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T imi lawson unveils groundbreaking announcement at Agu Studios Grand Opening Event.

Dr. Jude Lawson's Long-Awaited Redemption Confirmed.

Production Room Inferno Spells Grim Outlook for Red Tinsel Project.

Wow! The story has reached YNN so fast?

Forget Red Tinsel. The real movie was the grand opening. It's like I was watching the ending of a K-drama.

What's even the truth in this country?

One minute laughter at Agu, sorry, Ekuke's face when Timi announced he's not doing again. Bwahahahaha! He never expererit!

That conference hall make mad sense sha. Nollywood don finally set. Anyone wanna fly to Enugu?

Timi Lawson-King moves. Dr Jude Lawson, we're sorry. Keep resting in peace

LGTVBBQ+ people–0, Timi Lawson & Nigerians–1. Shey you people will now rest so @policeng can arrest all you disgusting bastards? Always looking for upright citizens to initiate into your cult.

Heheheehe. Blood of Jesus don finally cover Timi yansh.

Best news ever. Timi Lawson isn't gay!!! Timians for Timi, we won!

Alex didn't say much when Timi finally told him about outing himself to Gistcarrier and his sister's visit. He'd expressed shock, concern and surprise hearing about what she'd told him, but when Timi laughed at her audacity to think he would show his face, Alex had stayed silent.

They left Enugu on an evening flight on the day of the Grand Opening, and had to take a secret exit due to the sheer number of people waiting to welcome him home.

He'd left Lagos as a fugitive and returned as a long-lost beloved king. But call it pettiness or whatever, Timi wasn't in the mood for fake smiles and selfies. Especially, since the route the comments had taken left a sweet and sour taste.

They were finally giving him the result he'd been desperate for at the beginning of this journey.

But that was eight months ago. The baby had started crawling.

The girlfriend had found someone better.

Two online courses had been completed. A probation staff had been made permanent.

The rains were going. And Timi Lawson had disappeared.

He'd cleared Uncle's name, and he was ecstatic, but the sanctity of his own name wobbled now between fickle fingers and volatile mouths, held loosely by untruth .

How would the story go if the people found out he sometimes slept with a cock in his mouth? The truth, unshaded by doubts. Would he survive it this time?

The next morning after their return, Dozie called to ask if he could resume the process. Timi stared at Alex's face, resplendent in sleep, and promised to get back to him. On a burst of panicked tenderness, he leaned in to rest his head against Alex’s temple, but an unknown call came in.

Immediately he heard his sister's voice, he ended it and switched off his phone. He'd hoped to keep this new number. Too bad. He turned, only to find Alex staring sleepy-eyed at him.

“Was that her?” he asked, voice groggy with residual sleep.

“Go back to sleep,” Timi said.

Alex glanced at Timi’s phone. “Come with me to work.”

Timi happily did. After months of strategising and shooting, it was weird sitting on his hands.

He stayed in the back office for most of the day, entertained by the Mind Your Language series Mr. Fash wasn't tired of watching, and listening to stories of how he got to marry his wife.

The couple left them to close. And at past ten, when Alex still showed no signs of leaving, Timi had to ask if they planned on sleeping there.

“We'll leave soon,” Alex said, as he mixed flour in a bowl. “If you're sleepy, there's a roll-up foam at the bottom drawer of the shelf in the office.”

“Nah, it's cool. I'll stay with you.”

An indeterminate time later, a hand shook him awake. Timi woke up with a start on a foam he didn't remember pulling out. He rubbed his eyes. “Fuck. I slept? What's the time?”

Alex, who had done away with his stained apron, checked his watch. “3:30.”

Timi got up sputtering and rolling up the foam. “What the hell. You should have woken me.”

“You were pouting in your sleep. Waking you seemed profane.”

Timi smacked him.

As they journeyed home, Alex took a wrong turn .

Timi glanced at him. “Should I drive? I've had enough sleep.”

“I'm good,” Alex said. “Relax.”

And Timi asked no further questions, till Alex turned into a street, parking by rows of locked shops.

“Are we here to rob?” he asked. It was a joke, but he realised then, he would do anything, as long as they were doing it together.

Alex unlocked his seat belt. “Come with me.”

Timi dragged in a lungful of the early morning breeze yet to be encumbered by rottenness, unwashed bodies and exhaust fumes.

