Felix Robin Lowell
He finds the starting notes humming a tune on the train out of Anchor Rock. Felix sits leaning his head against Mitch’s shoulder and watches the verdant countryside blur past. They go towards his brother with every mile and he feels a slight dread at introducing Mitch to Oliver, if only because Oliver just very recently learned about his still-kind-of-recent shitty ex. But Mitch is nothing like Noah, and Oliver will see that too. It's nice, thinking about Oliver with a lightness in his chest. Felix forgot what it was like these past few months. The lightness curls into sound and he hums, fingers moving to the ghosts of different notes.
He's humming them again, when Oliver stops regarding Mitch with suspicion, instead bestowing upon them a smile almost like his own, but calmer, softer, where Felix's is bright, energetic and sharp. The twelve year old he used to be, lonely and wanting for his parents' love, not knowing why he lost it (the 20 year old he was four months ago), is shouting a little, the sting of being left behind had always turned Oliver into a threat. But that child is easy to soothe, remembering the evenings barefoot in the garden catching ladybirds as their parents’ records played. Remembering Mitch at the train station, saying the few words that Felix had been chasing for a decade, choosing to follow him. Oliver and Mitch talk about something or the other and Felix takes in the breeze through the open balcony door, late afternoon birdsong on the air. By his side sit the two people he knows will never ask him to be anyone but himself.
When they reach his flat in Notlondon, and he offers the spare room to Mitch, he taps out the rhythm on his dining table. Felix had been by himself since his flatmate dropped out in November, moved out, and promptly hopped on a plane to the other side of the world. He used it as his practice room since it didn't share a wall with the neighbours. He’d been in it the night of the Transference. Six days and he feels kind of new. Mitch clatters about, and Felix thinks it'll be easy, learning to exist next to someone again. Mitch is easy to be next to. He imagines breakfasts and dinners and cheap takeaways, laundry days and lazy days and a very ordinary everyday together. Felix smiles.
The best duck pond he can think of, in Clyde Park, is very much bigger than Anchor Rock’s. But it has good ducks and that's all that matters when he shows Mitch the spot by the shore, under the crooked tree. And that's all that matters when Mitch smiles that terribly sweet smile.
When Felix gets home, he pulls out his cello case from under his bed. A little tuning, and Felix plays the first few notes of a piece he knows he’ll be proud of.
By Noureen I.