Chapter Text
What strikes him most is that he feels no different when he walks out of the clinic than he did when he walked in. Every whispering doubt, every stray pang of fear he’s felt over the past few months has been vindicated, and it changes nothing. He’s in shock. Rationally, he knows he’s in shock, and when it wears off there’s no telling how he’ll react. In the present moment any feeling he might have about the news turned to mist and rose off him, invisible, as he sat in a stiff leather chair and heard a word he’s anticipated for years. He rubbed the back of his neck, nodded along with the doctor until they stopped speaking, stood up, said thank you, made a follow up appointment at the front desk as was suggested—to discuss treatment options with a specialist and arrange another scan—and left.
Nothing changes. Nothing immediate.
Instead of going home, Cullen wanders several blocks in the upscale neighbourhood surrounding the clinic. Most of the other people on the sidewalks are dressed in business casual, or they’re in their early twenties and stylish in the incomprehensible way of the young. Floral patterns, the likes of which he hasn’t seen since the sofa in his grandparent’s living room as a child, are apparently in this season. He pauses next to the window of a little place that reminds him of a café he often frequents with Hawke before they head to their work site for the day. Freezers lined with colorful gelato draw him inside, pulling his eye the way kite tails in the park always do.
The girl behind the counter beams at him. Asks, “What would you like?”
He finds himself smiling back as he points to flavors.
Gelato cup in hand, he sits at the top of the slide in an empty playground to eat. Three flavors: chocolate, hazelnut, and sea salt caramel. It’s cold, not too sweet. A fourth scoop wouldn’t be remiss, though it would be decadent.
Bright blue hydrangeas and pink phlox line the garden adjacent the playground, and someone’s laundry swings colorful and vulnerable over the rail of an apartment balcony. One stray breeze and it will all end up in the hydrangeas.
When the gelato’s gone, and an approaching pair of mothers give him a wary look, Cullen knows it’s time to head out.
He’s wondered for years when the war would catch up with him. Not in gunfire or drone strikes, but this deeper, slow burn poison he earned by showing up and shipping out. By thinking he knew the answers. Naivety carried him straight to hell and he spent several years there, his insides stained with the anger that seeped in where naivety charred and flaked away. Instead of cementing him into a hardened soldier, the experience left him damaged. Unfit for service, though his official papers say it more eloquently than that. Ever since, he’s been building a life for himself on shaky foundations.
If what he was exposed to on his tour of duty hasn’t directly made him sick, he believes the experience itself is still responsible. Either a result of nerves or divine punishment. Impossible to know which.
All he knows for certain is that in the span of one sunny summer afternoon, he’s gone from ex-soldier with a persistent chest cold to ex-soldier with lung cancer. The diagnosis is lukewarm—neither overtly hopeful nor utterly hopeless—but with doctors you never could be sure exactly what treatable meant.
He thinks he should tell someone. Hawke, maybe. Garrett seems all beard and bluster, but the man has a heart the size of the sun beating in that thick chest. Then again, Hawke has his own worries—a husband who struggles with his mental health, a little sister working a long way from home, and a little brother who volunteers for disaster relief when he’s not giving him an earful while they both build houses. Not only that, but Hawke’s trying to run a business; Cullen is his friend but he’s also an employee. It complicates matters. There’s Cassandra, but if he tells her she’ll turn his life into a treatment regimen and fuss over him day and night. Her meddling is about as subtle as a sledgehammer but it’s because she cares. Underneath the stern brows, she cares deeply.
Best not to tell anyone, for now. Until he knows what the next step is and, more importantly, how to take it.
*
He ends the day covered in gyprock dust and joint compound. The house they’re working on is nearing the stage where the pace of visible progress slows to a crawl as they do the finishing. Another two weeks, give or take any acts of god—something surprisingly commonplace in construction—and it’ll be time to pass the job on to the painters and interior decorators.
