TAKE IT EASY • TC ✔️

25: Borderline

When Lucia woke up the next morning, Timmy wasn't there. Or maybe it was safer to say that she woke up the next morning because Timmy wasn't there.

He was in the shower, and Lu could hear the sputtering of the boiler as it started up, the harsh pelting of water on the glass shower door and the slightly softer drum of water on skin. Julius scooted up the bed and began a series of rough little licks on Lucia's face, which she fended off half-heartedly, giving him a little scratch behind the ears.

When Lucia stretched her legs out across the bed as she had done when she got into it the night before, she was pleasantly surprised by the warmth still clinging to sheets where Timmy had slept. She reached out a hand and ran it over the warm spot. Shifted over so she was laying in Timmy's half of the bed, and pulled the covers up over her shoulders, burrowing down into the faint indent his body had left behind.

Lucia didn't remember a lot about the previous night. Everything had been drifting in and out of reality, and it was hard to distinguish where actuality ended and her dreams began. However she did remember a few things. The initial shock of seeing Timmy by the window. The lean, slim figure he cut as he stood there. Pulling back the covers on the other side and hoping dazedly that she hadn't made the wrong choice. Waiting for him to decline, to leave the other half of the bed empty, to smile and shake his head, to close the door behind him.

Remembered feeling the bed dip beside her, remembered his laboured breaths, remembered the soft, slight scratchiness of the dark hairs on his calves as she brushed her foot against them. Remembered smiling into her pillow and hoping he wasn't looking.

She wondered, now, if Timmy had even wanted to stay. Wondered if he took up her offer out of pity, as a last resort, just so she wouldn't feel stupid. It would explain why he was up so early, explain why he'd left without waking her up, without having to face what they'd done.

And what had they done?

Nothing. Nothing had changed, it was a bed shared by friends, an understanding, something normal, something fine.

Timmy was singing.

Well, okay, no, it wasn't singing, quite. It was more humming, stopping and starting, broken off as he bent down to pick up the shampoo bottle, resuming when he lathered up his hair. Lucia could hear this through what she had now discovered was a very thin wall, and it made her smile. Made her smile even harder when he obviously realised what he was doing, and stopped abruptly, the squeaking of his feet against the shower floor ceasing too.

She timed things perfectly. Swung her legs over the side of the bed, scooped some more food into Julius's bowl, and picked up the bath towel which she'd draped over the desk chair last night. Grabbed her shower things, and waited until she heard the unlocking of the bathroom door to walk into the passageway.

Timothée hadn't properly dried himself off yet, and (not wanting to hog the bathroom in case Lucia had woken up in his absence and desperately needed a wee) had just wrapped his towel around his waist. His hair was ruffled from being towel tried, still wet but not dripping, and there was water running down his body from where he'd dried his stomach but had not yet dried his shoulders.

Timmy was halfway back to his room when Lu came out of hers. She glanced at the sharpness of his backbones, the bumps of his ribs and the curve of his spine, watched a droplet roll down from the nape of his neck and disappear into the towel all in the few seconds it took for Timothée to realise she was there.

He spun around, bringing the bundle of pyjamas in his arms up to his chest protectively. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and a smile bloomed on Lucia's face. She looked him up and down briefly.