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Blood spouting from Andrew’s nose blended with the chlorine as he lurked underwater, waiting for Baz to surface with the ball. Pride wasn’t Andrew’s sole sin, yet he felt its wound deep in his bones. All that extra mass he’d put on in prison, it helped to hide the shame and agony behind the muscle as he always did. It sank him to the bottom of the Cody compound’s pool. Bubbles and blood were the sign of life he allowed the as he watched it waft thinly like smoke from a dying campfire.
Movement on the surface distorted his already fuzzy view. Yet, amidst the foaming splashes and ripples, the blobs of colour above, he found a familiar silhouette, delicate skin wrapped emerald and burnt orange.
His feet kicked off the tiles, propelling him to the surface with a pant.
“Jesus, finally,” Craig boomed between sips of beer, “Thought you were gonna drown yourself, sore loser.”
Had his older brother’s attention not been preoccupied, Craig Cody would be on the receiving end of a particularly brutal stare from Andrew, perhaps a headlock whilst underwater next time they played water basketball.
Fortunately for him, Andrew wiped his hand down his face and let that be the only obstacle between him and you standing at the end of the pool. Your smile matched your eyes: softened enough to coax him over, subtle in the brash machismo on display from the other Codys. Your light jewel toned clothes wafted in the breeze that seemed to follow you around, the alluring scent that circled your presence often rendering Andrew to the role of a fruit fly hovering awkwardly beside you.
His eyes fixed on you as he swam to the side. He was still catching his breath as he pushed up; you were too as you took in his freckled arms dappled with pool water. He took the step towards you, mindful not to drip on your clothes.
Your head tilted, “Your nose.”
“’S nothing,” he replied instantly.
Still, your hand glided to smear the iron traces from his lips. His heaving breaths punctuated against your thumb. Then you offered him his towel.
“I’ll get you some ice.”
Your thumb and forefinger pressed gently at the corner of his mouth and the underside of his jaw respectively, not worthy of being titled a pinch, just an affectionate second of pressure so he could feel the proof that you were there. Andrew accepted his towel and mopped up his face and hair as he followed you towards the house, for once ignoring the comments Craig was making behind him.
Called to action was how Andrew was expected to function in his family. A pitbull on a leash occasionally let off after winding itself up into a frenzy, the ground was dusty and absent of green grass from where he’d paced out his impatience and desire for more. As an adult, the leash had to be replaced with a chain because Andrew broke free from under their thumb despite always dutifully returned every time.
Yes, he came when you called and when you didn’t too. No, it was more like a call to motion at your mere mention, your potential presence. Distance kept people safe from him, yet he couldn’t help but sidle up to you. After years of pining like a forest for unconditional love from everyone in his life, you were the first to give it back. Never before had Andrew been grateful to run an errand for Smurf than when he was asked (told) to deliver stolen goods to Gia and met her new assistant: your sweet steady self.
Words were meagre and measly in comparison to how he felt and he was never good at talking about his feelings to begin with. Why try now to define all that you were to him? He’d rather show you and letting you care for him was one of many ways.
He waited by the sliding door, aware that Smurf would complain about him dropping all over the wood flooring and honestly? He couldn’t be asked to face her more than he had to today. Still, his yearning to be back at your side was as strong as it was every day in prison.
Thankfully, the ice pack you’d placed under the peas was easily retrievable. You nudged the door closed and glided back over to his side.
“Thank you,” Andrew murmured, his hand curving around yours as he pressed the pack against his face.
You let him borrow your hand for the moment. “No problem. Is it okay if I keep you company? I’m working from home today.”
Your request both soured and thrilled Andrew’s heart that you would make yourself a home here. That wasn’t what you meant at all though, of course; your home was with him, not Smurf’s place.
So, Andrew agreed.
During lunch the day prior, you were discreetly sidling off to the bathroom. The more you could deny, the better. Plus, this was a cash payday, not high-end items needing to be fenced. No job for you.
Andrew observed your disappearance, his head turning all the way with eyes still like an owl to keep you in his view before rolling back languidly to the topic Baz had broken with them: an accomplice on a potential job. He was already insisting that he had a rapport with Nicky’s father and the target: cash meant for overseas. His scowl twisted his nose mouth in disgust at Baz’s plan to shit where they ate. J’s absence was louder; how could Baz justify trusting a kid they’d known for a week and a military man he’d been besties with for even less?
So, when the idea of targeting a new build estate cropped up from Deran, the change in topic was welcomed by half the table.
