Chapter 18: A contractual agreement

Cian stared at the campus card in his hand and silently cursed the original host about a thousand times.

When he’d been dropped into this world, the contract between the original Cian and Eoin was already signed and sealed. He’d naturally assumed the financial side of things had been sorted. It had never occurred to him that the original had only arranged the hospital trial place and hadn’t handed over a single euro besides.

So here was Eoin, contracted partner to one of Dublin’s wealthiest heirs, wearing a designer coat and a custom ear cuff worth a small fortune, and his canteen card had less than a tenner on it. The man was eating plain food in the college cafeteria and calling it a day.

Cian slid the card out of Eoin’s fingers without ceremony and steered him into a chair. "Sit down. I’ll sort it."

He crossed the canteen to the top up counter and set the card on the desk. "How much can you load onto one of these at once?"

The woman behind the counter looked up. "Five hundred."

Cian put his credit card down. "Put five hundred on it then."

He’d already liquidated everything, the spare cars, the watches, the luxury bits he’d never touched, and had it wired to an account Dr. Keane was holding for him abroad. What remained was sitting on credit cards, and not for much longer. According to the novel, Declan would figure out what his son had done with the investment money within the month, and when he did, every card would be frozen before Cian could blink.

The woman at the counter blinked at the amount. "You’re sure?"

"I’m sure."

She ran it through the machine. He tapped in the pin. With that balance, Eoin could eat grilled fish every day for months and still have change left over.

He went back to the counter, put in the order, and dropped into the seat across from Eoin. Eoin looked down at the card like it might bite him. "How much did you put on it?"

Cian was already pulling apart a bread roll. "Not much."

Eoin let out a slow breath. "Thank you."

Strictly speaking, Cian only owed Eoin a hospital trial place. That was what the contract said. Everything else was outside its scope. The original Eoin had never pushed for money, had in fact been oddly resistant to the idea, as if accepting it would tip some internal balance he wasn’t willing to disturb. Whether that was pride or principle probably depended on your point of view.

But things had shifted from the original, quietly and without announcement. Something had changed in how Eoin held himself around Cian, some small reduction in the space he kept between them. As if the gap between their two worlds, which had always seemed absolute, had become merely large.

The grilled fish was spiced in a way that didn’t really suit Eoin, and he worked through it slowly. Cian ate most of it.

It had been a very long time since he’d eaten in a canteen like this.

When they’d finished, Cian leaned back and looked out through the glass at the stretch of beech trees lining the path outside, their leaves a deep, burnished gold. "Show me around the campus?"

He hadn’t exactly been a model student himself, but he could recognise a beautiful place when he saw one. Trinity was famous for its grounds, and he was curious.

Eoin agreed without hesitation. "Sure."

They went out together and walked the long path under the beech trees, past beds of late autumn flowers, past the ornamental pond and the humpbacked bridge where a couple was kissing in what they presumably imagined was a discreet corner. The commercial street behind the campus was loud and warm smelling, restaurant owners working their stoves, the footpath busy with students.

Cian and Eoin moved through it at a comfortable pace, surrounded by couples in matching scarves, or walking hand in hand, or sharing large takeaway cups with two straws wedged in the same lid.

Eoin’s gaze snagged on the cups.

Aoife always had one. Big cups, always from the same place, always on her desk when she arrived in the morning. They weren’t cheap, nearly five euro for the large size, and Eoin had never been remotely tempted.

He didn’t even particularly like sweet things. And the logic of spending money on something that lasted twenty minutes had always been beyond him. Growing up the way he had, with the nearest shop a long drive from the townland and every euro accounted for twice before it left his pocket, the idea of buying something just because it tasted nice had belonged to a different kind of life entirely. Not his.

Over the years, the wanting had gone quiet on its own. He’d stopped noticing things like that. Hadn’t bothered looking.

But walking down this street now, with Cian beside him and the evening coming in over the rooftops, Eoin found himself wanting to know what it tasted like.

The thought appeared without warning and refused to leave quietly. It spread through the back of his mind like heat. They were nearly at the end of the street, a couple of steps from turning the corner, when Eoin reached out and caught Cian’s sleeve.

Cian turned, looking mildly puzzled.

Eoin’s fingers tightened on the fabric without quite meaning to. He felt ridiculous. He felt like a child asking for something at the checkout he had no business wanting. He kept his eyes down, voice quieter than usual. "Cian. I want to try the bubble tea."

For people who were actually together, this would have been nothing. A perfectly ordinary thing to say on a perfectly ordinary walk.

But they weren’t together. They had an agreement and an end date and a very clear understanding of what each of them was getting out of it. Making this kind of request sat somewhere between embarrassing and absurd, and Eoin knew it. Half of him wanted to take the words back.

The other half waited to see what Cian would do.

Cian blinked, then pulled out his phone to scan the order code. "I fancy one too actually. What do you want?"

Eoin stared at him.

"I’ll just order two of what I like, then," Cian said, already scrolling through the menu.

