Page 51

On Tuesday morning, while he was in the computer lab, Zeph called the hospital.

He’d had a text not long after he’d found Jack in his room, asking him to contact them and he’d put it off long enough.

He’d wanted to stay happy for a little longer.

But not calling wouldn’t change the outcome of whatever they wanted to tell him.

When he’d been to the GP a few weeks ago and told him about the pain in his leg, his tiredness, bruises and lack of appetite, the doctor had arranged for Zeph to go to Addenbrookes Hospital for an x-ray and bone biopsy.

Zeph had known what the doctor suspected because he suspected it himself.

He read everything he could find, looked for anything else it might be, but he knew.

When he called the hospital number, he expected to be told his Ewings sarcoma had returned.

If it had, he wasn’t going to tell anyone unless he absolutely had to.

His heart was racing as he waited for someone to answer.

He had to take a deep breath before he was able to give his name and date of birth.

Then he listened. They wanted him to come in.

He wasn’t going to be told anything over the phone.

Zeph slumped. He should have realised they wouldn’t give bad news in that way.

They wanted him in an environment they could control with nurses present along with cancer support staff.

When an appointment time was set that afternoon at three, it confirmed his worry that the news was bad. Once he was sure he had his emotions under control, he phoned Jack.

“Hi, genius,” Jack said.

“Hi. I’ve got something complicated to do this afternoon so I won’t be ready at three thirty. I’ll see you at the house, okay?”

“Okay. Want me to cook?”

“Yessssssss.”

Jack laughed. Zeph was glad he couldn’t see the anguish in his face, the struggle to sound normal.

“See you later.” Zeph ended the call before he burst into tears.

Surprisingly enough, he was able to bury himself in work. Programming required concentration and if he ended up having to go to the hospital for intensive bursts of chemotherapy, the more he did now the better.

Zeph arrived ten minutes early for his appointment.

He sat and listened to them tell him what he already knew.

Everything except when treatment would start.

Oh. The twenty-seventh of December. Right.

He was given steroids to take. No more alcohol.

Chemo, surgery and radiotherapy would consume a year of his life but it might not make him well. Of course he’d do it.

He suspected they thought he was in denial because he showed no emotion and asked no questions. The only question he had was not one anyone could answer, so he didn’t ask it. Will I survive?

“How are you feeling?” the cancer nurse asked when she’d led him to another room, one that was supposed to be less clinical, with easy chairs and a box of tissues on a coffee table.

Zeph shrugged. “Okay.”

She gave him a treatment schedule and Zeph put it in his folder with the other pages of information.

“You’re in your second year?” she asked.

“Third.”

“You might want to ask your head of department if you can start again next October. Take the time to get well.”

“Right.”

When Zeph failed to respond to her questions with more than a single word answer, she gave a sigh. “Phone any time.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Zeph pushed to his feet, stuffed the steroid tablets into his backpack and hurried out of the hospital.

His heart felt as if it was going to explode.

How was he going to hide this from Jack?

But that’s what he had to do. Jack wasn’t going to stick around.

Zeph knew that before Christmas he’d be gone again.

Maybe by the time he reappeared, assuming he did, the treatment would be over and Zeph would either be in remission or not around anymore.

So he had to pretend to everyone that he was fine.

He wasn’t going to repeat the year. Maybe he’d have to tell his supervisors because he might miss stuff because of hospital appointments, but no one else.

He had from now until he arrived back at the house to get his head straight and his smile in place.

He’d managed not to tell Jack he loved him, so he could manage this.

Martin and Paulo were a different matter. They’d take one look at him and know. They’d be upset and make him upset so better to avoid seeing them until he was in full control. As he waited for the bus to take him back into Cambridge, he called Martin.

“Hi, Zeph.”

Do not cry. “Hi. Everything okay?”

“Yes. You’re not though, what’s wrong?”

Bloody hell! Was he that much of an open book? “Jack’s come back.”

He could almost hear Martin gnashing his teeth.

“And what excuse did he come up with?”

“He was injured in an explosion. And before you ask, it’s the truth.

I’ve seen the scars. He spent weeks in hospital, then a couple of months recuperating in Switzerland.

His uncle has a house there. The thing is…

You know you and Paulo had been thinking of going to Portugal for Christmas…

could you still go? Jack’s asked me to spend Christmas with him.

