Third reading

By the time the Bill was considered on report and moved to third reading, Ari was aware that people were starting to notice his general change in demeanour. It wasn't that she disapproved, Eilidh had been explaining at exhaustive length. "It's that it makes me think about your sex life, which I do not want to do under any circumstances," she said, tapping a glossy red nail on her briefing pack. "God, you're so relaxed and happy. I hate it."

Ari tried for a sharp response but couldn't manage it, on account of being too relaxed and happy. Eilidh groaned.

"Oh, go away, I can't bear you," she said. "I should try Tinder. Maybe Diggory has tips."

Diggory discovered an urgent need to visit the gents. Ari smiled at him as he went, or rather just kept on smiling; he'd had trouble keeping the bland civil service expression, these last few days and weeks. He, Eilidh and Diggory were lurking in one of the long hallways at the base of the House of Lords, being supervised by a portrait of Pitt the Younger while they waited to be called into the box by the ushers. They'd misjudged the timing, as ever, but for once they were too early for a debate, rather than too late. Jules would be along shortly, he'd said; he'd come and wish them luck before going up to the public gallery, and then come and meet them afterwards if the debate ended early enough. Ari was trying to put it out of his mind for the moment – he wasn't so far gone as to have lost focus on the Bill's third reading – but he wasn't immune to the possibilities of a free evening. He was contemplating them when his phone chimed with a message from Yaz: 1922 comm now poss pulling clauses?

He stared at it for a second, and then he was half-running, saying something over his shoulder to Eilidh, trying desperately to remember where the 1922 Committee Room was. He swung around a corner and almost ran into Jules. Ari smiled at him, then stopped short at the expression on his face.

"Ari," Jules said, "before you run off, just listen. About the Bill—"

"She wants to pull the clauses," Ari said reflexively, and then, as it hit him: "What have you done, you fucking spad?"

"Ari," Jules said desperately, "please understand, I had to do it, you wouldn't listen to me—"

"You went over my head," Ari said. "You went over my head, because you can, because you don't answer to anyone! You're the son of a peer and I'm just a civil servant!"

Jules had said that to him. Jules had said that to him almost the first time they'd met.

"Ari," Jules said again, reaching for him, but Ari jerked backwards.

"Don't touch me," he said, and then Yaz had spotted him and he didn't have time for whatever else Jules had to say. She grabbed him by the arm and hustled him to the door of the 1922 Committee Room.

"Just knock and go in," she said, looking at him with an ominous sympathy.

Ari knocked and went in. The room beyond was long, ornate, replete with the great coups d'état it had witnessed. He and the minister were the only people in it.

Baroness MacKay threw a piece of paper onto the committee room table, the top sheet of a bundle of memoranda. "Don't let the minister do the idiotic thing," she said. "Well?"

With a great effort of will, Ari met her eyes. She stared at him; he stared back. He couldn't speak.

"Well," the minister said again. "I suppose that means you don't have anything to say for yourself?"

"Minister," Ari said, "that wasn't intended for you to see."

"I know that!" the minister said, furiously. "Call me an idiot all you like in your own correspondence, it's practically a civil service tradition. Sit down, for God's sake."

Ari couldn't go further than a few steps into the room without putting his feet on the carpet. He sat down on the only chair he could reach.

"I asked for advice on pulling the clauses from the damn Northern Infrastructure Bill and doing a new one, all of our own," the minister said. "From what I can see here, that's perfectly possible. It's even a good idea. You, however, ignored the special adviser who found this out, ignored all the earlier policy input he gave you on the subject, and carefully omitted it from the submission, so I would go ahead with a set of clauses in someone else's Bill that will achieve almost exactly nothing."

"That's not how it happened," Ari said, his stupidly overactive mind riffling through the course of events like a flipbook. "When I did the sub, I didn't know about this option."

"But afterwards you did?" the minister said. "Don't answer that, I know you did."

She threw another sheet of paper on the table, the first page of Jules's alternative-energy-sources memorandum.

"It's dated from before the sub, I note," she said. "But let's say you didn't get a chance to read it, fine, it's dense. You could send me another sub. You could come and see me, I work in the same building you do. Why didn't you?"

