Pansies (Spires)
Author: Alexis Hall
Date: 2024-11-05T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Sourcebooks

Copyright © 2018, 2024 by Alexis Hall

Cover and internal design © 2024 by Sourcebooks

Cover design and illustration by Elizabeth Turner Stokes

Internal illustrations © Radionastya/Getty Images

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com

Originally self-published in 2018 by Alexis Hall.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

To Kat, for holding my hand (even when it was clammy)

Contents

Foreword

Content Guidance

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

Epilogue

Bonus Material

Floriography: The Language of Flowers

Author Annotations

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

About the Author

Foreword

It’s me. Hi.

Sorry, been on a bit of a Taylor Swift kick recently (which probably grounds this letter as squarely in 2023—no, wait, shit, 2024; what is time how does it even?—much as little details like the pre-COVID-inflation price of chips date this book to the 2010s). But actually, I really wanted to start this foreword with a quote from a different frustratingly talented singer-songwriter, that quote being: We live in cities you’ll never see on-screen. (A quote I’ve just realised I should credit: it’s from “Team” by Lorde, a song which I’ve just realised is now more than a decade old, help me).

If you’re familiar with my writing, you’ll know that regionality is a huge part of my work. As a British author writing for what I am deeply aware is a primarily American audience, I really want to make sure that I’m portraying a version of my country that doesn’t just get reduced to chocolate box villages, ancient university towns, and London. It’s important to me that I write at least a little bit about those Cities You’ll Never See On Screen, the steel towns and port towns and resort towns that so often get left out of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

At the time, Pansies was probably my most ambitious book (which is, perhaps, why this version has slightly more tweaks and updates than the other re-released editions, although I should, of course, emphasise that the original published version is every bit as valid as it was the day it was released). I don’t like to analyse my own work (if you’ve got “Death of the Author” on the drinking game, take a shot now), but looking back, I’m bizarrely fascinated at how many of my well-known recurring themes I was trying to address in it all at once. It’s about home, it’s about family, it’s about regionality and heritage, grief, navigating queerness in a heteronormative world, flowers (that one’s at least semi-unique to the book admittedly), notions of masculinity and—well, finishing the list is left as an exercise for the reader.

Given all of that, looking back after far more years than I’m comfortable thinking about (we’re really concretely into the 2020s now; 2010s nostalgia is closer than any of us want to admit), I’m actually incredibly happy with how well it all came together. When I first started work on Fen and Alfie’s story, I was a much less experienced author, and I don’t think I really knew how much I was taking on. Which, in hindsight, was probably a blessing because if I had, I might not have attempted it.

In any case, I’m glad I did, because I’m proud of the book that Pansies wound up being. I hope you’ll be glad I did too.

Alexis Hall

January 2024

Content Guidance

Please note: This is not intended to be exhaustive and may contain spoilers.

Sexual content, past bullying (one MC bullied the other when they were children), a parent of one of the MCs dies by assisted suicide after receiving an Alzheimer’s diagnosis (this happens in the past and off page but is discussed in the present), grief/grieving, one of the MCs reflects on being disciplined with a belt as a child (he’s not in a place where he recognizes that this wasn’t okay), emotionally distant parents, internalized toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia (challenged on page), homophobia/homophobic language, sexism and gendered stereotyping (challenged on page), mild violence.

The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.

You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.

You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn’t do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.

—Richard Siken, “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”

Prologue

Tuesday was Nora’s favourite day of the week.

Nobody liked Mondays, and she was no exception, but she thought it was unfair for the bad feeling to taint Tuesday too.

Tuesday offered all the possibilities of a new week with none of the disadvantages of being Monday.

It was also the day when Aidan O’Donaghue came.

Aidan O’Donaghue, who was not from around here, who wore a waistcoat and drove a Ford Thunderbird, and whose mouth tasted like the sky.

While she waited for him, she made up a basket of sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and glossy green aspidistra. She hummed softly to herself, muddled snatches of whatever had been playing recently on the radio. She’d never been able to hold a tune, but it didn’t stop her singing.

Not on a Tuesday, anyway.

He had come into her shop for the first time nearly a year and a half ago. It had been chance, pure chance. His mother’s birthday. Through the big front windows, she’d seen his car, a bold splash on the kerb.

She’d made him a bouquet of white roses and blue moon freesia, her fingers trembling a little among the petals. Because his eyes were all the colours and his lashes were tipped with gold, as though some careful artist had liked him enough to try and gild him.

Nora was dreamy for days afterwards.

He came back the next week to tell her his mother had loved the flowers. Somehow they started exchanging pieces of information, as shyly as children swapping barnacle shells and coral twists, mermaids’ purses and unicorn hair.

It began with names.

Then she learned he was the regional manager for Woolworths. That his father was Irish and had been in the Army. That his mother was French. And he spun the world for Nora in her little shop: glittering American cities with skyscrapers wreathed in cloud, stars spread as thickly as freckles across a desert night, the heather-purple highlands of Scotland, and the glass-blue lakes hidden in the Welsh mountains.

She also learned that he smiled with the right side of his mouth before the left and that the dimple there was deeper than its fellow.

One day when he came to see her, she locked the door behind him and flipped the sign to Closed. She took his big hand and led him into the back room, which smelled of pollen and perfume and damp leaves and growing things.

For a long time, they said nothing. Looking had somehow become a different thing now they were alone. And Nora was greedy for it, this newfound freedom to bask unchecked in blue-grey-brown-green eyes and a mouth so full of kisses. Then he reached out and began to unpin her braids, slowly combing out the corn-yellow tresses of her hair. Her mother wouldn’t let her cut it. Called it her crowning glory. Aidan O’Donaghue’s blunt fingers moved through it with unimagined tenderness. When it was all set free, he drew her to him and kissed her.

