘Nicky, hurry up, please,’ he pouted and rocked back and forth on the mattress, ‘I’m internally combusting over here.’
‘Give me a second,’ Nicky took off his blazer and hung it over the backrest of the armchair under the rooflight before pulling his shirt over his head, leaving him in the t-shirt he wore underneath.
He, too, changed into a pair of washed-out sweatpants that was only an arm’s length away from the bed anyway. With his arms unburdened of the books he padded across the floor, steps silenced by the thick socks that kept his feet warm. The mattress dipped a little as Nicky sat down and scooted back until his shoulders leaned against the headboard.
‘Come on then,’ he opened up his arms, ‘take a break with me. Rest before we reheat pasta in an outrageous crime.’
Joe exhaled softly and leaned back, positioning himself between Nicky’s arms until he was propped up against his chest and nestled his head in the crook of his neck, ‘Do you still have that volume of poetry nearby?’
‘On the bedside table.’
‘Will you read to me?’
Nicky grabbed the book from the side and opened it onto a page marked with a bookmark Joe had brought back from a study trip to Paris. He cleared his throat, looped one arm around his shoulder and threaded his fingers into Joe’s hair.
‘I would like to watch you sleeping. / I would like to watch you, / sleeping. I would like to sleep / with you, to enter / your sleep as its smooth dark wave / slides over my head,’ Nicky’s voice reverberated in his chest as he cited the poem, Joe could feel it against his ear.
He crumpled against his husband’s chest, surrendering himself to the low rumble of a practised reader, melting into the embrace that warmed him to his bones. Nicky pressed his nose to the back of his neck where some skin was still exposed above the hem of the shirt as he recited more verses of the poem. Joe held onto the feeling as he felt himself drift away, held secure in his husband’s arms. He forgot about the papers Nicky still had to grade, his own lesson plans and the books still waiting to be read.
He fell asleep knowing that no stress, no headache and no unwanted attention would come to him in Nicky’s arms as he leaned back against the broad shoulders that sheltered him from the world.