"I don't know," Ari said, but hindsight had the uncomfortable clarity of a searchlight. He hadn't wanted to pull the Bill clauses, to do the work from scratch, to spend yet more days and nights drowning in briefing packs and documentation and memoranda. He had been so tired.

"Christ almighty, Ari!" The minister threw the rest of the memo down onto the table. "You're not Sir Humphrey Appleby. What the hell were you thinking?"

Right now, Ari couldn't think at all. "It seemed like it was for the best."

"Were you elected to serve the public? Who cares what you think is best?"

"You weren't elected either, minister," Ari said, in some self-destructive urge towards pedantry.

"Do you think this is the time and place to get into the politics of an unelected second chamber?" the minister said. "Does it look like the time and place for that?"

"No," Ari said. He was exhausted from this, and from the mental gymnastics his brain was currently engaged in, to avoid thinking about how he'd got here. How the minister had got those memos, been able to parrot his own words back at him. "Are you going to pull the Bill clauses?"

"Well, I can't do that now, can I," the minister said. "Seeing as how no one advised me in time to actually do it."

"We could," Ari started, and then gave up. He knew even without consulting Eilidh that they couldn't. It was too late. "No. We can't."

"Yes, exactly," the minister said. "What happens now? Your advice is as much use as a chocolate teapot at this moment, but let's have it."

"The current Bill clauses will do some things," Ari said cautiously. "They will create some jobs, they will increase some capacity. It would be better if we could do it from scratch, but it's not nothing."

"See how easy that was?" the minister said. "You can tell me when I'm stupid or uninformed. I want you to do that, in fact. But you can't just slide an option off the table because it doesn't suit you. That's not your job."

"It's my job to get your legislation through," Ari said. "The new Bill is an unknown quantity. This one isn't. We could have got it through."

"I want to get our legislation through as much as you do," the minister said. "But not at the expense of actually achieving something. When this is all over your team are going to work out the logistics of a new Bill. Can we make a second session bid for it?"

"Yes, I think so," Ari said, grateful to be asked a question in the usual way. "I'd have to check with the lawyers."

"So check with the lawyers. You're going to put together the bid, and prepare the clauses and documentation. You're going to keep me briefed throughout. And you are never, ever going to do something like this again. Do you understand me, Ari? Stand up and say, ‘yes, minister'."

Ari stood up. "Yes, minister."

"Good." The minister held his gaze. "Right, is that you properly bollocked? I don't have to find whatever poor sod you report to and get them to have another go at you?"

"No, minister."

"Are you sure? It's no trouble."

"I'm sure."

"Fine. Get out of my sight."

Ari nodded, but she wasn't looking at him, her head bent over her papers. He had reached the threshold when she said, in a much gentler tone, "Ari, wait."

Ari stopped with his hand on the door handle. "Yes?"

"Come over here, please."

"I can't," Ari said, gesturing at the carpet, plush and rich and strictly verboten for officials to stand on. He'd avoided doing so thus far by lurking on the chair closest to the door, his papers dropped on the big antique table beside him. If she clucked and said, just this once, or surely it isn't that important, he would scream, or cry, or otherwise embarrassingly lose his mind to the extent that he hadn't already.

"Oh," the minister said, still gently. She got up, crossed the floor and came to perch on the table next to him, her feet swinging off the ground. "That's better, isn't it. Tell me, what's happened between you and your spad? My spad, I should say, I appointed the bloody man."

"Minister, I don't know what you mean."

"Ari, I have so few pleasures left in life. Allow me the small joy of shipping my officials."

"Did you just say, shipping?" Ari said.

"Oh, my, the young." The minister put a hand on his shoulder. "My children are your age, you know. I was there for the glory years of One Direction fandom."

"Christ," Ari said, involuntarily. "What's happened is the papers he sent you. The ones you've just this minute finished bollocking me about?"

"Ah, yes, that did make me wonder." She flipped back through the pages with charming disingenuousness. "Yes, he sent me these. To drop you in it?"

"Presumably."