Everyone thought Nora was a good girl. A quiet girl. Even if she was a little odd sometimes, with the things she wanted and didn’t want.

But that afternoon she was neither good nor quiet.

When they were together, they talked as infinitely and endlessly as they touched each other, and she never asked, or thought to ask, for promises. She had no need of them. She was South Shields born and bred. A sand dancer.1 The sea was everything she knew. She would no more have thought to keep him as she would have thought to hold the waves. She simply loved him, as she loved the flowers that lived their lives in a brilliant moment, and the whispering tides that came and went with the turning of the moon.

It was strange, she thought to herself this particular Tuesday, not quite six months from the first, the way everything could change, and nothing.

Certainly not her. Or Aidan O’Donaghue. Who came into her shop, wearing the sun in his hair and carrying the world in his eyes. Who, every Tuesday until this one, had given her his body like a gift. And who had, perhaps unintentionally, given her another gift, even more precious than the first. The promise of a life, curled deep inside her, already loved and waiting to be free.

Just like always, he turned the key and flipped the sign, but she did not lead him to the back room. Instead she took his hand, as she had the first time and every time that followed, and drew it down to rest against her stomach.

His eyes went wide.

Then he pulled away.

She bowed her head against the pain. Expecting it had not made it easier, as she had dared to hope it might. It was a little piece of loss, amidst all her joy.

I love you, she thought fiercely, to the life beneath her fingers. I will always be with you.

Her friends and family wouldn’t understand. They would watch her and tsk, as they so often did. They would whisper she had been careless. But it wouldn’t matter, because she hadn’t been. She had loved and been loved, and from that love had come a child, who would know the sea and the sky and all the worlds between.

“Nora.”

She turned slowly.

Aidan O’Donaghue. His eyes wet and bright like summer rain. In his hand was a piece of the thin green wire she used for her bouquets. “I’ve had enough of Tuesdays. I want to stay. Will you let me?” And as she watched, he went to one knee on the stone floor. “Will you marry me?”

She thought about it a moment. Her friends and family would like this. It would somehow make them approve of her. But what they wanted was not what Nora needed, and she already had everything she needed: her lover, her child, her shop, the wild seas, and the rough air. “No, Aidan. I won’t marry you.”2

The colour fled his face. “Nora, I—”

“But you can stay with me…with us.” Us. “As long as you want.”

What difference did it make, really, promises given in buildings and written in books? These things that let the world believe in what you had. Why did that matter, if she believed in it? If she believed in the way he looked at her and the way he touched her. The words he’d already given her. Their child. The life they could make together.

“I do.” He coloured a little, perhaps startled by his own certainty. “I want every day.”

She nodded, breathless and giddy suddenly on the realisation that he believed too, just like she did.

He laughed up at her, but he was shaking as he gently wound the piece of wire about her fourth finger. “Then this is today.”

She stretched her hand into the dusty sunlight.

“Tomorrow there will be another, and another, until your hands are full of all my days.”

And she looked at him, kneeling there, and smiled. Brighter than all the flowers in her shop.

1

“An’ wharraboot ye, pet?”1

“Huh?” Alfie made a valiant attempt to look like he’d been paying attention. “What about me what?”

Great Aunt Sheila jabbed him in the ribs. “When’s it ganna be your turn?”

Oh God. Was that going to be the question now?

“Well, you know…it’s just…how it is,” he mumbled.

The DJ, who was probably somebody’s uncle or somebody’s neighbour or somebody’s neighbour’s uncle, was playing Erasure’s early nineties classic “Always.” Which at that moment swept into a passionate crescendo.

Sheila cupped her hand to her ear. “Eh?” This was local speak for I’m sorry, could you say that again?

“I’m not really…”

“Eh?”

Always, da-da-da-dah-di-do… “I don’t think I’m the marrying…” Harmony, harmony, oh fuck it. “The thing is, I’m sort of gay.”

“Eh?”

“I’m gay.”

“Ye wha’, pet?”

“Gay. I’m gay. I like cock.”

Whoa, that was way too loud. It seemed to echo in the silence and—Wait, silence? Of course silence. The song had ended a couple of seconds ago.

Which meant Alfie was standing there. In the middle of his best friend’s wedding. Yelling about cock. While everybody stared at him.

He wasn’t an expert, but he was pretty sure there were better ways to come out.

Great Aunt Sheila rolled her eyes. “Well, we all knaa that, pet. But it’s nae reason not te be settled doon in this day an’ age.”2

“Oh right. Right.” He was too dazed to manage anything more coherent. Who was we? And how did they know? When he barely did himself?

“There’s more te life,” Sheila went on, with the dogged wisdom of the far too bloody old, “than bums.”

Alfie waited, hopefully, to die. And didn’t. “Thanks. That’s… Thanks.”

Uncle DJ had finally remembered he was meant to be providing music, not allowing the room to fill up with awkward revelations of homosexuality, and hastily fired up the “Macarena.” While everybody was distracted, Alfie reeled away to the relative safety of the finger buffet.

The centrepiece of the whole arrangement was a tinfoil hedgehog skewered with cheese and pineapple pieces on cocktail sticks.3 This was as close as North East England got to a canapé. He ate one out of long habit. The pineapple was dry, the cheese too rich and faintly sweaty. It tasted of home.

He could feel about thirty people trying not to look at him, so he began vigorously helping himself to the potato salad. It was basically a bowl of wobbling mayonnaise with a few unhappy potatoes bobbing in it.

Then came the clicking of dress shoes behind him, and he had no choice but to turn and face his best friend. Kevin was shiny-faced with groomly joy and stuffed uncomfortably into a morning suit that had clearly been chosen by someone else, presumably the bride. Alfie had known Kevin for nearly his whole life, and he’d never seemed like a heliotrope cravat sort of bloke.

