Work Text:
“the number of hours we have together is actually not so large. please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”
—mikko harvey
*
It starts like this: Techno blinks down at his phone—brightness turned down low as it can go, and yet still he wishes it would go lower—stuck somewhere between befuddlement and numb shock. On the screen, the stark white letters of a text message glare up at him.
(11:14) Wilbur: hey what’re you doing next week or so? im going to be in town for a few days and thought we could meet up
As he rereads the words several times over, resisting the urge to pinch himself to make sure he’s not dreaming, the little bubble and ellipses pop up, indicating Wilbur is typing another message.
Techno waits for it to come through. The bubble disappears, then reappears, and then does it all over again. Techno keeps waiting. He has to tap his screen twice to keep it from going to sleep in the time it takes Wilbur to type one text. Techno wonders if it’s because Wilbur’s as apprehensive as he is.
(11:19) Wilbur: i know its been a while
That’s putting it lightly. Wilbur was always good at that—at making things seem less big, less momentous than they really were. If you let him have his way, he could convince you that jumping your bike from a high enough ramp could get you to the moon. (It did not actually get Techno to the moon. What it got him was a wrecked bike and torn-up knees that bled all over Wilbur’s windbreaker that they used as a makeshift bandage, but for one single moment at the peak of his arc, with the moon hanging full and low overhead, low enough to take a bite out of like a ripe apple, a ten-year-old Techno had actually believed it might work.)
Capable of making a mountain out of a molehill if it suited him, or just as easily the other way ‘round, that was Wilbur Soot. In their youth, people liked to tease Techno about being a supposed theatre kid, about having a flair for the dramatics with his wooden sword and the cape he wore everywhere when he was eight, but really, Techno’s drama pales in comparison to Wilbur’s.
A lot of Techno is like that, it seems.
Another text from Wilbur, one that says it would be good to see you. Techno types out a reply, thinks about it, and then backspaces until it says nothing at all.
He stares at the phone for a long time, long enough that his boss walks by and he has to shove it under his desk and actually go back to work. Wilbur’s waited three years; he can wait a few more hours until Techno gets off work. He jams his phone into his pocket and goes back to the drudgery of his 9 to 5 job.
*
If we’re being honest, which happens more rarely than you think, that isn’t where it all began. Actually, it starts like this: Techno can’t remember how he met Wilbur, or how old they were, or how they became friends, but that’s exactly what they were. He still has a photo album overflowing with pictures of the two of them as toddlers, kids, teenagers, doing everything together. They used to be inseparable.
Wilbur tapes Techno’s glasses together when he gets into a fistfight that breaks them in middle school, and Techno pulls Wilbur’s first tooth for him with a wad of tissues and a straight face when Techno is seven and Wilbur is six and too scared to do it himself.
They write each other notes in secret codes they make up themselves, playing spies and heroes and everything in between. They make up stories and realms together and keep a shoebox full of handmade maps and bags of acorns and stolen monopoly figurines, passing it back and forth week to week. (Techno wonders if Wilbur still has it, after all these years.) They use it for all their games, everything from hunting trolls to taking the One Ring (a golden spray-painted twisty tie stolen from Techno’s bread box) to Mount Doom (the pile of broken asphalt and gravel in the empty lot down the block). Techno gets a good dressing-down when the bread goes stale from sitting open, but the fun was worth eating peanut butter sandwiches on stale bread for a week.
For most of Techno’s life, Wilbur is his best friend. (Sometimes, the shared brown hair and glasses and the closeness obvious between them means people even mistake them for brothers. Wilbur never corrects people on it, so Techno doesn’t either.)
Growing up steals the closeness. Growing up tends to do that.
*
Techno doesn’t end up texting Wilbur back that day. He means to, but the afternoon is unusually brutal and he’s so tired by the end of it he barely manages to stay awake long enough to eat dinner (leftover fried rice that’s been shoved to the back of his fridge for a week) and shed his work clothes before falling asleep, phone and Wilbur completely forgotten.
It takes him until his lunch break the next day to remember, at which point he wastes five minutes debating if he should even respond after such an awkward length of time. In the end, he can’t help himself.
(12:13) Techno: not doing anything other than work
(12:13) Techno: what dates?