“I can do it,” Pope stated, not volunteered or offered, stated.
“We need precision,” Baz said, his expression hiding none of his exasperation, “Not a bulldozer.”
Andrew’s brow was heavy as he stared down his so-called brother. It took Baz a few more seconds to continue with his bravado since none of Andrew’s blood stood up for him. They were scared again of him, regretting his early release.
“We’re not cutting you out, Pope. Just hang back.”
Relegated to garden duty without a home to call his own, Andrew glared at the fountain that was still rotting despite his years in prison. Years to do something about that piece of shit garden ornament and his brothers had done nothing. Spoiled brats. Meanwhile, the timeline of this job was taking far too long and placed weight on an unnecessary risk. He’d had an eye on a spot by the ocean that you had commented on during your second date four years ago. Who knew how long that would still be available?
A flash of amethyst moved back around, and Andrew’s spine lengthened as you returned to his side. Andrew swapped his plate over for yours, having saved you the slice of pie with the flakiest pastry.
"Thanks-"
A hand on his bicep lengthened his break from demolishing the final signs of the old water feature, “Hey, handsome?”
Andrew hated how he tensed up instinctively, that it took longer than it did before prison for his muscles to lose their stiffness. You, on the other hand, showed no apparent discomfort at his presence or his reaction.
“C’mon,” you patted his sweat stained skin, “Time for a top up.”
Andrew watched you return to your lounger before he rested the sledgehammer down like a baby in the crib. He didn’t tell you that he’d neglected to put on the suntan lotion you’d bought, choosing instead to rectify that error by allowing you to help him. That in and of itself was a choice that had taken him four months to make the first time.
“Bit cold,” you warned him, your palms thoroughly coated in sun lotion as he perched in front of you.
Andrew’s back was touched first on his traps, the heat of your hands mitigating the chill of the lotion as he felt the path of your fingertips kneading into his muscles.
“This okay?” you asked.
Grunting in reply, Andrew didn’t have to wait long for you to continue. Yet he was still impatient and was about to turn his head to prompt you again within a second of his reply. Luckily, you picked up where you left off in that next second and Andrew was able to zero in on the path your palms paved. First, down his biceps, cupped hands braceletting around his limbs all the way down to his fingers. You weaved your own between his and squeezed as if it would hasten the absorption rate, then resumed down his back. Slippery, soothing, you spread safety across his skin while Andrew held his back straight rather than arching away from your touch.
He reached behind him for the tube when your fingers fell just from just above his belt. The lotion made a childish sound as it landed in his palm.
His voice was soft, a little rasp accompanying it, when he told you, “Turn around.”
This was far better; he was more in control here, though not total. He massaged the lotion into your skin whilst intrusive thoughts of what harm he’d done to others within arm’s length of him swarmed like hornets. Their buzzing, he tried to tune out into white noise, focusing instead on avoiding the hems of your clothes and taking care around your hairline.
Your head leaned back and forth depending on where he was touching you. It left your neck exposed, trusting his hands that were more often than not encrusted with ruby rivets of blood and garnet scabs.
“Not done,” he said as you opened your mouth to thank him.
He carefully rotated you on the sun lounger. A small smile balanced on your lips as he then worked around your upturned face tactfully. You impishly wrinkled your nose when he reached it, then you let him rotate your head by your chin, keeping your eyes closed and vulnerable even when his fingers wrapped around your neck. Another intrusive thought stung Andrew’s mind; he swallowed and kept his hands moving. Whilst he smoothed across your chest, he felt the evidence of your life, his effect on you, rise and fall beneath his touch.
Your breath sucked sharply in your stomach as his touch tickled. He apologised.
“It’s okay,” you reassured and you thanked him as well once he declared you were ready to return to the sun.
Then Andrew squirted a dollop on his palms and rubbed them harshly together before scrubbing his face with it.
You pouted playfully at him, “I coulda done that. See, you missed a spot.”
You leant up and kissed his lips. It was brief, too brief, so Andrew chased your lips for two more and a third after you’d taken over to lotion up his chest, squeezing the fat and unflexed muscles. Your touch didn’t necessarily stain away the ones he’d suffered and the ones he hadn’t. Andrew still chased it when his body warned against it, hackles raised like guns at a knife fight. He mapped out the pathway of your care and was for once grateful that his body had forgotten how to display his arousal.
He was soon collecting his sledgehammer once more. It faltered in his grip at first. But, after a few good whacks, the handle was secure.