Hawke stands in the center of the master bedroom, where they’ve been filling drywall joints for the last hour. “Not bad what you can accomplish with a hawk and trowel,” he says, grinning to drive home the pun. Cullen ignores it. Every time they do drywall joints, the puns are endless. To Hawke’s credit he only recycles one or two that are obviously his favorites. Cullen coughs, though he muffles it in the crook of his elbow.
“You get that checked out yet?” Hawke asks, dusting his hands off on the front of his shirt.
“Last week,” Cullen says. “I’m...waiting to hear back.” It isn’t exactly a lie—he’s still waiting for a call to confirm his referral to the specialized oncologist.
Hawke nods. “When they don’t call in a couple weeks that’s usually a good sign. It’s if you hear back that you need to worry.”
“Yeah.” Easier to agree than to talk about the truth. It’s been six days, but he isn’t ready to discuss it. He’s barely ready to acknowledge it’s happening to him. Denial and distraction: the only powers he’s got left.
After they’ve cleaned up, the crew says their goodbyes. Hawke, as always, tries to goad Cullen into joining them at the pub for a few rounds but, as always, he declines as good-naturedly as possible. Ever since moving west, he prefers to spend Friday nights in attendance at a meditation group. It was Hawke who first directed him to it, since the woman who leads it is a personal friend of his. Merrill is small in stature but her presence has weight, and she’s excellent at facilitating calm contemplation and the occasional therapeutic discussion.
“Say hello to Merrill for me, then,” Hawke calls as he heads for his truck. Cullen nods, waves at him from beside his own car. Once he climbs into the driver’s seat he pulls off his dusty, sweaty shirt, and tugs on a clean one. Fumbles in his bag for a deodorant stick and freshens up, all the while hoping nobody is watching. The drive downtown is relatively painless once he moves past a chokepoint where traffic inches forward a few cars at a time each green light. Ages ago he sussed out a rare block with free parking, and he finds himself a spot on the tree lined street. He’s got forty-five minutes leftover to grab dinner and walk to the community center.
There’s a grim undercurrent in everything he does. A second, softer heartbeat—the shadow cast on his lung. It’s overwhelming, so he contemplates putting one foot in front of the other; counts his steps along the sidewalk. Concentrates on the bowl of soup set in front of him after he sits down at the bar of a ramen joint with the smell of hot tea wafting in the weakly air-conditioned space. He watches the chefs at their oeuvre, admiring their speed and craftsmanship. It’s work that takes deft hands.
He’s midway through a mouthful of noodles when he realizes he’s deeply, unshakably afraid. He manages to finish chewing, but he can’t bring himself to take another bite. All week he’s kept busy, focused on the external: Hawke’s awful jokes on the job site, drywall to put up, errands to run, a beer with Cassandra. After the drive home tonight, he’s got a lonely, silent weekend to cope with. Forty-eight empty hours. He rubs his hand over his beard, feeling himself sliding further into panic. When the waitress asks if he wants his meal packed up he says yes out of guilt and requests the bill.
He leaves his noodles in the car. Part of him wants to climb in and cross the bridge, head eastbound instead of home. Drive all night, check into some motel in Alberta and then disappear into the wilds. Go out on his own terms, never to be heard from again. Instead, he locks the car and starts walking.
All the way to the community center, he’s bargaining with himself. If he still feels too shaken when he gets there, he’ll leave. Maybe the walk there will level him out. He can go in, and he can leave before it starts if he needs to. He can drive around the city or back to the bar where he knows Hawke and the crew will still be playing pool, half of them well past tipsy. Keeping his brain occupied that way gets him through the front doors and down the hall to the room where the meeting takes place.
It’s filling up, but even with a crowd it’s quiet. People are there to let go of a week’s worth of stress, and everyone is subdued. That calm hits his panic like a wave, takes hold, pulls him into it. His breathing starts to ease.
Merrill moves up to the front of the room, and a minute later she raises her hand. “Shall we get started?” she asks, soft voice lilting just so. The murmurs dissipate to scuffling chair legs and sighs, creaking furniture, the rustle of fabric.