Wilbur, texting back immediately, gives him the dates. It’s a weekend, so Techno knows without looking at his calendar he’s free. He looks at his calendar anyway, then tells Wilbur he’s got time before he can second-guess the decision.
“This is a terrible idea,” Techno mutters, staring down at his phone. A mourning dove strutting around on the pavement in front of his bench eyes him suspiciously. He ignores it and heads back to work.
*
Techno can’t really pinpoint where they started to grow apart. Maybe they were always on that trajectory and just didn’t realize until the ever-widening gap became impossible to ignore. The coming and going of friends is a normal part of life, as painful and unnatural as it seems. If Techno has had to learn anything, it’s this: people come and go. That’s life.
Like it or not—and it’s usually not, isn’t it—that’s just life.
Maybe it’s when Wilbur starts fighting with his dad more, or when they move to a different apartment complex to be closer to Phil’s job. Maybe it’s when they both privately start to think of themselves as too old to be exchanging letters in codes composed of twenty-six different badly-drawn flowers. Maybe it’s when they go to college, Wilbur in town and Techno abroad.
It's hard to write letters when one of you is out of the country. It’s even harder to coordinate calls, and neither of them has ever been very good about texting.
For a while, things are fine, because all they have to do is meet up over break, at a coffeeshop or the bowling alley or at Techno’s apartment—never Wilbur’s—and pick up right where they left off. It feels natural as anything to fill in the gaps of their time spent apart in the space of an afternoon, to part ways feeling like they haven’t been apart at all.
But then, for reasons Techno can never put to words, they stop meeting up.
Techno graduates, heads to grad school. Wilbur drops out. Techno moves home, and Wilbur moves away, and after three years of sporadic happy birthday and do you remember that one time when we were kids, with the—? text messages, Techno quit expecting to hear from Wilbur again, much less see him.
Somewhere along the line, he’s stopped thinking of Wilbur as best friend, as even friend, as anything but Wilbur or maybe just a faint feeling of regret, a dull-pulsing ache when he thinks about his childhood too late at night. One day, Techno thinks often, one day we won’t have been friends longer than we were. He keeps thinking it, no matter how much he wishes he could stop.
Techno doesn’t know when they stopped being friends. He just knows it was a long time ago, maybe longer than he wants to admit.
*
It’s a terrible idea. The worst ever, maybe, or at the very least, high up the list of Worst Ideas Techno Has Ever Had. Still, he sends the text before he can regret it, and then he sits and regrets it anyway.
(6:27) Techno: do you know anything about hair dye
Then he shoves his phone under his couch cushions—out of sight, out of mind—and goes back to watching Bridgerton while wishing he was watching anything other than Bridgerton. (God, he misses Downton Abbey.) He keeps watching it because sometimes it’s easier to be miserable. He remembers to fish his phone out before he goes to bed, and sure enough, there’s a text from Wilbur.
(7:32) Wilbur: yeah loads.
(7:33) Wilbur: why?
(9:44) Techno: don’t know if youd be interested but I was thinking of dyeing my hair if you want to help
That’s it. There’s no going back now.
(9:46) Wilbur: yeah man totally
(9:46) Wilbur: what color were you thinking of dyeing it???
(9:49) Techno: pink
Here’s the thing about Techno: he doesn’t often get out of his comfort zone, not in big ways. Oh, he’ll do little things here and there—try a new recipe, attempt small talk with a coworker in the break room, buy a new tea every few months—but nothing drastic. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, because sometimes he does. It’s that he sometimes doesn’t feel like he’s a whole person yet, like the Greeks were right and he’s just half of what a human should be, missing all the parts that make him adventurous and confident and a little bit wild.
(For most of his life, Wilbur took care of all those things. Wilbur dragged him out of his shell, frightened hermit crab that he often was, and now, without someone like that, Techno has settled into comfortable routine.)
His phone vibrates again, and Techno looks down at the latest text.
(9:51) Wilbur: i bet itll look great :) it’s a plan then
Maybe, just maybe, with Wilbur’s help, he can be a little adventurous again.
*
Techno gives up cleaning his apartment around the time he registers, down on his hands and knees, holding a rag that is equal parts sopping and grimy from cleaning, that it’s a little bit unreasonable to scrub his baseboards when Wilbur’s not even going to be in the flat for more than forty-eight hours total. Nobody looks at the baseboards when they come to visit—nobody but mothers-in-law, which Techno does not have.