For the afternoon, you watched him from the sun lounger between working on your laptop, later from in the pool where you floated and swirled about. Rhythmic strikes of metal on stone matched Andrew’s grunts of effort. Occasionally, he paused to look at you typing away. It was as if you sensed he was watching you; you glanced up to flash a quick but sincere smile his way before getting back onto whatever you were organising.
His sledgehammer was a metronome against the last of the fountain’s foundations. Once it was complete, the rolling of his wheelbarrow’s wheel against the grass and concrete replaced it as he relocated the waste into the skip that he’d hired out front.
Returning to the yard for the ninth time, he heard your voice encroaching through the garden gate:
“I’m vouching for them. Care to explain why my word is suddenly worthless?”
The voice on the other end of the call was muffled.
You were pacing before the pool, your route taking up a few feet like a caged tiger. Except Andrew knew better than to compare you to that. You’d never let yourself be taken down to that position. The careful, limited space your feet found meant limited space to occupy and annoy your mind.
A flash of solitary confinement crossed Andrew’s gaze. The absence of sleep still haunted his bones and his nights. His days, yes, but with you here, less so.
You hung up on whoever was bothering you and took to staring at the water sloshing in the basin at your feet. Its turquoise hue reflected against your shins, rippling like a breezy sheet on the washing line. Andrew, despite all his sweat, slotted up behind you.
Leaning your head against his, you enjoyed Andrew pressing a kiss to your head. Your deep breaths slowed the cortisol to a stop in both your brain and his just enough to settle you both down.
Then he slid from you and retrieved his wheelbarrow.
At some point, he stopped for lunch with his family (when you asked). You sat beside him, something of yours always close enough for him to recognise: your hand holding your fork near his fist, your elbow resting on the chair’s arms pointing to your true north of his torso, your knees spread out and just grazing hairs against his own.
It grew foggier after that, especially with the vomiting. Grounding him through it was your hand in his hair, its print in the glass’s condensation that he used to swill his mouth out. Food poisoning wasn’t an option, not with everyone else hunky dory after Smurf’s meatloaf. A glance at you and Andrew felt assured in his suspicions; concern and caution were clear on your face as you handed him his toothbrush and toothpaste.
“I’ll drive you,” he offered, out of breath, when later that afternoon you reminded him that you were going to an online auction.
Knowing Andrew wouldn’t relent for his health when he could offer himself to you in any way, you smiled and shook your head, “How about I come back and pick you up? We can go to mine.”
Andrew nodded, accepting a peck from you and watching the space you leave behind. Your walk was a little lopsided, a stone in your sandal you’re trying to shake without halting pace.
He had missed watching you work, really work – on the jewels you dismantled and masked for sale abroad. You made it look as such on the few occasions Andrew had seen you work: the precision of a screwdriver and the magnifying headset of a fly, amplifying your eyes for you to angle the soldering iron just right and for Andrew to take in every brushstroke of life in your irises.
He continued his efforts in the garden, his grunts louder as his chest surged through cycles of oxygen, his incense driving him. Bitterness rooted deep inside him bloomed like foxgloves as he battered the final foundations of the fountain.
“Pope.” Smurf’s voice punctured the air. “Baby.”
Andrew continued to toss the broken stones into the wheelbarrow.
“The neighbours will complain.”
A gruff huff ceased Andrew’s movements. In one motion, he stood up to face Smurf. His glowering stare didn’t openly dissuade her when it latched onto her. Her arms remained folded, her stance remained entitled, her expectations remained unreachable. Andrew knew he was being closely monitored, more than he was before he went to prison. No doubt when Baz showed up next, he’d have some questions about how he was feeling to gauge when whatever they were sticking in his food had stopped making him nauseous.
Without dropping his gaze from his mother, Andrew let the rock in his hand drop into the wheelbarrow, casting dust and rubble into the grass. Then he prowled back up to the house.
“Go clean up, it’s almost dinner time.”
Andrew didn’t stomach dinner for long, though it felt more lingering from earlier and exacerbated by the absence of a distraction. To fill his time, he cleaned up after dinner, scrubbing the countertops within an inch of their lives.
He didn’t pay mind to when it got dark, only when the cleaning products were eating into his skin because Craig had gotten water inside the marigold gloves and not replaced them. Cool water didn’t help. Instead, its bite wriggled under Andrew’s skin and spread up until his clothes stifled him. Entering the garden, Andrew stripped off his clothes in the glow of the pool’s lamps and folded them upon the lounger you’d spent the day upon. His hands clenched around the sledgehammer and he swung it up across his shoulders. His bare body basked in the sea air that reached even this far inland; it stabilised his stomach and quenched his brain’s stagnant atmosphere. A chill brought from the Pacific kept him alive.