“I divvent knaa ye were a puffter,” he said.

Alfie picked up a sausage roll so big he could barely get his hand round it, and then wished he hadn’t. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Eee, well.” There was a pause. “Are ye sure?”

He nodded. It was one of the few things he was sure about.

“I dunno, man. Doon sooth for five minutes, first you’re talking like a reet ponce, and the next thing we knaa, you’re an arse bandit.”4

Sweat prickled the back of Alfie’s neck, oozing beneath his collar. “You don’t just turn gay the moment you go past Leeds. And believe me, your arse is very, very safe.”

“Oh aye. Like ye haven’t been after it for years.” Kevin slapped himself soundly on the buttocks and grinned.

It was meant to be a joke, so Alfie dutifully tried to find it funny. Nope. “I really haven’t. Sorry if I wrecked your wedding. I didn’t mean to tell you like this.”

“Dan’t be daft, man.” There was another pause, somewhat more fraught than the last, and then Kevin went on plaintively: “I just divvent gerrit.”

Alfie ran his hands through his carefully spiked hair. The least he owed his friend was some sort of explanation, but he hardly knew how to start. He’d left South Shields his father’s son. And now he…well…wasn’t?

“It’s complicated,” he tried. But then the words came tumbling out of him and couldn’t be stopped. “It took me a long time to sort of…figure it out. Even longer to get my head round it. I just never thought I was, y’know, that way. But I guess I am? I mean, I must be.”

Kevin blinked. “Wha’ ye gan on aboot?”

The sweat clung cold to Alfie’s body. What was he doing? This wasn’t how they talked to each other. They were mates. They took the mick, they had a laugh, they didn’t emote at each other like southerners.

“I just meant,” Kevin was saying, “I divvent knaa how ye go from, ‘Oh, that’s a bloke ower there,’ to ‘I fancy banging him like.’”5

Alfie shrugged. He didn’t know either. “Look, I’m sorry if—”

“Alfie, ye knaa you’re still me best mate. Ye always will be.”

Relief and gratitude rushed over him, but they were followed by a nasty sort of resentment that the words were necessary in the first place. That Kevin had needed to say them and that Alfie had needed to hear them. As if there had ever been the possibility of another answer. Which, of course, there had.

Kevin grinned. “Even if ye are a shirt lifter.”

If his hands hadn’t been full of phallic sausage, Alfie might have put his head in them. “Kev…” But there was no point. It had been kindly meant.6 So maybe this—why couldn’t he even say it to himself sometimes?—would just be something else for Kev to rip the piss out of, like his hair or his tattoo. Comfortably meaningless. “Well, you’re still my best mate too, even if you’re a complete knob.”

Kev laughed and flung an arm across Alfie’s shoulder. “Takes one te know one.”

“And I should know, right?” Oh God. Now he was doing this shit to himself. But he had to say it, to prove it had no power over him. And it worked. Kev spluttered, caught between shock and amusement, and it was close enough to winning that Alfie was able to be generous. “Congratulations, by the way.”

For a moment, Kev looked blank. “Blummin’ hell, I’m married.”

“Till death do you part.”

“Or we get divorced.” He gazed proudly across the room at his bride. “What do ye think, though? Didn’t I do well, eh?”

Lisa—he was pretty sure she was called Lisa—seemed nice enough: pretty, friendly, a bit of a glint in her eyes. What Alfie really wanted to say was, As long as she makes you happy. But he knew it wasn’t what Kev wanted to hear. That he’d probably think it sounded gay.7

Which left Alfie trying to remember who he used to be. “What is she,” he managed, “a mental case?”

“Oi.”

“Well, she’s out of your league, mate, so there’s got to be something wrong with her.”

Kevin beamed like this was high praise. “I’d better get ower there or I’ll never hear the end of it. She’s feisty when she’s roused.” He gave Alfie’s shoulder a final, rough squeeze and headed back to his new bride.

Alfie watched him go, smiling a bit, happy and sad and confused all at once. Since he’d picked up the sausage roll, he tried to eat it in the least dodgy way possible, and it settled lumpenly in his stomach.

Now Uncle DJ was playing “The Power of Love,” swaying ecstatically behind the mixing desk, and Great Aunt Sheila’s voice was somehow managing to drown out even Céline Dion. “An’ ye knaa what else?” she was telling her rapt little audience. “I think wor Maureen’s a lesbeen.”

Nobody was looking at Alfie. Except they were not looking at him so very pointedly that he knew the moment he turned his back they’d all start staring at him. Like everyone was playing some kind of weird visual game of Grandmother’s Footsteps.

It was at times like this that he really wished he smoked. Or did coke. Or whatever gave you an excuse to slip out of the room when you needed to. So he did the next best thing. He pulled out his phone, reacted to the blank screen as though he’d received some kind of important message, and hurried outside. The air was blissfully cool for a few seconds, and then just cold. He shivered. His coat was still in his room.

God, he really was a soft southern ponce.8

He used to go clubbing in the middle of winter wearing only jeans and a T-shirt. Kev the same. Just two lads out on the toon. The girls had flocked to them. Stroking the tattoo on his arm with soft hands.

But that was a long time ago.

The Little Haven Hotel was one of those places that seemed to exist only in the backwaters of the North East. It had a timeless, custom-built blandness, but the visitor information made a big deal of its unique location: an expanse of yellowing scrub grass overlooking the grey-brown mouth of the Tyne.

He wandered down to the beach. Most of the light had faded, leaving the scene as still and silent as a black-and-white photograph. The sand was silver-stained by the tide. The red groyne lighthouse that guarded the jetty like a stubborn old man was nothing but a hunch of shadow in the distance. And across the bay, the answering light from the North Shields dock gleamed like a pale star.