"Don't be such an idiot." The minister reached over him to steal his briefing pack. "He's not some career-ambitious spad with his eye on political office. He's a dippy little policy wonk trying to be a bit of use in this world. It's no sin."

"He is a spad," Ari said, having decided to go with the flow of this conversation and be mortified by it later. "Why else would he do this? Why would anyone? The palaver, the mess of pulling the Bill, all that time, all that work?"

"Other than to make you look stupid and shortsighted, which by the way, you have been?" The minister put down the pack. "How about, to stop climate change?"

Ari tasted saltwater, like grief. He dug his fingernails into his palms and said nothing.

"Well, that shut him up," the minister said, to no one in particular. "Is that so hard to believe? That your spad might be trying to change things for the better?"

"We have tried to change things for the better," Ari said, through a wash of something that felt like drowning. "We try, and what we get is the Acts. All we ever get is more to do. All we ever get is requiem."

He knew, as he said it, that this was one of the things that were true but should never be spoken of, like the alcohol in the departmental filing cabinets and that sometimes-desire to stay in bed and never get out of it again. It was of a piece with the thing he wasn't thinking, about how letting Jules into his life should have brought happiness measured in more than days. It was all, in its way, a kind of lost grace.

Inside his head, Lil noted that he'd just taken the civil service principle of deferential neutrality and set it on fire. Ari sat quietly and waited to answer for it.

But the seconds passed, and the minister wasn't looking at him with outrage, or making any immediate demand for his resignation.

"Sweetheart," she said, with a compassion that hurt more than anything else had today. "This is it. This is all I have to give you. If you want more, you have to find it for yourself."

Ari thought of waking with Jules in his bed, the music he'd heard in the rain. "Minister," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Make things right," the minister said. She jumped off the table and picked up her papers just as they heard the knock at the door. "Five minutes?"

"Five minutes," Yaz confirmed, peering through the crack.

"I can't do this without you," the minister said to Ari. "Do I have you?"

"Yes, minister."

"I'm glad of it. Come on."

She waited for him to gather his things, and they went down to the chamber together.

___

The Northern Infrastructure Bill was considered on third reading in debates running to ten hours, without motion for adjournment. The clauses from the Department for Energy and Efficiency, having been amended in such a way as not to trigger Opposition Amendment Eleven, were the penultimate batch to be considered, yielding finally for consideration of changes to the constitution of the Settle-Carlisle Railway.

Jules was waiting in the hallway at the door to the officials' box.

He'd been almost sure Ari would shout at him or ignore him, and only realised slowly that the reason he didn't seem to be doing either was that he couldn't speak. Eilidh and Diggory weren't much better off, but both managed to smile at Jules before heading unsteadily off into the night. The minister, too, nodded at Jules while taking a breath in the hallway. "You and I need to talk about climate change," she said, focused as always on the next thing, and headed back into the chamber.

"Ari," Jules said, holding out a bottle of water, "you can go off at me after you've had this."

Ari took it from him and drank half of it in one go. "How long?" he asked, voice hoarse.

"It was half the sitting," Jules said. "You and the others were in the box for about four hours."

Ari seemed barely comprehending. "That means it must be—"

"Nearly midnight, yes." Jules glanced at his watch. "What do you need?"

He'd promised himself he would ask that, while making his way down from the public gallery. Even if – when – Ari walked away from him, Jules wanted to be able to look back and think he'd had the courage not to run from this. To come down here, and be what he'd always want to be for Ari, despite everything. Jules hadn't sent the minister the papers as a form of political manipulation, or to hurt Ari; he'd done it because it was the only thing he could do.

It had hurt Ari. Jules had spent his four hours in the public gallery sitting with that certain knowledge, while counting all thirty-three questions the members of the Lords had lobbed at the minister about the Bill clauses Jules had tried to get pulled.

"I need—ah." Ari waved a hand vaguely, indicating all the things that one would need, having been forbidden to eat, drink or use the facilities for half a day. "And then I need to get out of here."