He stops scrubbing the baseboards, which is good for his back but bad for his anxiety, so he ends up staring mindlessly at his laptop while YouTube autoplay cycles through a diorama kitbash video, two video essays about shows he’s never seen, and four vine compilations before he registers the headache blooming behind his eyes and closes the tab. There’s still half an hour before he even needs to start heading to the airport to pick Wilbur up.
What the heck, Techno decides. He’ll grab some food on the way to kill time.
*
McDonald’s, it turns out, doesn’t really kill that much time, so Techno has to drive in aimless circles around and around the airport, waiting for Wilbur to emerge, but the fries keep him entertained. In the cupholder by his knee, the strawberry shake he picked up for Wilbur on total muscle memory is just beginning to melt when Wilbur texts him to say he’s coming out the doors.
Another loop, and he’s there, leaning in Techno’s rolled-down passenger window and grinning.
Wilbur looks taller than the last time Techno saw him, which doesn’t make sense because they’d both stopped growing by then. Maybe it’s just that he seems thinner, swallowed up by an oversized aviator jacket, or older, face a bit hollower behind his big round glasses. His hair is the same unruly mop as always, though longer than before. He looks tired, but his smile is the same as ever, crinkling his eyes and nose up just like when he was a kid. The milkshake makes his smile a touch softer, half-melted as it is, and that makes Techno feel a bit better about the whole thing.
“You look exactly the same,” Wilbur says, voice carefully light. It still feels like a blow, somehow.
Techno shrugs one shoulder, keeping his eyes on the road.
“I guess,” he says, “I did all my changing on the inside.”
*
Here’s something Techno hasn’t told Wilbur: a couple years ago, the semester before he graduated, he got a call. It stood out immediately because it came in at two in the morning, startling Techno out of his studies and his grogginess. He doesn’t usually get calls, and especially not this late. He doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s a familiar country code—home. On a whim, he answers.
“Hello?” he asks, trying not to sound bleary and definitely failing.
“Is this Techno?” asks a voice from the other end. It sounds young, like a teenage boy not quite through with puberty.
“Yeah,” he says. “Who’s askin’?”
“I’m Wilbur’s brother.” The response brings Techno up short.
“Wilbur doesn’t have a brother,” Techno says, unthinking, because it’s true. The closest he ever had was Techno. The thought sends an uncomfortable jolt through him. He swallows—hard.
“I’m adopted,” the kid says, somehow sounding both sheepish and like this is a spiel he’s fast-growing tired of reciting. “He’s my guardian.”
“Wilbur has a kid?” Techno sputters, nearly dropping the phone. He knocks two pencils and an orange highlighter off his desk and has to lean down and fumble around on the floor to retrieve them.
“No, it’s not like that,” he sighs. “He’s fuckin’…this is why I say brother, you know, it’s so much easier than explaining this bullshit. He’s my guardian, but he’s not my fucking dad or anything. He’s basically my brother. It’s a long story. I dunno, it doesn’t matter, and that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Wait,” says Techno, pinching the bridge of his nose under his glasses and feeling incredibly lost, “why are you callin’ me?”
“You’re his emergency contact. One of ‘em, anyway. I’m one, you’re the other.”
Something in the back of Techno’s brain pings at the notable absence of Phil on that list, but the rest of his mind is focusing on what the kid just told him.
He sits up straight, feeling tension seep into his shoulders, neck, jaw. “Is something wrong? Is Wilbur okay?”
“Well,” Wilbur’s supposed brother says, sounding very much strained and very much like he’s trying not to sound strained, “I mean, he’s alive anyway.”
Techno forgets to breathe for a minute.
“What…what happened?”
“He tried to off himself.” The kid’s trying so hard for nonchalant, going for bluntness because if he doesn’t get the words out as fast and as frankly as possible, he won’t get them out at all—doesn’t Techno know the feeling—but Techno can hear his voice shaking, even over the phone. “The doctor says he’ll probably make it.”
Probably.
“Called you because I didn’t know what else to do. I’m, uh, Tommy, by the way. Don’t think I mentioned that bit.”