I’d come and see you when you got home.”

“Do you think it’s a good idea? Falling back into his arms?”

“Probably not, but it’s what I want.”

Martin didn’t speak for a while. “Okay, then.”

Zeph could tell by his tone that he’d disappointed him and felt awful but he didn’t want to ruin everyone’s Christmas.

“We can probably get a last minute flight. You’re sure?”

“Yes. We can have Christmas later.”

“Okay. We’ll WhatsApp on Christmas Day. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Zeph felt less guilty than he’d thought he would. He might have a miserable Christmas but he didn’t want that for anyone else.

Jack was cooking when he returned. They kissed and Zeph didn’t want to let him go, but made himself.

“I need a shower,” Zeph said.

“Are you dirty?”

“Filthy algorithms. You have no idea.” He hid all the papers about the cancer at the bottom of a box of lecture notes in his wardrobe and slipped the steroids into the inside pocket of a jacket.

Hopefully Jack wouldn’t have detected the chemical scent of the hospital, but Zeph still could.

He showered, then went down barefoot, in his tightest boxers with a sachet of lube tucked over one of his arse cheeks, wearing the long baggy T-shirt with a nonsensical equation across the front that Paulo had bought him for his birthday.

Jack turned when he walked into the kitchen and his jaw dropped. Zeph loved seeing that. Jack was so rarely surprised.

“I’m hot,” Zeph said.

“You definitely are. Did you sort out your complicated thing this afternoon? Is that why you’re hot?”

“Nearly. And no. Another step on the path to world domination. What are we eating?”

“Chili con carne.”

“Great. My stomach is thanking you. Want to listen? You could put your head right here.” He patted his boxers.

Jack growled. “I have to keep stirring otherwise…”

“I should have done as much as I want to by Friday. We could have the weekend together, then go our separate ways. Or do you need to go to Thomas’s sooner?”

“Leaving on Monday morning is fine. How’s the dissertation going? I didn’t know there was anything else to discover about facial recognition.”

“I hope you can tell by my look of abject horror how wrong you are. Ready for a lecture? No? Tough. There’s always a need for increased accuracy in contactless authentication.

Using systems like eigenvectors, which are derived from the covariance matrix of the probability distribution over the high-dimensional vector space of face images, we can form a basis set of all images used to construct the covariance matrix.

Then produce dimension reduction by allowing the smaller set of basis images to represent the original training images. Shall I stop?”

“I am so turned on.”

Zeph giggled. “Classification can be achieved by comparing how faces are represented by the basis set. We’ll make advances with mask recognition and in very low lighting.

Even with issues of privacy, the ramifications on security are immense.

Tie in a city’s CCTV network, both council and businesses, and we’ll know where bad guys are almost before they’ve decided to go there. ”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Psychic too? Grab a couple of forks. We eating in here or the TV room?”

“Let’s watch Pottery Throwdown.”

“Oh God. You blow my mind with your brilliance and you want to watch that? I need wine.”

Zeph laughed. “Water for me please.”

He’d been normal, hadn’t he? Jack hadn’t seen through him?

They sat together on the couch and Zeph hmmed as he ate. “This is delicious. Just the right amount of spice.”

“Eat all of it, then. You’re getting skinny. Is that another bruise on your thigh?”

Zeph looked down at it. “I can’t blame you for that one. I walked into a desk in the lab. However…” He pointed to his other leg and then his arm. “Those are yours. I bruise easily. Always have.”

Zeph ate more than he’d wanted but still left some. It was hard to keep forking food into your mouth when you felt full.

“I don’t know why you like watching this so much.”

“It’s watching Keith cry. He’s such a softie.” He put the bowls aside and snuggled up against Jack. “I don’t know if I can imagine you crying.”

“Neither can I.”

Zeph pulled off his T-shirt, then dropped to the carpet in front of him and looked up as he unfastened Jack’s jeans. “You’re dessert. I want you to go hard in my mouth.”

“Be quick then. I’m already on the move.”

Zeph wrapped his fingers around Jack’s cock, licked the head and he began to thicken.

“One lick?” Zeph widened his eyes.

“Staring at you has the same effect.”

Zeph took more of Jack into his mouth with each dip of his head. Deeper and deeper. Jack slid his fingers into Zeph’s hair.