Cullen chooses a spot near the back, and tries to ignore his second heartbeat. He narrows in on the real one, the thud-thud that carries him, diseased or not, through his life.
He opens his eyes when he hears the doors swish five minutes later. A man he’s exchanged pleasantries with on occasion comes in late and takes the seat next to him with a bright smile and quick nod hello. Dorian, the fellow’s name is Dorian, and he’s forever impeccably dressed and perfectly coiffed, though often five minutes late. Cullen feels every wrinkle in his shirt—and on his brow for that matter—stand out all the more for being beside him. They must make for a stark comparison: handsome mustachioed gentleman alongside scruffy, grotty t-shirt wearing construction worker. He realizes a few moments later that Dorian not only looks good, but smells incredible, too. Cullen can’t place the fragrance, but it’s musky with a perfect note of warm sweetness for balance.
It’s more distracting than it ought to be.
Later, as the meditation draws to a close, people stand up, stretch, check their phones. A pleasant sense of peace fills the small space, almost its own quality of light. On a table at the back of the room there’s a spread of muffins and doughnuts, as well as a stainless steel dispenser full of hot green tea. Merrill always stays and chats with the group for half an hour or so, and although Cullen has rarely spoken with her for long himself, he enjoys the companionable atmosphere. And normally, the muffins. Worth a shot, he decides, to see if he can get something down.
He stands off to the side, out of the way but not fully removed, and peels the paper from the bottom of one of said muffins. It’s packed with blueberries and keeps sticking to his fingers, but the first bite doesn’t disagree with him.
“I don’t normally come on Fridays,” says Dorian, popping up beside him and helping himself to a mug of tea. “Is it always this lively?”
“Quite often,” Cullen replies with a nod. It’s the usual crowd of familiar faces, and almost every available chair is full each week. “You a Tuesday man, then?”
“Mostly, yes. I tend to seek peace elsewhere on Friday nights,” he says. “Specifically places that offer a selection of craft beer.”
Cullen chuckles, cutting it short after it occurs to him to wonder if he’s got blueberry stuck in his teeth. “Perfectly reasonable alternative,” he agrees. Dorian looks like the type who’d appreciate craft beer. He almost looks like the type who might brew it for a living, but there’s something elegant about the man that speaks otherwise.
“I like to think so.”
The buzz of idle chatter fills the room, patching a gap in their conversation. Cullen takes the lull to work his tongue over his teeth surreptitiously, praying it does the trick.
“It’s Cullen, right?” Dorian asks after a moment.
Their eyes meet, and Cullen finds himself surprised to hear his own name. “Yes.”
“I thought so. I’m—
“Dorian,” Cullen finishes for him, offering what he hopes is a genuine smile.
“He remembers! Well, that makes me feel good. It’s been a while since we’ve crossed paths, hasn’t it?”
Weeks since Cullen has seen him in the group, months since they’ve spoken. “Winter, I think,” Cullen replies. “Or early spring.”
“Ah, yes, I complained bitterly of the cold to you. No wonder you remember me.”
It was rainy that night, and icy. The wet got into your bones, a hard sensation to recall in the midst of a hot summer. “You were also wearing a comically large scarf.”
Dorian blows on his tea, smiling. “I have been known to indulge myself on that front.” He takes a sip from the mug before pinching one of the points of his mustache back into place. “If nothing else, it’s memorable,” he adds with a sly twist of the mouth.
“It is that.” The other group members have descended on the snack table, and Cullen steps further aside to leave room. Dorian joins him. Merrill is still chatting heartily to several people, her large eyes intent on whomever is speaking. Cullen manages to finish all but the last bite of muffin and tosses the remains into a nearby trash can.
“So,” Dorian says, “now that you’ve found inner peace, are you off to make the most of your evening?”
