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He thought it was a dream, that first night.
After the fourth and final round of the evening, when they curled together beneath the diplomatic duvet, Arthur just so happened to notice it. Usually he was too distracted by the itchy stuff on his chest or the silk of his forearms, but something compelled him to snuggle into Francis’s shoulder. And there, on his jaw, he saw it.
A silver hair.
A tiny white ghost in the shadow of the bedroom.
He almost said something right there. Couldn’t have told you what, in retrospect. A scornful brag? A general PSA? What’s this, then?
Francis turned his head to brush his lips over Arthur’s temple, and his snores eventually put Arthur to sleep.
It didn’t cross his mind the next morning. He woke to an empty bed and the muffled clatter of breakfast’s birth in the kitchen. Late, summery dawn turned the place peach, and what a beautiful creature Francis was with his paint-spattered trousers and his shirt only half-buttoned. Whisking eggs and humming through the static of a French station the radio could only occasionally be persuaded to receive.
Arthur stood behind him and Francis obligingly leant back into his touch. Several wavy locks had to be tugged aside before Arthur could bite the back of his neck. Francis laughed and Arthur made to nuzzle into him, addicted to the sound.
There it was. The hair.
Arthur froze. Not a dream, then. A real silver hair, so much easier to see in the light of day. So much more damning. Francis was only a year older, after all. If doomsday had come for him, then Arthur’s couldn’t be far behind.
But how had there been no announcement, no production? Francis had given him a report for every torn nail or inconvenient pimple he’d ever suffered. And nothing for this? Arthur hadn’t given the topic much thought, in honesty, but now he considered it anticlimactic that Francis hadn’t shrieked like a housewife upon discovering a mouse. Then Arthur would rush into the bathroom and find his beloved twisted to observe his handsome face and the intruder which threatened to taint it.
Actually, he’d have to do quite the contortion to see that bit of his reflection. It was tucked underneath his jaw, close to the edge, a place Arthur wasn’t even sure Francis looked at when trimming his stubble. So maybe Francis just hadn’t seen it yet. Which meant . . . he should tell him, right?
Francis glanced at him, a touch of confusion to his brow. At this angle, the hair disappeared. At once there and not there. Schrödinger’s disheartening precursor to graying at thirty.
Arthur nipped Francis’s bottom lip. He laughed again and nudged Arthur out of the way so he could pour the egg into the pan. Arthur, when asked to hand over the spatula, spanked Francis with it instead. They only just managed to save the egg before they became liberally distracted on the kitchen table and distractedly liberal up against the French doors in the living room. A trio of sparrows observed from the garden. Arthur couldn’t imagine they’d take offense but threw them his crusts in case they had. Francis smiled at him from where he sprawled on the sofa.
Arthur should have found all that golden skin spread out so lavishly cause for continuation, but from here he could see it. The wee silver bastard.
He wasn’t going to tell him.
How could he? Francis would panic, probably, insist on a full-body examination for more proof of aging, maybe, and he’d obsess over it, and what if he got it in his head that Arthur was looking for unattractive traits? As an excuse to cause an argument, or make him feel crap, or . . . well, it was worst-case scenario thinking, but what if Francis thought Arthur would leave him over this?
Sickly hypotheticals, but also: thoughts become things. Arthur knew full well how a mindset could take over a person. No, he wouldn’t tell him. He’d just let Francis find it himself. Bound to happen, sooner rather than later. All that time he spent at the mirror, in the bathroom and the kitchen and the car? It would be within the day if not the week. Arthur would pretend to be shocked, tease him a bit, share a brief chat on mortal misgivings, then cure him with a quick shag to remind him that there were definitely benefits to not being a teenager anymore.
Yes, that’s what he would do.
Except it wasn’t, because the day passed by without incident. Then the week. Then the next. Even when Francis came back from his studio with baby blue smudges on his chin, and Arthur waited with bated breath . . . only for Francis to come out, sans paint, and kiss Arthur’s nose, among other things.