Jules didn't know if that meant Ari wanted him to hang around, or not. He lingered anyway, waiting until Ari had dealt with the formalities and signed them both out. Outside, it was chilly and damp but not actually raining, the lights of the Palace of Westminster glistening in the puddles. Ari seemed restless, reluctant to follow the towpath towards home, casting his eyes around for something else. A pedestal bench under a canopy of trees was miraculously dry. Ari dropped on it and Jules sat down beside him, understanding what was going to happen next. If they didn't do this now, they could go no further together.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then there was no getting away from it.

"Ari," Jules said. "About what I did. When I sent those papers to the minister about pulling the Bill."

"Yes," Ari said, without affect.

"I'm not sorry," Jules said. "I didn't want the minister to blame you, and I didn't want you to be hurt. But it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad I did it, and I would do it again."

Ari said nothing, looking at him with those steady, unreadable eyes. As he had done when they had first met, over the table in the Residence Room, a few months and a lifetime ago.

"I wouldn't have done it before," Jules said, after a moment. If he owed Ari the truth, he owed him all of it. "I wouldn't have cared enough about the Bill, or climate change, or anything. But doing it, caring about it, despite the personal consequences?"

"Yes?" Ari said again, when Jules didn't go on.

Jules breathed in, and out. "I learned that from you."

The silence after that was deep and ominous. Ari was quite still, leaning against the back of the bench with his eyes unfocused. Jules thought about putting an arm around him, but held back. The last thing Ari had said to him before the third reading debate was, don't touch me. Jules waited.

"I was ready to end this," Ari said, at last. "Whatever this is, you and me. I was ready to leave."

"I understand," Jules said. He did, despite everything; he'd made this choice in full knowledge of the possible consequences. But it hurt like hellfire anyway, and more so for this awful melodramatic garnish, that this precious thing that he and Ari had been to each other, however briefly, should end on a deserted towpath at midnight in the rain.

Then he thought about what Ari had actually said.

"But you don't want to leave now?" Jules asked, in hope, not certainty. "Do you want to?"

"I understand why you did what you did," Ari said, not answering his question. "I was tired, and burnt out, and I didn't want to listen to reason."

"You…" Jules paused. "You were so angry with me."

"I still am," Ari said. He didn't sound it, but equally he didn't seem quite so senseless with exhaustion; Jules had heard this sharpness in him many times. "I'm angry that you sidestepped the usual channels, that you used your spad privileges to go around me. But they are your privileges, and this is the game we play. I understand that."

"Thank you," Jules said. "If you don't mind my asking, what changed your mind?"

"The minister." Ari sighed. "It's a long story."

"She wanted to see you," Jules said, remembering this with a flash of guilt. "Did she—"

"Yes, she did," Ari said. "It was about the most excruciating experience of my entire life, including my fifth birthday party with the clown."

"Sorry," Jules said, because regardless of the general principle some things did demand apology. "Ari, if you want nothing more to do with me after this, I do get it. But if you do…"

Again, he was asking with hope, not certainty. Ari leaned over and kissed him, wrapping his arms around Jules's neck. Jules held him tightly and felt him shudder, as though in release of some long-endured pain. It was all he needed in answer.

For a minute, they stayed as they were, Ari in Jules's arms, heavy and wordless. It was raining again, the water running down the back of Jules's neck.

"Ari," Jules said at last, wanting to add any number of relieved, soft, loving things, and not able to articulate any of them. It didn't matter. There would be time. "What now?"

"Take me home, please," Ari said, into his shoulder. "I need you to fuck me till I can't think."

"Yes." Jules drew back. "We can do that."

They got to Jules's little flat in Hammersmith in the small hours of the morning, and only waited until the front door was safely closed. Ari put his hands on the back of the door, bracing them both against it, kissing Jules as though his sanity depended on it. It took time, but Jules understood what Ari wanted: to be relieved of the responsibility of thinking; to be taken apart meticulously by Jules's mouth and cock and fingertips; to be spent, and able, finally, to rest. Jules was dizzied by it, by being the focus of such an intensity of need and desire. For himself, he wanted only the soft weight of Ari's body in his bed, the flesh-and-blood reminder that he had seen Jules as he was, and chosen to stay.

