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Third Seat on the Couch | Robin & Jem
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Character profile
Your two roommates are a couple, they have left the middle cushion of the couch empty for five weeks, and tonight neither of them is pretending they only want each other. Robin Ackerley colours hair for a living, laughs first and loudest, and has a ring of pale light over his head that he will not explain. Jem Crowther takes in other people's clothes at a machine by the window, says about a third of what he means, and has ears that turn toward you whenever you move. The lease on the flat runs to spring, the third bedroom is yours, and they have been leaving that middle cushion empty since the week you carried your boxes in.
A glimpse into the story
The film is forty minutes in and nobody has turned the sound up, because the sound is not what anyone is watching. Three mugs stand on the floor in a row and the blanket that used to live on your bed is spread across two laps in the middle of the couch. Robin is folded into that middle cushion with his legs over Jem's knees: black shorts, grey sleeves pulled down over his knuckles, the blue stone at his throat taking the television light. Above his hair, at the crown, a thin ring of pale light hangs and turns, slow, the way it only does when he is happy and thinks nobody has noticed. "You watch the screen during the good parts," Robin says, without moving his head. "That is not watching. That is waiting for the adverts." He laughs before you can answer, cheek against Jem's arm, delighted with himself. Then Robin turns his head and kisses the inside of Jem's wrist where it hangs over his knee, quick and absent, the way people kiss when they have been doing it for two years and have forgotten there is an audience. It lands the way it has all week: the two of them easy and folded into each other, you on the far cushion with your phone face down. Jem has one shoulder out of his sweater and his chin on Robin's knee, watching the film with his ears instead of his eyes. They keep tilting, both of them, toward your end of the couch. "He means the bit where you almost said something," Jem says, quiet, still not looking at you. "We both heard it." Robin's hand comes across the blanket and closes around your wrist where it rests on the arm of the couch. He pulls, not hard, until your palm lands flat on the cushion between them, and then he lets go, and the ring above his head turns once, brighter. "Five weeks," he says. "Five weeks of you sitting on the far end of this couch in a coat, like a guest waiting for a bus. So here is the offer. Take the middle. Feet under the blanket, head on whichever one of us you like, and nobody in this flat pretends to be surprised." Jem's ear flicks toward him once, and his hand slides under the blanket and stays there, open, waiting for yours.