It was even colder here. But he had forgotten how clean the air could be. Fresh air, literally fresh, breathed from the edges of the sea.

He’d sat on this beach so often with Kev. They’d shared their first bottle of White Lightning here. Alfie had never touched cider again. Even apparently good cider, proper cider, organic, artisanal blah blah blah cider, tasted of nothing but vomit and sand.

The memories felt so clear and so distant at the same time.

He took out his phone again—barely one bar of reception—and turned on Grindr. It took ages to load.

Maybe he really was the only gay in the village.

Finally, he was rewarded with about fifty profiles, none of them inspiring. He wasn’t really in the mood to cruise, but he desperately wanted to be with someone.

Someone who wouldn’t ask any questions. Someone who might find something to recognise about him. Even if it was just that they both liked men.

He was updating his profile to say he was only in town for a night and looking for—when he suddenly couldn’t be bothered anymore. Couldn’t be bothered in this really massive way. And in a moment of overwhelming dissatisfaction, he deleted the app. He put his phone away and stuck his hands in his pockets. Listened to the swooshing of the tide. The distant, mournful gulls. It was too overcast for stars, so the world was a strip of artificial light, squashed between two shifting darks.

Eventually, he climbed back up to the hotel. He could hear music seeping faintly from inside. Thankfully, he couldn’t quite work out what it was.

He hesitated in the car park. He really, really didn’t want to go back to the party.

His TVR Sagaris was tucked into one of the bays.10 He could get in it and drive away and never ever come here again.

Leave his best friend and his new wife to live their lives without him.

Which couldn’t make all that much difference to them, since he lived in London and they lived here, and he wasn’t who Kevin thought he was anyway.

He unlocked his car and climbed in. He wasn’t actually going to leave. That would be shitty and cowardly. But he felt more like himself with his hands on the wheel, surrounded by the familiar smells of oil and leather.

He’d been telling himself for nearly a year that he’d come out to Kevin eventually. But he’d been lying. He would have liked to come back here on special occasions, just like he had this weekend, and acted like everything was exactly the same as always. And that he was the same too. Alfie Bell, a little bit wild, a little bit wicked, but with his heart in the right place. A good, honest lad. The sort you’d be proud to raise. To call your friend, your brother, your son.

Maybe he’d drive for a bit. Find a pub where he could be just like everyone else. Have a beer. Smile at the lasses. Be one of the lads.

And then come back, better and stronger and feeling less like two people, both of them unfit for purpose. Probably no one would even notice he was gone.

He pushed the key into the ignition, turned it, and the car roared into life as only a TVR could. He slipped out of the parking space and turned onto River Drive, accelerating as it widened out into Sea Road. There was very little traffic, and he let himself flirt at the edges of the speed limit. The sense of power was effortless. Free.

He opened all the windows so the air went tearing past, ruffling his hair. The sea was a distant shadow, the beach a flat gleam, the old funfair a skeleton of metal. He used to hang out in the amusement arcades with Kev, trying to hook cuddly toys they didn’t want and squandering twenty-pence pieces on those machines where you bet on mechanical horses and never won.

In summer, they rode the rickety old roller coaster and chased each other in circles on the Dodgems. He’d even had a Saturday job working the Waltzers. He’d felt free then too, riding the boards through the whirling carts as if he stood on the deck of a ship.

As he drove by the Rattler, he impulsively veered off the road and into the car park.11 It was a pub in the station house of the abandoned railway line that used to connect South Shields to the colliery at Whitburn. Part of the building was actually a carriage from one of the old steam trains, the ramshackle Rattler itself. It apparently called itself “a bar and restaurant” these days, rather than a boozer, so it wasn’t exactly Alfie’s sort of place. At least, it wouldn’t have been. Except in London, he went, without even a trace of shame, to cocktail bars and wine lodges all the time.

Cold as it was, he took off his jacket and tie and left them draped over the passenger seat. And so nobody paid him much attention as he stepped inside. It was kind of dark in there, with lots of wood panelling and little booths tucked into the carriage bits. A winter-afternoon-with-the-family type pub, but not very crowded now. Which was fine. Probably just what he was looking for.

There was a man propping up the bar. He had his back to the room, but his weight was resting on one leg, which outlined the curve of his spine and, well, everything that came after.

Alfie tried to ignore the flicker of discomfort that he noticed these things. That he was a man who found bits of other men provocative. Whether or not they were trying to provoke him.

His thoughts felt as loud as a siren.

It didn’t help that he kept trying to imagine how it might feel. If he knew that man. If he could go up behind him and press their bodies together. Gather him up. The tight fragile bowstring of his too-thin back. The succulent invitation of his arse.

Yes. Succulent.

Provocative and succulent. Alfie Bell was fucking doomed.

He went to the bar and ordered a pint of John Smith’s, stealing what he hoped was a discreet look at the other guy. He had a pale, sharp face, all angles and edges and taut little frown lines. His hair was silver-blond, as fine as dandelion fluff, dyed bright pink at the tips, and long enough to brush his shoulders.

Alfie stared at his beer.

The bloke next to him: gay, right?

Another glance: he was drinking rosé.12

He had to be.

Alfie wondered if he could say something. He knew how to chat up girls. It was easy. You smiled and you said, “Get you a drink, pet?” And they smiled back and said yes. In theory, it should have been no different with men, except Alfie got all nervous about it. His ex-boyfriend, Greg, said everyone did and you just learned to deal with it. But Alfie had never been nervous before. And that made him even more nervous.

“Can—” he tried. “Can I get you a drink?”

The man started and turned. Behind the heavy frames of a pair of vintage glasses, his eyes widened.13 Then his face went blank, shuttered up like shop windows, but not before Alfie had caught the flash of pure, bright hate. It was the kind of look he had lately learned to fear. He’d seen something like it on his father’s face. An instinct of revulsion.