He woke up to find that for once Ari had not got up before him at some unearthly hour. Jules slipped out of bed, made a pot of coffee and brought two mugs back, just as Ari emerged from a heap of covers, sleep-ruffled and hopelessly endearing.

"There's another problem," he said, as though continuing a conversation they had just been having. Jules slid into bed beside him, charmed by Ari's ever-churning mind.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked, holding off whatever it was for a moment. "You were done in last night."

"Much better, thank you." Ari sat up and accepted the mug. Their hands brushed, and Jules felt stupidly, giddily happy. "Problem."

"Problem," Jules said.

"You and I still work together," Ari said. "You know more about the subject matter than I do and I respect your opinions. But we're not always on the same side."

"You respect my opinions," Jules said. Ari had said it casually, without particular weight and moment. It felt like a last missing piece.

"Of course," Ari said, oblivious. "So we're going to come to blows again eventually, I'm sure. Probably on the details of the climate change bill if nothing else."

"There's going to be a climate change bill?" Jules said, unable to stop himself from sounding excited.

Ari elbowed him. "Yes, that is definitely the important element of this conversation."

"We'll manage it," Jules said, with a sudden certainty. "People split up their personal and professional lives all the time. It'll be hard, but we're used to that."

"Yes, I suppose we are." Ari smiled at him, fragile and wonderful. "In a better world, you and I would have an easier time of it. But this is it, this is what we have. And I think I'm lucky to have it."

Jules leaned in and kissed him. "I love you, Ari."

"You, too." Ari slipped down the pillows, his head coming to rest on Jules's shoulder. "You care about doing the right thing, you care about people, you care about climate change. I'm not going to stand in the way of that. At least, I'm going to try not to be a dick about it."

Jules nodded. "You care about things too, you know. You're just living through something, that's all."

"Yeah." Ari's voice was soft in his ear. "Thank you for… well. For last night. I appreciate that was more about me than you."

"It was a terrible chore," Jules agreed. "You owe me. Shut up and drink your coffee."

Ari laughed and took orders. Jules thought about following it up with a further instruction to stay in bed and not worry about anything, but he recognised that as a lost cause. Ari drank the coffee and then went hunting around the flat, looking for wherever his phone had been discarded the night before. Jules watched him potter around as though he belonged, and felt happiness uncurl inside him again, like a snowdrop through snow.

"Oh," Ari said, to thin air, having found his phone in his coat pocket. "Oh, my God."

He sat down on the floor where he was and buried his head into his hands.

"Ari," Jules said, really alarmed. "Ari, what is it?"

Ari looked up, and Jules couldn't tell if he was laughing or crying. "The Bill has fallen."

"What?" Jules leapt out of bed and grabbed his laptop out from under a sofa cushion. "It's a government Bill! How can it have fallen?"

"I don't know!" Ari was scrolling through something. "Defeated at third reading—yes, blah, blah, blah, we know that part, why did it fall?"

Jules had got BBC News up on screen. "Due to failures by the whips – what the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know, but someone screwed up."

"The government's Northern Infrastructure Bill," Jules read, "posited to bring a number of benefits, yes, fine, okay, we know all about the benefits, was defeated in the Lords in the small hours of this morning by a narrow margin."

"Two votes," Ari said. "Two votes, it says here."

"Failures by the whips," Jules said, again. "The government members weren't all informed in time of the vote. And there was a minor peer rebellion over the Settle-Carlisle Railway."

"Who resigns the whip over the Settle-Carlisle Railway?" Ari said, happily. "Oh, Regional Infrastructure must be so pissed off."

"What does this mean for us?" Jules asked.

"They actually came to me and said, oh, Ari, darling, your department's going to have to speak to its own Bill clauses! Months of work and they fucked it up!"

"Ari!" Jules said. "What does this mean for us?"

"It means it all falls away." Ari was standing in the middle of Jules's living room, ablaze with mischief, with joy. He'd been laughing a minute ago but there were tears in his eyes. "It means we begin again."

Jules pulled Ari close, holding him against his heart. "Yes," he said, understanding the weight of what he was saying, feeling equal to the task of bearing it. "Fall, and begin again."