Above them, darkness and light had begun tousling, painting the sky slate grey, with the moon and stars hiding behind darker lumpy clouds.

The crunch of stones beneath their feet disrupting the death-still quietness felt like they’d left the world behind.

And when Alex reached for his hand, Timi slid his fingers through his, sure and bold.

Alex tugged him towards a black spaced-bar gate leading into a mini estate, shadowed by a dim security light. A light in the security annex came on but no one appeared and soon went back off.

Alex stood before the gate, staring. Bewildered, Timi followed his gaze to a white house built to modern standards and partially covered by Areca palms. It was the first house on the street, and it stood taller and fancier than its neighbours.

Asides that, there was nothing spectacular about it that warranted Alex driving all the way down just to gaze at it.

He opened his mouth to ask what they were doing, but Alex's voice snapped it shut.

“It wasn't like this before,” he said softly.

“Everything's so…white. Used to be creamy yellow.

Those palms were elephant grasses and didn't cover the frontage.

This gate here wasn't this porous either. The windows too. Ours were the simple sliding ones.” He wrinkled his nose.

“The current occupiers would have a hard time pushing that tiny window facing the inner stairs to gaze outside.”

Alex released their hands, walked a few feet in the opposite direction, stopped and strained his neck, exclaiming.

“Where did the balcony go? Are these people against reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee on an early Sunday morning?

Those moments were his calmest, you know?

The only time Oyin and I could ask for anything and be guaranteed a favourable response.

Psssft! They clearly don't know the power of a strategically positioned balcony overlooking a busy stree—”

Timi burst into tears.

Hot racking sobs that seized up his body without warning. One minute, he was bemused by Alex’s rambles, and the next, his heart was at the brink of collapse.

Alex hastened over and gathered him in his arms. He ran his fingers through Timi’s messy bun, then gripped his scalp.

The tears wouldn't stop. And the more Timi’s thoughts ran riot, the bigger bubbles blew out of his nose, staining Alex's shoulder.

Alex's family home. One he'd told him had been a huge part of his nightmares.

The building he'd witnessed his father batter his mother and sister over and over.

Screams, tears, blood, swollen faces and broken bones.

The house he'd finally fought his father, getting a knife cut underneath his ear lobe in the process.

The neighbours, the whispers, the gossip.

He was poisoning people after all. What a monster.

The house Alex had found his body slumped over fresh pastries.

The house he'd avoided for eight years. And the house he'd brought Timi to, in hopes it would give him the courage to face his own house too.

“I have something to tell you,” he whispered into Timi's hair. “I need to tell you so badly. You must let me, Timi. Plea—”

Timi's mouth captured the rest of his words.

And Alex fell into the kiss, giving and receiving, the precise premise of their relationship.

Two men, exposing their souls without letting the other feel they were more damaged or needed more saving.

Two simple men standing side by side on equal grounds.

They stood there, kissing and kissing, till a light in the security annex came on again. This time with a shout. “Hey!”

Laughing, Alex grabbed his hand, and they hightailed it. Throwing their middle fingers at the man waving a torchlight at them.

Once home, they resumed kissing, but with Alex reverting to their first time together.

Tenderly taking Timi apart and putting him back together piece by piece.

And when he finally spilled into Alex's warm mouth, his orgasm was a journey. A slow delicious tumble into delirious ecstasy. With Alex’s name continuously falling out of his mouth like a confirmation of a life-long supplication.

When he came to earth, he reached for Alex, who was so hard, he feared he would combust. But Alex stopped his hand.

“Sleep. You've had a stressful day.”

The next morning, Timi was on his way to Ibadan.

The earliest memory Timi had of his mother was her chest cushioning his face after his head was rescued from between the church’s stair rails he'd pushed it through.

Standing there with his head meshed between metal, he'd been so sure he would die. The after feeling of that chest’s warm softness had been angels-singing glorious.

A solid proof he could never do life alone.

The last memory of that chest, however, was what had a lasting impact.

After the severe beating from his hostel boys, he'd been so certain that softness was his restorative. Ma never hugged him again after that incident, but he was dying. Surely, she couldn’t let him run the remaining course of his life without that soft warmth.

So, when word reached him of her presence, where he was hooked on drips at the sick bay, hope had flared where fear burned.