Arthur hadn’t topped for days. Seeing Francis tip his head back into the pillows, baring his lovely throat and bringing that cursed hair into full view, was enough to put Arthur off entirely. How was he supposed to stay focused when that white hair was judging him? Taunting him? Not that Francis was complaining, of course. And not that Arthur was, either.
It wasn’t a big deal or anything.
It was just bloody intolerable.
He thought about asking Francis’s—and, by extension or proxy or perhaps technicality, Arthur’s—friends about it, but quickly gave up on that idea. Gilbert had been born grey, so he was no help, and Antonio was about as observant as the condom wrappers that perpetually collected under the bed. And if either of them had seen the hair, surely they’d have jostled Francis with their shoulders and clapped him on the back and performed those other rituals of masculine celebration Arthur had for whatever reason never been invited to. So they were useless.
He had no other options, when it came down to it. They were only vaguely in touch with Francis’s mother, who would quite possibly react even worse to the news than her son. Arthur didn’t know the art therapy group well enough to broach such a subject with any of them. The doctor? Far too trivial to waste her time. Francis’s hairdresser? No, he wasn’t seeing her anymore, not after what she’d done to his sideburns last time. Who, then?
No one. After a month in the hair’s presence, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
He waited, after the gasping and groaning became sighing and snoring, until he could be sure Francis wouldn’t wake. Then he slowly untangled their limbs and propped himself up on an elbow.
Francis didn’t move. With his head turned to the side like that, the hair was in full view. So white it seemed almost to glow in the moonlight filtering through the blinds. The enemy. Target acquired. Pursue and destroy.
Arthur made a claw of his hand, then paused to consider what he was about to do. Was it even possible? He’d never dealt with a grey hair. Were they dead? His brother was the scientist, not him. He imagined it like pruning a flower. Pick off the ugly bits so the beautiful ones could flourish. Was it the same principle?
He gingerly pinched the hair and pulled. His fingers came away empty. Not an easy pluck, then. Damn it. Could he sneak into the bathroom for the tweezers? No, Francis would surely wake if he felt the bed go empty. It was an endearing ability, before. Now it seemed a curse. Arthur felt rather impotent.
Maybe if he applied pressure along with a twisting yank . . .
He was five attempts in when Francis started to stir, but it felt like he was making progress. One more go, so close!
Francis grabbed his hand. “What are you doing?”
Frustration ignited Arthur’s embarrassment. “I almost had it, just let me—”
“Had what?” Francis grasped his wrist in one hand and flicked on the bedside table lamp with the other. “What are you doing?”
Oh, to hell with it. Arthur shook his head in surrender. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you.” He couldn’t bear it anymore. “You have a grey hair.”
Francis gave a bleary blink. “Do I? Where?”
Arthur dabbed at his jaw. “Just there. It’s driving me mad.”
Francis, to his astonishment, didn’t fling off the covers and rush to the mirror. He just raised one eyebrow slightly in that knowing way that always infuriated Arthur and asked, “The hair was? Or not telling me?”
“Well.” Arthur struggled with that one a moment. “. . . Both.”
A smirk curled. “Arthur.”
“I don’t care!” Surely he didn’t sound as hysterical out loud as he did in his own ear. Something to do with reverberations through the body, that had to be it. “I don’t care what you’ve got on your face. You know that. I just didn’t want to send you round the bend. And here I am.”
Francis’s smile softened. “Here you are.” He twined their fingers. “Waiting for me.”
Arthur observed how their matching gold bands caught the lamplight, then met his gaze uneasily. “But you don’t care? At all? Really?”
Francis shrugged against his pillow. “It’s not my first. The others I plucked, but maybe I will keep this one.” He pressed his lips to Arthur’s knuckles. “Since you care for it so much.” Arthur bristled until Francis laughed. “C’est la vie. But you know . . .” He shifted closer, so the tips of their noses brushed and he was all Arthur could see. Into his mouth, Francis murmured, “If I have to get old, at least I am doing it with you.”
Arhtur kissed him hard enough that the bed knocked the table. As light danced over them, he wondered if perhaps even this could be a dream, and how he could ever be sure it wasn’t, and—no. Quite enough of that.
If it was a dream, he didn’t plan on waking up anytime soon.
The End.