Utterly Forgettable | MM Romance | Complete

Thirteen: You Look Like A Drowned Rat

"It turns out she had lung cancer. Pretty advanced. She'd known for a few years, but it hadn't been progressing that quickly, probably because of her age. And she'd decided she didn't want to spend the time she had left in and out of treatments that were never going to cure her in the end."

Emery moved fractionally closer, shoulder touching Josh's; Josh hadn't realized how much he needed the contact until that moment.

"She didn't tell me until she'd adopted me. Because she wanted me to be taken care of, once she died. That's how I discovered this line of work. After everything she'd done for me all I could think of was that I wanted to do whatever I could to make that time worth it. I asked her for stories of her past, took the time to find out what she liked, to read to her often... I like to think I became the keeper of her memories."

Emery's right hand found his, fingers interlacing, and Josh held on tight.

"She had no one else, and neither did I." With his other hand, Josh wiped a stray tear that was threatening to fall. "Never mind that my parents lived right down the street. They acted as if they didn't know me and I did the same. She passed away a year later. She'd wanted me to go to college but I delayed it — I didn't want to find out she'd died while I was away. I wish you could have met her."

Josh's last sentence probably revealed a lot more than he'd have preferred, but he wasn't filtering his words. It felt... nice, for lack of a better word. To share his past with Emery. Mark was the only person Josh had told — even Brian hadn't known.

"I thought about studying to be a nurse, but I didn't want my relationship with people to be about the medicine of it, you know what I mean? I wanted to be a..." He trailed off, lacking the words to explain it.

Emery offered him a smile in faraway eyes and finished his sentence with a different memory. "You wanted to be a sort of lady-in-waiting for the dying."

"Yes," Josh replied with a grateful huff of laughter. "That. I still can't believe you called me that on the day we met."

"In my defense, I didn't mean to," Emery retorted. "It just slipped out."

"Right, right. Perfectly understandable. It's the sort of thing that just slips out when you least expect it to."

"Precisely."

Maybe Josh ought to have gotten up when Emery slid his left arm behind his back, but... He didn't want to. He laid his head on Emery's shoulder and closed his eyes, allowing himself to bask in the moment. And if he pictured, in the privacy of his mind, how Emery's lips would feel when pressed to his, well. It wasn't as if Emery would ever know.

#

Playing Scrabble with Emma was fun, if one's definition of 'fun' consisted of being flattened by a steamroller without ever losing consciousness. She came up with the most impossible words yet, every time they challenged her, the words turned out to exist. Even she wasn't enjoying trouncing them — stealing candy from babies had more appeal, she said.

By the third game, she'd determined they'd be a team, Emery and him, playing against her with 'twice the tiles and half a brain between them'. They still lost consistently, but at least they had a fighting chance now.

They plotted strategies in secret; they stooped to studying online dictionaries over coffee, while she was in physical therapy. When they finished close to half her score they high-fived, Emery looking more than a little surprised at himself for doing such a thing.

The one time they won saw Josh dancing around the room, to the amusement of his audience of two. Somehow a high five seemed insufficient; before he realized what he was doing he'd drawn Emery into a celebratory hug.

It wasn't until later that night that Josh thought it was rather suspicious, how smug Emma had looked for someone who'd just lost.

#

"You have new pieces on it," Emery commented, gaze drawn to his charm bracelet. "There were fewer of them before."

"I make a charm for every client." Josh's fingers found the little wooden tile with the E. "This one's Emma."

Emery's hand was warm when it moved to touch the charm. He leaned closer, adjusting his glasses and squinting. "What's this below the E?"

Josh smiled. "An infinity sign. Whatever she did with her tiles, they were always worth more than all of ours combined, weren't they? Seemed fitting."

His eyes leaped to Josh's, something unmistakably tender in their depths. "Fitting," he echoed, and then said nothing at all. Josh swallowed. He hadn't realized they were this close. Emery's fingers still held the tile, unwittingly trapping Josh by his bracelet.

He was going to need that punch in the face Mark had promised sooner, rather than later.