The glass door slid open behind him, accompanied by your voice, “Just me.”
Andrew kept his face turned to the sky. Yet the sparse hairs scattered across his torso prickled at the traffic of air, bringing a twitch from a supressed shiver when you wrapped an arm around his waist. The sleeve of your robe was much less preferable to your skin, yet it annoyingly prevented Andrew from being overwhelmed by you.
From his early twenties, Andrew thought that touch was something he’d never enjoy again with the only person that could comfort him with a hug or a hair sweep… gone. Truly gone now, that arc unamended and forever shut off to him. He was presented with that agony in full force when he found an echo of his twin standing in his old bedroom, the ex-con still ignorant to the news of the total upheaval of his old life until there was silence after his question “she’s here?” No tears permitted for the exiled Cody, Andrew’s loss took seed in his heart the moment he chose to get back into the car that day. Her death was tinnitus in his ears, the force behind each punch, the stone in his heart.
“She is beautiful.”
A frown crossed Andrew’s face as he lowered the sledgehammer to his side, “‘She’?”
You nodded upwards, “The moon.”
She was half-hidden in grey clouds, but you were in awe regardless.
There was still so much for you to know and Andrew to learn about each other. Maybe one day, his words wouldn’t stopper up his throat with the threat of hysterics, and his fists wouldn’t curl up and hone on the nearest hard surface for physical pain to outweigh his emotional load.
Andrew found himself pulling your wrists further around him until your front was anchored against his back. Then he waited for you to pull away.
You kissed his shoulder from behind him instead, causing it to slump, and your hands locked around his front like a belt, tightening your hold upon him. You could tell at least that Andrew was agitated about the upcoming job and the outsider they were bringing in. No offence taken, you were more of a peripheral these days.
Your hand flattened against his abs, “How you feeling now?”
“Hmm.”
Turning in your arms, Andrew felt your warmth through the satin of your sapphire robe that scrunched between your bodies. You had no qualms about his nudity; you left your arms under his and hooked your hands upon his shoulders.
The weight of you after three years was underestimated by his psyche. But tonight, Andrew could trace the bumps of your skin, the texture of your hair, the wattage of your smile, your lip balm-stained kisses, and he could feel his truth being extricated from the depths of the archives he’d sealed off for survival.
Your hand found the nape of his neck again, encouraging a longer length from the near curls growing there. You believed him, believed he could do whatever he needed to, no matter how long it took.
You’d taken a few half-steps back amidst his staring. Andrew didn’t know how many, but he noticed now that he was following you to keep you in his arms. If this was still his home, he’d carry you to bed.
Instead, you handed him his clothes – folded on a sun lounger where he’d left them – one by one until he was deemed publicly acceptable.
Another blur began. You took the driver’s seat, Andrew opening the door for you. The handle felt faraway. Music low through the speakers barely reached him across the journey
Inside, with sore arms, Andrew picked you up koala style. You giggled as you clung to him, landing on the barstool.
“Andrew,” you cooed when he knelt to remove your shoes, not annoyed at his efforts, just sheepish.
He placed your shoes back on the rack, his hand finding your exposed knee quickly and thumbing across the cap.
“Can you stay?” You already know the answer and so did Andrew. You were just letting him know you wanted him to stay without overwhelming him, a little reminder like a chocolate on a hotel pillow.
Andrew kissed your brow, inspiring your eyes to droop closed, “I’ll shower when you’re in bed.”
Reverently removing your robe, he stripped you down to your skin and cornered you into your bedroom. He watched you fold yourself amidst the covers and surrounded you with his hands pressed either side of your legs until you sank into the pillows.
“Hurry back,” you nudged your nose to him good-humouredly.
Andrew took that request to heart, almost as much as his vitriol for mess, scrubbing himself raw from any lasting residue from his garden toil. His skin was pink to complement his hair by the time he escaped the unfurling steam from your en-suite.
You coaxed him with equal devotion to lay down beside you, curling into him and cooling him down. His hand pushed past your underwear and circled the wispy hairs growing there.
It was not an odd sight at night for you to open one eye and rediscover Andrew watching you like a hawk without anything to prove to you. Unable to rest himself, Andrew did as he’d done many times. He contented himself once again tonight as you drift off to sleep by tracking the movement of your chest.