So maybe the bloke wasn’t gay after all. Maybe he was a quirkily dressed homophobe. An idea that didn’t seem too far off the mark when he snapped, “Why the fuck would I let you do that?”

He spoke like Alfie, though: as if somebody had sanded down the rough places of his accent. It should have been nice. Comforting. Something else they had in common. Except for the things they didn’t.

Alfie stared at him. Straight into those fury-glinting eyes. “Well, I don’t know.” He kept his voice calm. Confidently unbothered. Even if inside he was a mess of bewildered hurt and anger that someone would just despise him on sight. Based on nothing. “Maybe because you’ve nearly finished and want another?”

The man glared. “I don’t.”

“That’s fine, then.” He turned away as indifferently as he could manage.

Over the years, Alfie had got pretty good at dealing with shit like this. Well, not quite like this. But certain sorts of people would take one look at him, even if he was doing something perfectly normal like walking to work or buying a coffee, see only height and strength and the edge of a tattoo, and try to start something.14 To show off. Or make themselves feel big. When he’d been younger, he’d encouraged it. Even liked it. The attention. And the power of knowing he made others uncomfortable. Now he didn’t care about that stuff. He had enough on his plate without also letting strangers convince him he had something to prove.

But there was still no way he was backing down. Just because of some overreacting little prick in arty specs. Can I buy you a drink? was hardly Can I stick my dick in you?

He took a long swallow of his pint. He wasn’t going to rush, but he was going to finish it and then get the hell out of here. And try not to think about what had just happened. Or the man who was still standing beside him. He could almost feel him somehow, body heat and a sort of trembling ferocity. Weirdo.

Suddenly the stranger spoke again, his voice tight and high, still pissed off. “What the fuck was that about?”

Alfie turned slowly back.

God, even mindlessly angry, he had such pretty eyes. Soft green, apple-coloured, framed in gold lashes, bright behind glass.

And that was not a helpful thought.

He was confused. Annoyed and trying not to be, and lonely and attracted and a fucking mess. “I suppose I just thought you looked”—hot—“like you needed another drink. And that you might be”—hot—“interesting to talk to.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Riiight. So you buy me a drink, and we talk, and our souls connect and our minds meet, and what then?”

“What then?”

“Yes. What then?”

Alfie tried not to squirm. In his experience, women definitely did not do this. When you said, Can I buy you a drink? they didn’t immediately call you out on the subtext. He genuinely wasn’t sure if he was meant to be punching the guy or trying to kiss him. Right now, he kind of wanted to do both.

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look. I’m sorry. Yes, I made some assumptions, and I can see that’s offended you. I tried to talk to you because…because…I fancied you, alreet…” Shit, his accent. “But that doesn’t mean I expect anything. Or that I’m going to, y’know, force you against the Rattler.”

A tinge of colour crept over the man’s pale cheeks. But then his face went blank again. “You fancy me. Yeah. Okay. Very funny. You can fuck off now.”

It was probably good advice. And a less lost Alfie might have heeded it. “Mate, what’s your problem? I tried to hit on you, you didn’t like it, I’ve said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”15

There was a long silence. The man traced a circle round the rim of his wineglass until it shrieked. His hands were thin, like the rest of him, the nails ragged, stripped to the quick, the skin dry and flaking. He had a piece of green wire coiled round the fourth finger of his right hand. “This is a joke, right?”

Alfie was pretty sure he was missing something, but he had no idea what it was.

“Which bit?”

“All of it. Any of it.” The stranger adjusted his glasses, pushing them back with the heel of his hand, holding Alfie prisoner on the other side. His mouth—God, he had pretty lips as well—curled into a sneer. “You’re just supposed to be gay?”

Okay. Enough was enough. “Why, was I meant to check with you first?”

“Hah.” That one little word contained a whole world of un-amusement.

Alfie drained his glass with grim determination, left three quid on the counter, and turned to go.

The other man’s voice called him back one last time. “And you fancy me?”

Alfie glanced over his shoulder. “Yes, I blummin’ fancy you. My mistake.”

2

Alfie got out of there before anything else could go wrong. The cold air came at him like some kind of anti-hug, but it was actually almost nice. It felt real, unlike everything that had just happened.

Which was what, exactly?

He told himself that this was going to make a great story for when he got back to London. How he came out at his best friend’s wedding with the line “I like cock” and then got savaged by a guy he could snap with one hand.

His gaydar had probably been irreparably stunted by twenty-eight years in the closet. He was like one of those animals that got raised in captivity and couldn’t cope among their own kind when they were released into the wild. One of those whales that just hung around near the rescue boat being sad and confused.

“Prove it.”

He spun round. The pissed off guy had followed him out.

“What?” It was only a short distance to his car. He’d feel a bit of a prat running away from a tiny bloke in a pink jumper, but he was also starting to wonder if he hadn’t tried to pull a genuine mental case.1

“You want me?” For the first time, a trace of something that wasn’t outright hostility crept into the other man’s voice. Something a bit uncertain, a bit…needy. Alfie knew he was being an idiot, but it sort of turned him on. “Then prove it.”

Alfie’s first instinct was to tell him he was nutters and make a dash for his car.

The man folded his arms tightly across his chest, hugging his own elbows. It wasn’t exactly a pose that said, Come and get it, big boy. “I’m right here. I’m waiting. Why don’t you show me just how gay you think you are?”

This was weird. This was wrong. Totally weird and totally wrong. But it was also exactly what Alfie had wanted since the second he’d laid eyes on those narrow hips, the fragile spine, and the hinted mysteries of that taut, restless body. Well, not this exactly. It would have been a pretty niche fantasy. But the possibility of…something.

He took a few steps forward. Until he was standing sociably close. Then intimately close.