“Techno,” Techno answers, and then realizes Tommy already knew that. He does not ask for details, nor does he ask what business Wilbur has being a teenager’s guardian. He’s restrained like that.
“Can you…” Tommy starts, and then trails away. He takes a breath that Techno can hear over the phone and starts again. “I mean, would you be able to come? Here, I mean?”
Techno winces. “Kid, I’m…I’m not in the country right now. I go to school abroad.”
“Oh,” says Tommy. And then, “Shit, I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Techno tells him he didn’t, and then they talk for a little while longer, mostly just Tommy rambling and Techno letting him, because it seems like he needs it. Anybody would, after what’s happened.
(He tries very hard not to think about it. What happened. It doesn’t work—Techno doesn’t sleep that night. Afterwards, the two of them stay in semi-regular contact. Tommy seems like a good kid, funny too, and it’s nice to have someone to talk to.
He doesn’t mention it to Wilbur, and Wilbur never brings up Tommy or anything else whenever they do talk, which isn’t much, these days. Techno tries not to be bothered by that. He’s not so sure he’s succeeding.)
*
The drive from the airport back to Techno’s apartment is full of stilted conversation. There’s plenty to talk about—school, work, living situations, though Wilbur pointedly brushes off discussions of family—but it all feels wrong, somehow, to be talking so casually, so impersonally, with someone who used to know all of Techno’s secrets and insecurities. It’s a bit like being lost in the woods, fumbling in the dark and the undergrowth for what used to be the well-worn path of their friendship. Old interests, new interests, people who have come and gone—it’s all uncharted territory for them now.
Here there be monsters, Techno thinks helplessly, and keeps driving.
Beside him in the passenger seat, Wilbur might as well be a million miles away for how unreachable he feels.
*
The hair dye—along with bleach, disposable gloves, a mixing bowl and a hair dye brush that internet insisted he would need—has been sitting in a Publix bag on Techno’s counter for three days. He bought it and then tucked the receipt into his checkbook and put his checkbook back into his desk drawer, because if he can’t see the receipt he can’t crack and return everything and have to text Wilbur in shame admitting he isn’t going to do it after all.
It's not that he doesn’t want to dye his hair; it’s that he’s never done something like this before, and Techno is very bad about doing things he’s never done before. It’s much easier not to.
Wilbur pokes his head into the bag immediately when he spots it, though he has no way of knowing what’s in it, and Techno is vividly reminded of every video he’s ever seen of cats playing in bags.
“You’re like a little boy scout,” Wilbur says from inside the bag. “So prepared.”
“I’m gonna take that as a compliment,” Techno tells him, dumping his keys in the basket he keeps by the fruit bowl.
“In what world would that not be a compliment?” Wilbur complains, removing his head from the bag. His glasses are crooked.
Techno just shakes his head, and that gets a grin out of Wilbur.
Maybe things won’t be that bad after all, Techno thinks. It’s a nice thought, which means it probably can’t be true, but that doesn’t make it any less nice.
*
Wilbur ends up doing the majority of the work, because Techno has no clue what he’s doing, and that’s just fine by both of them. That night, after a dinner of Chinese takeout and a few more hours of slightly less stilted conversation, they drag Techno’s desk chair into his tiny bathroom and Wilbur breaks out the bleach.
The bathroom is so small that Techno has to sit with his knees drawn up to his chest, chin tucked into the old towel Wilbur draped around his shoulders. The bleach doesn’t smell like Techno expects, like what he knows bleach smells like, but the chemical stink of it is still strong, if unfamiliar, as Wilbur mixes together the powder and the developer somewhere behind him. He’s set his phone on the toilet lid, playing music on low volume as he works. Techno thinks he recognizes a David Bowie song, but he’s not really sure.
Techno takes off his glasses so Wilbur can work more freely. The bathroom becomes a blur of indistinct shapes and softened edges in their absence. Everything is a little bit like a watercolor with too much water, colors running loose and wet across the paper.
“So,” Techno asks as Wilbur begins to work the bleach into his hair, “what have you been doin’?”
Wilbur hums, hands steady. “Lots of stuff, really. Worked in a warehouse for a while, a bookshop for longer. I’m a bartender right now. Don’t know for how long.”
“You don’t like it?”
Wilbur pauses. Out of the corner of his eye, Techno can make out Wilbur’s blobby shape in the mirror, bleach-laden brush poised in midair.