He ordered, collected both cups, and handed one to Eoin. The cardboard was warm. Steam rose from the top and curled against Eoin’s face.

The system chose this moment to materialise beside Cian. "Host, don’t forget, you’ve still got two lines to deliver."

Cian acknowledged this with a small sound and then, smooth as anything, drew Eoin a step closer. He brushed his fringe back with one hand, let his fingers settle into the scarf at the back of Eoin’s neck, cool against the skin.

It was the sort of gesture that was designed to unsettle, a slow, possessive thing, like someone turning a precious object in the light to appreciate it properly.

Cian dipped his head and kept his voice low. "Come to the hotel tonight."

Eoin’s fingers trembled slightly around the cup. "Okay," he said.

In the original novel, these smaller scenes had been scattered across several Chapters, nothing dramatic, no particular highlights, just Cian summoning Eoin as the mood took him and Eoin arriving as the contract required. The system classed them as routine checkboxes. Work through them, clock them off, move on.

By the time they’d walked the full length of the street, all the lines had been said. The system sent up what could only be described as mental fireworks. "All done!"

Working with a host like Cian was genuinely exhausting.

Cian drove back to the hotel. Eoin returned to the lab, where Aoife was waiting with a new stack of papers. "The supervisor’s taken on a new project. He specifically wants you to lead it."

Eoin sat down and started reading through them. Aoife hovered, then added, "It’s a significant one. He’s one step from the Distinguished Young Scholar award. If he makes it this year, we’d probably get moved to the new block."

The new building was where the serious researchers worked, the ones whose names turned up on posters and grant lists.

Eoin turned a page. "Let’s just focus on doing the work properly. The rest will follow."

Aoife nodded dutifully, held out for about four seconds, and then couldn’t help herself. She leaned forward. "Eoin. What is the story with your man?"

She had already decided in her own mind that Cian was his boyfriend.

Eoin sighed. "He’s not my boyfriend."

"You’re telling me that man sat through an entire pharmacokinetics lecture for someone who isn’t his boyfriend."

"That’s not what it is."

He and Cian had matching scarves. Cian’s initial was clipped to his ear. They had spent an afternoon walking the most notoriously romantic stretch of the Trinity grounds together. And they were, technically, not in a relationship.

Cian had always listed himself as single. He’d never made anything public. When Rory had introduced Sinéad, he’d used the word girlfriend. When Cian had introduced Eoin, it had been, "This is Mr. Brennan, teaching assistant at Trinity."

Aoife raised an eyebrow. "So what are you to each other?"

Something bitter settled at the back of Eoin’s throat. He managed a smile that didn’t quite fit his face. "Just believe what the subreddit says."

The subreddit said it was a kept arrangement. And it was, more or less. Cian held the terms. He could end it whenever he liked.

Aoife made a sceptical noise and went back to mixing her reagents. "I’m not buying it. The way he looked at me when he pulled you out of that lecture hall, I genuinely thought he was going to say something."

Eoin said nothing.

That evening, as he had done before, he climbed the steps to the hotel, knocked on the door of the penthouse suite.

Cian was on the sofa, as usual, sprawled sideways with a game running on his phone, and glanced up when Eoin came in. He said something lightly cutting, Eoin replied with something flat and brief, they both washed up and got into bed fully clothed, and that was the extent of it.

They lay with an arm’s length between them and Cian closed his eyes, one hand resting easily on Eoin’s shoulder, completely relaxed, not pushing anything further.

He seemed entirely uninterested.

Eoin had never been in a relationship, but even he understood that this wasn’t how someone behaved around a person they wanted, or even a person they kept around for their own entertainment.

He’d heard things about Cian’s tastes, the way people talked in that circle. The young master had always gone for the bright, easy sort, cheerful, a little dramatic, quick to laugh and quicker to pout. The opposite of Eoin in almost every particular. Compared to the socialites and personalities Cian had apparently kept company with before, Eoin considered himself fairly unremarkable on all fronts. If the arrangement hadn’t been useful, he doubted he’d have registered on Cian’s radar at all.

And yet.

The blanket after the rain. The lollipop in the car. The milk at the bar on the boat. The canteen card. The tour of the campus in the afternoon light.

Eoin reached out in the dark, his fingers finding the edge of Cian’s shoulder blade. "Cian."

Cian was mostly asleep. He caught Eoin’s hand without opening his eyes, loose and easy. "What."

Eoin lay still for a moment, looking at the ceiling, and then asked quietly, "What are we to each other?"

Cian was too far gone to properly surface. He held onto the question for a few seconds, turning it over somewhere below full consciousness, and then answered in a voice blurred with sleep.

"A contractual arrangement."

His mind drifted, unhurried. A month from now, Declan would find out where the money had gone. After that, Cian would be on a flight out of Dublin, and the contract would unravel on its own. Five years abroad, more or less. And Eoin would be free of him.

By then, Eoin would have come through the worst of it. He’d rise, the novel said so, steadily and without looking back.

And Cian, having played his part, would slip quietly off stage.