Since being gay had become undeniable, he’d had one serious relationship and a bunch of hookups. They’d basically been okay. Nothing special. In the moment, they’d made him feel realer. Afterwards, not so much. And he was still a bit shaky on how they worked.

Women were easier. There were rules about who did what. Which tongue went where.

With guys, it was like meeting someone for the first time and not being sure whether you were supposed to hug or shake hands. An embarrassing tangle waiting to happen.

He’d also never tried to kiss anyone who seemed so absolutely opposed to being kissed. While also apparently inviting it.

He slipped a hand around the back of the man’s neck, sliding gently beneath the fall of his hair. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do next, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to think about doing anything. Because everything just sort of happened.

For a moment, he was standing there, befuddled, touching skin that felt ridiculously, impossibly tender, and wondering if maybe it was acceptable to do a bit of hair tugging, since there seemed no way to get to the kissing bit without a pretty significant change of angle.

But then the guy moaned. Actually moaned. Soft and helpless and fucking gorgeous. And he rocked forward, falling against Alfie’s body like he’d lost the ability to do anything else. His hands clutched at Alfie’s shoulders, then clung, clumsy-awkward, just a little bit desperate, and Alfie suddenly felt about ten feet tall and strong and right and wanted, and from there it was all effortless. All instinct.

He dragged the other man close, maybe a bit rougher than he meant to be. Made a snug little cradle with his spare arm. Got him tucked into it. And then he was bringing his head down, and the guy—shit, he didn’t even know his name—was tilting his head back, and there was this moment when all there was in the whole fucking universe was a pale, moonlit mouth parting in anticipation, in welcome, and then they were kissing.

Kissing like Alfie had always imagined it was supposed to be. Movie-star-magic-silver-screen-fireworks-in-the-sky kissing. Endless and restless, like the sea beating in the distance. Like listening to a shell, except it was everything and everywhere, the taste of salt water rich and sharp between their lips.

And a strange sort of sweetness too. It took him a moment to place it.

“Hey,” he whispered, breaking the kiss. “Hey, you smell of flowers.”

The other man was shaking—shaking, really shaking—in his arms, his fingers curled urgently against Alfie. A rock climber trying not to fall. “Take me somewhere.”

“I’ve got a room at the—”

“I don’t care, take me somewhere.”

This was another terrible idea. He was supposed to be at a wedding.

But the next thing Alfie knew, they were in his car, zooming back to the hotel. It was a five-minute drive, but it seemed to go on forever. And Alfie’s cock couldn’t decide if it was nervous or excited.

Which pretty much went for the rest of him as well.

He stole occasional glances at his passenger. Each time they passed beneath a streetlamp, the sudden glare would light up his face, and Alfie would get a fresh shock at the sheer loveliness of him. It was like recognising somebody from a dream you once had.

“Look, mate, what’s your name?”

The man turned his head slightly. It was too dark to see his expression properly, but Alfie thought he caught the twisty glint of something that might have been a smile. Not a very happy one. “Fen.”

“Fen?”

“Fen.”

He wanted to ask more, like what kind of a name was Fen, except in a polite way, but they’d arrived.

He locked his car and led the way to his room, too busy worrying about running into someone from the wedding party to worry about the lack of conversation. Besides, what was he supposed to say? Fen very obviously wasn’t interested in talking.

It all made him feel a bit weird. But not weird enough to stop.2

The Little Haven was probably the poshest hotel in South Shields. For a Londoner, however, it was embarrassing. Barely a step up from a Travelodge, with its teal-checked carpet and its 1970s furniture. Alfie had cringed when he first saw it. Then cringed at his cringe.

Down south, everyone saw him as this bluff, solid northern bloke. It set him apart from the rest of the equity capital markets team, but it was also the foundation of his success. Clients trusted him. His opponents feared him. And he was very, very good at what he did.

Except now he was back up north, it was starting to feel like he’d become, somehow, less than himself. Sort of a sketch. Just blunt lines and the basics. What a fucking joke. Not north, not south. A straight gay man.

He turned and tried a welcoming gesture. “So this is me like.”

Fen was staring at the awful carpet.

And suddenly all Alfie could think about was the man’s mouth under his, so absolutely right that nothing else seemed to matter. Fuck it. “Come ’ere.”

To his surprise, the guy—Fen—did. This time, Alfie didn’t even hesitate, just caught him and kissed him, hard and deep and as rough as he wanted.

This game they were playing, this notion somehow formed between them, that Alfie had a clue what he was doing, was something he could really get behind.

He splayed his hands across Fen’s back, slid down that supple curve and just…grabbed his arse, as if that was a totally reasonable thing to do, grinding their bodies and hips and cocks together.

It made Fen go wild and shuddery, his mouth turning slack against Alfie’s. And he was sort of moaning and sort of muttering, and what he seemed to be saying was “Ohgodohgodohgod.” So Alfie grabbed that too, sucking the words from Fen’s tongue, licking them up from all the velvet crevices of his mouth with the last of the salt spray and the sweet-sour trace of cheap wine.

“Fucking love how you taste.”

Fen’s only answer was a whimper, eyes so tightly closed it looked like he was frowning, his fingers latched into the dips between Alfie’s biceps.

“So”—Alfie dutifully repeated what Greg had said to him that first time because it was apparently the rules—“what you into?”

Fen’s eyes fluttered open. God, those lashes. Better than a girl’s. Alfie swooped in, pushed Fen’s glasses out of the way, and kissed his eyelids closed. His eyelashes were so soft. They tasted a little of salt as well.

“Oh,” said Fen. “Oh.”

And trembled all over again.

Alfie was kind of dizzy with joy and disbelief. Touching men, in general, was still kind of magical to him. Just the freedom of it. How fucking good it felt. He’d had some pretty enthusiastic reactions before, but nothing to match this one, or even come close. It was, honestly, a bit amazing that this hot, angry, weird guy was letting Alfie put his big hands all over him.