Cullen stifles a small cough against his fist. The familiar gesture fills him with a sudden, sinking dread. He stares momentarily at his hand before remembering that he’s been asked a question. “I... Sorry,” he says. Pressure against his temple grounds him, so he digs his thumb in there. “No.”
“No? You’re not going out?”
All he can do is shake his head. “I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Hm. Let’s see, I’m to meet someone in...” Dorian glances at the stylish watch strapped to his wrist, “an hour and a half. Would you care to join me for a friendly pint in the meantime? Keep me entertained?”
Distraction. Distraction is exactly what he needs, instead of a night at home full of listless, pointless fear. He doesn’t know why Dorian is suddenly inviting him out to the pub, but he isn’t sure it matters, either. A friendly pint is what it is. One way or another, it’ll busy the mind.
“You can say no,” Dorian adds gently. “I won’t take offense.”
It’s unexpected, but what has he got to lose? “Sure. I’ll come,” Cullen replies. “Though if you’re hoping for excitement I’m afraid you’ll find me a disappointment.”
Dorian waves him off, gives him a crooked smile. “So gloomy. Come on, I know a place.” He finishes his tea and leaves the mug in the provided plastic bin. They head back out into the heat of the evening. “It’s not far.” He leads the way across the street and up a block, to an innocuous looking pub with small heart-shaped rainbow stickers placed strategically in each tall window. They are in that neighbourhood.
“Will this do?” Dorian asks with a tilt of the head. “Surely a card-carrying heterosexual such as yourself isn’t intimidated.”
Cullen snorts and shoulders past him to hold the door open for them both. Their faces are briefly quite close, and Dorian looks at him with a raised brow as he steps by. They settle into a recently vacated table for two next to the windows, and Dorian checks his phone before tossing it back into his bag. A waitress comes by and they both order a pint.
“Have you eaten, aside from your muffin?” Dorian asks. Cullen nods, not wanting to focus on it, and Dorian nods as well. “That was dessert then, hm? I haven’t, but I’d better wait. I think I’m meant to be getting dinner later. Though...the fries here are quite good.” After a quick perusal of the menu he shuffles it to the side.
Their drinks arrive; they both ordered different things, but the colors are similar. They take simultaneous tentative first sips, exhale approval, then laugh at their synchronization.
“Not half bad,” Cullen says. “Refreshing, anyway.”
“I prefer a good stout if I’m honest, but that’s a brew for a cold winter’s night. Better to stay light when it’s properly hot out.”
Cullen nods. “It’s been a wicked summer.” He knows he’s sweating and that his shirt is sticking to the center of his chest, but he has to hope he’ll be forgiven for it. Everyone else is suffering the same fate—save for Dorian, he realizes at a glance. “I’m no fan of the west coast IPA, though,” Cullen says.
“Agreed.” Dorian’s long nose wrinkles. “Too hoppy. Lacks balance. That bitterness borders on acrid at times, I find.”
“Seems like all the local microbreweries do one, though.”
Dorian sighs so hard it almost dishevels his mustache. “It’s trendy, you see. I’m not convinced anyone actually likes IPAs, but all these Johnny-come-lately bearded beer aficionados have decided it’s the way to go. Some machismo thing. You can hardly take a step these days without stumbling into a new IPA. You can even get black IPAs, which...there’s a misnomer for you. Black India Pale Ale.” He shakes his head.
It’s possible Cullen was wrong when he guessed Dorian wasn’t in the craft beer industry. “You’re quite the expert,” he says, bemused.
“It’s a hobby.” Dorian smiles, takes another gulp from his glass. “Can’t say I’ve ever refused a beer though, even one I didn’t like.”
“A drink is a drink.”
“Especially close to the end of the evening,” Dorian adds with a laugh.
A larger group comes in and the waitress passes by with a serving of french fries. Those fries do look appealing—they’re thick cut, peels on, seasoned lightly...
Dorian notices him eyeballing them. “Shall we share an order, perhaps?” His hand is drifting over to the discarded menu.