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Wilbur says, sounding thoughtful. “I just don’t know if it’s what I want to do forever.”
He goes back to applying the bleach after that, and Techno learns something about bleach at this point: it itches. He’s never had the most sensitive scalp, but the sensation is all-around uncomfortable. Resisting the urge to scratch at his head, Techno casts around for something to talk about. His eye lands on Wilbur’s phone, still playing music.
“Is that Elvis?” Techno asks in disbelief. Never in his life has he heard Wilbur listen to Elvis.
Wilbur pokes him with the dye brush. “Don’t judge my music taste,” he says, but he sounds embarrassed. “It’s a catchy song!”
Grunting, Techno makes a swipe for the phone and manages to grab it, ignoring Wilbur’s squawk of protest. He unlocks it—after all this time, Wilbur still hasn’t changed his passcode from four ones in a row, really?—and scrolls through Wilbur’s music.
“I can’t believe you don’t have Poison on here,” Techno tells him. “How did that song go?” He adopts a terrible Southern drawl. “Every rose has its thorn—”
“Oh my god,” Wilbur groans.
“—Just like every night has its dawn—”
“I was twelve!” he hisses, whacking Techno’s head with the brush again. “You can’t hold things I thought were profound at age twelve against me!”
“—Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song,” Techno continues, ignoring him.
“I hate you,” Wilbur tells him. Techno can hear the grin in his voice.
*
Dyeing hair is a longer process than Techno expected, or maybe he just gets bored easily. After Wilbur finishes applying the bleach, he has to sit with a plastic bag over his head, feeling very much like an idiot, for half an hour to let it work. They watch an episode of some terrible mystery show Wilbur picks to pass the time, and then Techno has to wash it out and dry his hair before they can even get to the dye.
He's amazed he even owns a hair dryer, but apparently he does.
Techno chooses all the music as Wilbur starts on the dye, hunched up in his desk chair again with the phone about an inch from his nose so he can make out the song titles. As the evening goes on, the awkwardness falls away the more they talk. It’s nothing profound, but it has none of the hesitance of their earlier conversations. Maybe it’s just that talking is easier without having to look Wilbur in the eyes, but Techno welcomes it regardless.
“Okay,” Wilbur says, wrapping another plastic bag over Techno’s dye-sodden hair and cinching the excess with a hair tie, “the longer you leave it in, the more vibrant it’ll be. You can sleep in it if you want.”
Techno nods, unsure of what to say now that the natural flow of the conversation has been stymied. He unfolds himself from the chair, legs protesting at the sudden weight, and helps clean up the mess on the bathroom counter before restoring his chair to its proper place.
It’s getting later by this point, so in the end they decide to go to bed. Wilbur takes the couch, bedding down with a couple of Techno’s spare blankets, and Techno brushes his teeth in the bathroom that smells strongly of chemicals and the oddly floral scent of hair dye and retreats to his room. He’s more tired than he realized.
“Good night,” Techno hears Wilbur call from the living room, or he thinks he does, anyway.
“Good night,” he says back, settling onto his side. Time for a good night’s sleep.
*
Techno does not sleep. Can't sleep might be more accurate to say. It’s certainly not for lack of trying, but it’s been hours and he’s most definitely still awake.
Around two in the morning, he finally gives up trying to sleep. The plastic bag keeps crinkling in his ears and the smell of the dye is a uniquely terrible experience and every bone and nerve and neuron in Techno’s body is incredibly aware that he’s not alone in his apartment. There’s just something about having people in his space that sets him on edge, something he can’t seem to control no matter how hard he tries. It makes him want to unzip his skin, to crawl right out of it like a lizard or a snake and run away somewhere to be alone. Maybe take a nap on nice sun-warmed rock.
Sighing, he puts on his glasses and climbs out of bed. In the dim greyscale painting that is his apartment after dark, Techno shuffles to the bathroom and spits out his retainer, rinsing it in the sink and tucking it back in its case. He runs his tongue over the backs of his teeth in relief and wanders into the living room. The couch is empty, and the balcony door stands open, letting in the cool night breeze. Out on the balcony, he can see Wilbur’s lanky silhouette leaning against the railing, haloed in hazy orange light from the street lamps below.