And acting like he’d been waiting for it his whole life.

Alfie rubbed his cheek against Fen’s, then nuzzled his way up into his hair. His jaw was rough, but the stubble was so pale you could barely see it. “Well?”

Tipping his head back, Fen gave Alfie his throat, pale and slender. “You can…” He lost control of his breath entirely as Alfie swept his tongue over that vulnerable, shuddering Adam’s apple. “You can do whatever you like to me.”

Fair enough. “I’m going to suck your cock, okay?”

“Okay.”

But when Alfie tried to drag him out of his fraying pink jumper, Fen froze. His eyes lost their pleasure-blur. “You first.”3

Alfie shrugged. “All right.”

He wasn’t vain—at least, he didn’t think he was—but he took care of his body, and you could tell. He tugged open the buttons on his shirt, peeled it off his arms, and tossed it onto the floor.

Fen stared so long and so hard it was a wonder it didn’t burn the skin right off Alfie’s bones. After what felt like forever, he reached out a shaking hand and ran it over the tribal tattoo that swept in thick black lines all the way up Alfie’s left arm, across his torso, and down his back. The skin beneath the ink prickled with awareness. “This is new.”

“Naw, had it since I was like seventeen. My best mate was supposed to be getting one as well, but he chickened out.”

Fen leaned dizzily forward and pressed his mouth worshipfully to a flourish that finished just over Alfie’s heart. He bowed his head, whispering in a swirl of hot breath, “I’m so fucking stupid.”

Once again feeling like he’d probably lost the plot, Alfie petted Fen’s hair. It was soft as his eyelashes. Silky. Not like his body at all. Or his hands, which were rough and dry and strong. “Don’t be like that. I know I look a bit of a hooligan and the ink’s a bit daft, but I was a kid—didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“I like the way you look,” muttered Fen. “And I’m so fucking stupid.”

Alfie tried to think of something reassuring he could say. Because I’m not a serial killer was probably exactly what serial killers said before they serial-killed you. And maybe it was pretty stupid for a guy who was all of five foot six, and basically made of bones and air like some kind of exotic bird, to go waltzing off for casual sex with an enormous, tattooed stranger. But, stupid or not, who said it had to turn out bad? For either of them.

It was already the best stupid thing Alfie had ever done.

Way ahead of the tattoo. And coming out to his family.

“Look,” he tried, “if it makes you feel any better, I’m kind of new to this. I only realised I was, y’know, gay, like two years ago. How’s that for fucking stupid?”

“Seriously?” Fen’s head jerked up. “You mean—”

Alfie nodded. “So we still doing this, or what?”

Though he didn’t answer, Fen’s eyes flicked downwards. And Alfie could take a hint. He stepped back, toed off his shoes, ditched his socks, and finally shucked both trousers and boxers.

Fen actually put his hands over his eyes like one of those see-no-evil monkeys Alfie’s grandma used to have. So Alfie took him by the wrists and pulled gently until, at last, Fen yielded. And looked. Stared. The longing and the greed naked on his face.

Heat rushed over Alfie’s skin like he’d been touched. His voice came out all husky. “Your turn.”

Fen nodded and let Alfie tug the jumper over his head, emerging a few awkward seconds later in a tangle of fraying wool, steamed-up glasses, and floofed-up hair.

That had gone better in Alfie’s head. But better was relative when the result was a half-naked Fen, blinking dazedly and pushing static-wild silver strands away from his face.

Alfie heard himself make a sort of growling sound. “God, you’re hot.”

He was too. Beautiful, if you were allowed to say that about a man.4 Sleek and strong and smooth, all white and gold, dusted here and there in softly curling hair, and a few shining drops of sweat.

And the next thing Alfie knew, he was in there, all over him, hands and mouth and tongue and nails, and Fen was letting him, twisting and moaning and chanting “ohgodohgodohgod” again.

“Now the rest.” Alfie’s hands fumbled with belt and zipper, and Fen wasn’t much help either, but somehow they got him out of his clothes.

Which meant they were both naked. So very naked.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Or dared to touch. Fen’s breath was harsh in the room, and Alfie thought his heart was probably thumping loud enough to piss off the neighbours.

“You…” said Alfie. “I…”

Fen dug his hands into his own hair and pulled, his eyes closing tight as barnacles, deep lines that looked like pain creasing his brow.

Alfie went to his knees. The carpet was rough as well as awful, but he didn’t care. He was looking up at Fen, who still wouldn’t look back. He ran his hands up the outside of Fen’s legs. Coarse hair and lean, hard muscles like a runner. On the inside, though, it was all secrets, like the skin at the back of his neck. Smooth and tight and quivering when he put his lips to it.

“Oh. Oh.”

Fen’s hands tightened in his own hair. He kept returning these dazed, shocked little noises for every kiss Alfie gave him.

It was a fair trade, Alfie reckoned, because they went straight to his cock, like Fen had his hand wrapped tight round it. Or his mouth.

And when he got up to Fen’s cock, all it took was the first brush of his lips to make Fen cry out. Alfie managed to get his arms around him as his knees buckled, just in time to half catch him and bring him tumbling messily onto the bed.

For a moment, Fen just lay there, pale and sacrificial, breathless, arms flung wide, chest heaving. Then he pulled himself into a sitting position, blinking at Alfie, who was still crouched on the floor.

Alfie peered up at him. “All right?”

Fen frowned and adjusted his glasses, like maybe he thought they were lying to him about what he saw. “Oh I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t care.”

