Nathan closed his eyes and kept Ulysses’ smile - the sort of smile he’d never seen directed at him - in his mind, and allowed himself to picture it this time, lying in bed with him and a book and that smile, playing almost absent-mindedly with his hair, just like now, how different could it possibly be from now? Ulysses was picturing it, so it didn’t seem disrespectful somehow to imagine it himself now. And, Christ, he wanted days like that. He wanted to be able to lose track of time and steal someone’s body heat. His skin still tingled wherever Ulysses touched him. It felt like he was brushing the first layer of loose ice-flakes off a frosted over window.

But to have any of that, he’d have admit that he’d been terrified to let Ulysses - not specifically Ulysses, just someone, anyone - into his flat at all. He wasn’t sure that he could even comprehend the actuality of having him in his bed, let alone for an entire night, to wake up to the morning after, and then for enough mornings for books to be learnt and normality to be found somewhere in amongst it all. His heart fluttered, but he couldn’t tell if it was from the usual anxiety or something else entirely new.

He smiled back at him all the same, when Ulysses eased away from the sort of kiss Nathan wouldn’t have at all minded drowning in. It was impossible not to return the man’s smiles, lose a little bit of time in them already. And playing along, even though the realisation that Nathan really might need to work out how to fall asleep and stay asleep next to another person again, was something that came naturally.

“I’d play piano - Rachmaninoff, because I can only play the left hand properly and I’d need you to play the right. Or sometimes there’s a starling that sits on the balcony railings at about six in the morning, and he’s so tame now that, if you don’t startle him, he’ll eat breadcrumbs straight from the palm of your hand.”

His voice didn’t sound like his own and his expression felt new. He was looking at Ulysses with an openness he didn’t recognise in himself but couldn’t help showing, almost like a confession. These were things no one else knew.

“But they don’t sound like m-miracles,” he added, finally faltering. He thought he’d be much more likely to just lie there very quietly with him and let him sleep and find a comfort and a strangeness in it until he had to get up and leave him to open the shop. His hesitance only lasted a moment. There was just something about how close Ulysses willingly was, and the blueness of his eyes, and the confidence in his hands, and all the tiny little things about him Nathan was learning. A smile crept back on to Nathan’s face.

“I’d have to resort to trying to make you breakfast in bed so you’d have to get up to stop m-me burning the place down.”