The beer ought to be enough, but the prospect of hot salt and potato strikes a chord. “All right.”
With a quick wave, Dorian has the waitress back. A few more people file in, most of them keeping half an eye on the television screens on the walls. There’s a rugby match on, and Cullen spends a few moments watching.
“Rugby fan?” Dorian asks, looking where Cullen is looking.
“Sorry,” Cullen turns his attention to Dorian, sheepish. “Now and then. Used to play when I was younger.”
That brings a huge smile to Dorian’s face. “Explains the physique.”
Cullen clears his throat, lets his smile twist the scarred side of his lip. “Not for a long time.” He nudges his beer, “ Actually, this probably does a better job explaining my current physique.”
A soft chuckle from Dorian.
“Do you come here often?” Cullen asks, anxious to gently deflect while not letting the silences between them drift too wide.
“Often enough, though my regular pub is a few blocks over. That one is more of a late night affair.”
“Pub or club?” Cullen leans his elbows on the table and raises a brow.
Dorian lifts his hand in concession. “You got me. It can get quite loud and it’s better for dancing than having a chat. I might end up there tonight. Let me guess: it’s not really your scene?” He’s still smiling. The question is good-natured.
“No, not really. I’ve always felt more at home in dive bars. Somewhere that still reeks of cigarette smoke from before they changed the bylaw. With dartboards in the very back.” Serious blue collar: cheap drinks, rough crowd. No expectations of anyone looking clean cut or even clean, considering most of the clientele were usually manual labourers.
“Darts! Is there anywhere like that left in this city?”
“My crew knows a few places, but the way things are going...”
“Ah yes, the inexorable forward march of gentrification. Speaking of, you work in construction? Wear lots of plaid and denim?” Dorian teases, his mustache curling as he smiles behind his glass.
“I’m that dreadfully obvious, am I?” Cullen’s fingers tug at the chest of his t-shirt, unsticking it. What an impression he must be making.
“It’s a look.”
The waitress brings them their fries, and they both thank her.
“I uh, I do work construction, yes. Renos mostly, but some new builds. Been on the same crew for a few years now.”
“I wonder if we’ve ever worked on the same house. At different times, I mean.” Dorian snatches up a broken stub of fry and pops it in his mouth. He makes a face like it might be a bit too hot.
“What do you do?”
Dorian finishes chewing and sips his beer; likely trying to cool a burnt tongue. “Landscape architecture. Gardens, patios, outdoor seating areas. Mainly residential, both old and new. If you work around here I bet we’ve both contributed our, in my case proverbial, sweat and blood to at least one or two of the same houses.”
“Huh.” There’s a good chance he’s right. “I suspect we have, at that.” Cullen reaches for a fry, breaking it in half to let it cool for a moment first. “How’d you get into that?”
“Back when I was young—well,” he presses the tips of his fingers to his chest, “younger—I started off in landscaping and found myself constantly critical of everyone’s yards. Poorly positioned gardens, tropical plants languishing in the cold, invasive species creeping from lawns into adjacent forests, lots of positively hideous and impractical outdoor furniture, much of it ruined for lack of proper storage in a damp climate.” He shrugs and reaches for another fry. “Someone with good taste had to intervene.”
Cullen finds himself snickering. “Do you like it?”
“I do, most of the time. There’s the occasional client from hell but you see your share of that in every profession, as I imagine you’re well aware. And you, you enjoy building? Reconstructing, reconfiguring?”
He nods. “Most of the time. I like the guys I work with, and that’s...”
“Half the battle,” Dorian supplies before nibbling another fry.
“Exactly.” The fries really are quite good, and Cullen pulls a big one out of the stack. Salt, fat, beer, and a little upbeat company are helping his appetite.
A gasp and a few mumbled curses from the patrons around them make them both turn their eyes to the televisions. There’s been a penalty issued. They watch the next series of plays unfold, casually invested bystanders to a drama that seems to have half the pub in an iron grip.