Techno crosses to lean against the doorframe, clearing his throat. Wilbur startles, looking back at him. He’s holding a cigarette in one hand, the burning end glowing like a firefly in the darkness. Two weeks ago, Techno remembers Tommy mentioning in one of his texts that Wilbur had gone cold turkey on smoking. He’d been so excited about it, too.
“Hey,” Wilbur says, taking another drag of the cigarette, making the end flare. In the navy darkness of night, his face is a jumble of angles and shadows, almost alien in its composition. “You couldn’t sleep either?”
Looking at him then, Techno is struck by a sudden thought: do I even know you at all anymore? He’s not entirely sure he wants to know the answer.
“This dye smells terrible,” he grumbles.
Wilbur laughs. “Yeah,” he says, “I guess it kind of does.”
“Screw it,” Techno says, reaching for the hair tie, uncaring of the fact that it’s two in the goddamn morning, “I’m washin’ it out. If I keep smellin' this stuff for more than another two minutes, I’m gonna go crazy.”
Wilbur follows him back into the apartment, stubbing out his cigarette on the rail and dropping it into one of the terracotta pots on Techno’s balcony that used to hold geraniums, back when he was more optimistic about his ability to garden, but now holds only empty soil. Techno makes a mental note to tell him to throw it away later.
“How do I do this?” he asks, reaching the bathroom and flicking on the light. The golden glow bathes the entire hall.
“You just rinse it with lukewarm water until the water runs clear,” Wilbur says, coming to stand by his side. He smells like tobacco, which is hardly better than the stink of the dye.
Pulling the bag off his head, Techno moves towards the tub, then stops.
“How am I supposed to tell if the water’s runnin' clear without my glasses on?” he realizes, annoyed.
Wilbur looks thoughtful. “I might have a solution to that.”
(In the end, Techno sits in the tub, fully clothed in swim trunks and a ratty old t-shirt, arms around his knees, because it’s almost three in the morning by this point, and nothing matters anymore. Wilbur sits on the edge of the tub, sleeves and pant legs rolled up, and uses an old plastic cup to dump water over Techno’s head, washing the dye out.)
*
Afterwards, they sit wrapped in towels on Techno’s balcony, talking over mugs of coffee. It’s the kind of late-night conversation where you can never remember half of what was said afterwards, but never forget it happened, and that’s just fine with Techno.
As the sun rises over the edge of the buildings across the street, Wilbur tells him about Tommy, but not all the way.
“It’s complicated,” he says, and, “It’s a long story.”
“We have time,” Techno says. If there’s anything he has time for at four-thirty in the morning, it’s a story. This story. Mapping uncharted territory. Maybe, just maybe, reforging a friendship.
Wilbur looks at him then, really looks at him in the pre-dawn light. Techno can make out a tattoo of a compass rose on the inside of his right wrist, half-pressed against the ceramic of his mug of coffee.
“I don’t think I’m ready,” Wilbur tells him. “Maybe next time.”
It feels like a promise. Wilbur Soot has never been the best about promises, but Techno thinks he’s okay with that.
(If this is the last time he sees Wilbur, Techno thinks it’s as good an end as any. Kinder than most, even. If it’s not, then Techno thinks it just might be a good beginning for something new.)
*
(Here’s something Wilbur hasn’t told Techno: he lied about knowing loads about hair dye. Until a week ago, he knew nothing at all, beyond a vague sort of understanding about bleaching dark hair to dye it colors. When Techno texts him about it, he stays up until three in the morning watching tutorials and doing research.
Techno will never know. Wilbur’s just fine with that. He’s never been very good at saying sorry out loud, for all his love of words.)
*
“Hey,” Wilbur says, pulling his head off his knees and shaking it, fighting back a yawn. They’re both nearly asleep on the cold concrete of Techno’s balcony, uncomfortable though it is. He nudges Techno with his elbow. “Your hair’s dry!”
Techno blinks at him sleepily, wiping at the crust forming in the corners of his eyes. “Huh?” He yawns. “How’s it look?”
He could just go inside and look in a mirror, but he’s too tired for that.
A smile breaks out over Wilbur’s face, bright as the sun coming up over the horizon.
“It suits you,” he says, tugging at a strand of now-pink hair until Techno sleepily slaps his hand away. “It really suits you.”