Their conversation turns to sports; hockey, cricket, Cullen’s occasional weekend rugby with the lads. Then to food as they finish off the last few french fries. They talk about the city, what it’s like to live in a place where everyone seems to come from someplace else, themselves included.
“And you’ve been here how long?” Dorian asks.
“Only a few years in Vancouver. In Canada since I was thirteen.”
“Your family came over?”
“No,” Cullen trails a finger through the condensation on his glass, considering how he can answer the question without inviting further questions. “Just me. Boarding school.” He punctuates it with a shrug and a curl of the lip.
“Ahh, that old chestnut.” There’s a knowing bend in Dorian’s brow. “Did a bit of boarding school time myself. Never cared for the uniforms. So drab, and itchy.”
For someone as clearly interested in fashion as the man across the table from him, uniforms must’ve been a particular torment. “Is that how you wound up all the way out here?” Cullen asks.
“No, actually. I got here because when it came time for me to go to university, I decided I was going to do it as far away from home as I could manage. I was meant to go to McGill, but as it turned out, one winter in Montreal was enough.” He shivers in his seat. “I’d never been so frigid in all my life.”
This makes Cullen laugh, because he remembers. “The winters out there mean business, it’s true.”
“Preferable here by far. Though, I do have a couple of beautiful wool coats languishing in my closet. You can only wear them for about a week in February, otherwise it’s too wet or too warm.”
Cullen sips his beer. “A crying shame,” he agrees with a stifled smile.
“You’re teasing me, I caught that.” Still, he’s smiling back. “In truth I like it here, even it is small, as cities go.”
“Hm,” Cullen nods. “I feel like I’m always running into people I know.”
“Yes, precisely! On that note,” Dorian says, raising a hand in consideration, “tell me about your friends. I bet we have at least one in common.”
Cullen lists off a handful of names, and Dorian shakes his head on each one until they reach Cassandra.
“Pentaghast?” he asks. “Do you by any chance know a Josephine?”
“Montilyet? Cassandra’s girlfriend?”
“The one and only. Stunning, look at that. We’re practically in the same circles.”
“How do you know Josie?”
“I recently worked with her on a big project. It depends on the client, but some like to involve a decorator in the process, and it turns out she and I collaborate well.” With a flourish, he dashes down the last of his beer. “Shall we order another round?” he asks, gray eyes sparkling in the dim light.
It would be so easy to say yes. So easy to nod, order another pint and pretend for a little longer that this is his life. “Your uh, your friend, I thought...” Cullen taps his wrist, indicating the time.
“Oh, shit! Thank you, yes, he’ll vivisect me if I’m late again.” In an easy lean Dorian pulls his wallet from his pocket, produces a crisp new twenty. “I hope you won’t hate me for skipping out like this, I’ve enjoyed your company immensely.” Long fingers extend toward Cullen and he takes them: Dorian’s grip is firm and encompassing. “Shall we do it again next week?”
Cullen blinks, caught in the suddenness of his departure and the unexpected blow of the invitation. As he hesitates, their fingers linger together a few moments longer than is polite. When he withdraws his hand, he feels the start of a furiously dark blush. “Uh, sure. Sure, next week,” he says, smiling against the color tightening his cheeks.
“I’ll see you Friday, then.” Dorian rises with a grin and shoulders his bag, and once outside he sets off down the block at an easy trot.
Cullen squares up the remainder of the bill and walks back to his car. He feels at a loss, but there’s a kernel of warmth in his belly sitting at odds with the tension in his chest.
That, he decides after a bit of waffling back and forth while mentally reviewing Dorian’s smiles, was a date. And he’s got another one the following week.
He climbs behind the wheel of his car, fires the engine. Shakes his head in disbelief as he pulls onto the bridge entrance. Of course it would be now, after a near decade long dry spell. That’s just his luck, always has been. The master of abysmally poor timing.