Alfie hoped he was going to say more, but he didn’t. He just reached down, and the flaky-rough tips of his fingers drifted over Alfie’s face. Alfie closed his eyes for a second, swallowing a sound, overwhelmed somehow by the simplicity of touch, and reached out to Fen’s wrist. Took his hand prisoner. Kissed his fingers. Drew them into his mouth, and made Fen shake again and spread his legs. Invitation. Surrender. More than enough encouragement.

Fuck, it was hot. All that exposed skin. And Fen’s cock, rising insistently and a little bit desperately, powerful and vulnerable at the same time.

Alfie swiped a bead of moisture from the tip. Salt again, but purely male, underlaid by sweetness and the taste of skin. Alfie ran his hands up the inside of Fen’s thighs, holding him wide, velvet, sleek muscles trembling against his palms.

Fen went rigid and then his hips pressed forward, and Alfie let him. He let Fen slide the head of his cock between his lips and tried to think of nothing but the deep, hot thrill of it.5

Never mind that he was kneeling on the floor with another man’s dick in his mouth.

Never mind that he was kneeling on the floor with another man’s dick in his mouth, and he wanted it so badly, he thought he might come.

He bowed his head, taking Fen deeper. Because the invasion was part of the pleasure. And it was an invasion, a sick, wonderful, perfect invasion, stretching his mouth, just on the edge of choking of him.

He told himself it was nothing to be ashamed of, shuddering and groaning around a man’s cock, taking those harsh, stuttering thrusts.

Then Fen made a noise so like a sob. One of his legs came up to rest on Alfie’s shoulder. And Alfie stopped thinking about anything but the man he’d made do that. Feel like that.

The man who was coming apart beautifully and fearlessly above him and with him. Because of him.

“Oh God.” Fen clawed into his shoulders. “St-stop. Or I’ll—”

Alfie drew back. “But I want…I want you to.”

For a moment, they were silent, breathing hard, staring at each other, Fen’s eyes banked behind misted glass. Then he said, “Fuck me.”

“Uh.” Alfie curled a hand absently about one of the other man’s knees, nestled his head against his leg. “I don’t really…not casually like.”

“Saving yourself for marriage?”

“Just…more than… Just a proper relationship. Something real.”

Fen was wearing a look Alfie couldn’t read. It reminded him of the way he’d been at the Rattler: brittle and angry and not liking Alfie very much. “Well, didn’t you grow into a nice heteronormative young man?”

Alfie pressed an openmouthed kiss to the inside of Fen’s thigh. Sucked at the skin until he moaned. “This not enough for you?”

“No, it’s, it’s… Oh God, Alfie, I just want to feel you.” His voice got so ragged Alfie barely heard him whisper, “Please.”

Alfie’s heart gave a sort of lurch. “Fuck, mate, I’m really sorry. I haven’t got anything.”

“W-what?”

“I haven’t got anything. I thought I was going to a wedding. Not out on the pull.”

Out of nowhere, Fen laughed. Like his smile, it didn’t seem very happy. He covered his face with his hands again, pale hair falling wildly through his fingers. “Oh God, I just begged you to fuck me. Oh God.”6

“Mate, Fen, it’s all right.”

“It’s not. It’s really not.”

Alfie gazed up at him, bewildered, suddenly miles away from whatever the man was thinking, as if all that touching meant nothing at all. “I liked it.”

“Hah. I bet you did.”

There was an endless silence. Alfie’s cock ached.

“I can go out?” he offered hopelessly. “The big Asda is twenty-four seven, right?”

God, what would he look like? Running in there half-dressed at eight o’clock at night to buy extra strong condoms and a tub of lube.

That was Daily Mail gay.

But if he had to do it, he had to do it. He wanted that tight, angry note out of Fen’s voice.

Wanted his secrets. The softness in him. Everything his body gave.

Fen took his hands away from his face, blinking slightly owlishly, his eyes flat and green through a haze of glass and gold.7 “You’re going to drive to the nearest superstore for condoms? All because I want you to fuck me?”

Alfie grinned. “I’ll pick you up a box of Milk Tray while I’m there.”

“Don’t go.” There was a pause. “Just…just…”

Alfie rose, and Fen reached out to embrace him, and they fell together onto the bed. It groaned and creaked beneath them, and Alfie winced internally, and maybe a little bit externally, because it was a sex noise. Not necessarily a gay sex noise. But some part of him thought people might instinctively know how to tell the difference.

Then Fen raised his knees to cradle Alfie’s hips, pulling their bodies more tightly together, and Alfie sweetly, helplessly, drowned in skin. Fen’s hands swept over his shoulders, and he felt taken and held and wanted.

“You feel so good.” Fen’s breath was hot against his neck. “So strong.”

His hips writhed under Alfie’s, nudging their cocks together, which was so completely and perfectly the right sort of not enough that Alfie could only groan.

“So safe.”

Alfie kissed him under the chin. Then again at the base of his throat. The tender, beating spot beneath his ear. Everything was heat and sweat and corn-silk secrets.

“Alfie?”

“Yeah?”

“H-hold my hands.”8

“Erm, what?”

“Hold my hands, pin them down.”

Alfie hesitated.

Fen’s eyes fluttered open, caught Alfie with their hunger and their pleading, and would not relinquish him. “Don’t hurt me. Just…just hold me.”

Alfie wasn’t really into what he thought of as kinky stuff, but he was very, very into Fen. And he would have agreed to pretty much anything when he was asked in a voice so frayed with longing.

“Like this?” He wrapped a hand around one of Fen’s wrists and pressed it tentatively against the bed. Fen arched and whimpered, closed his eyes tight, and nodded. Offered up his other wrist, not like a sacrifice at all, and Alfie kissed it before he claimed it.

He expected Fen to feel fragile beneath his hands, but he didn’t. He didn’t at all. His wrists were slender, yes, but supple, like maybe an artist’s or a musician’s, used to moving and working. The muscles on his forearms stood out so strongly Alfie wanted to lick down the straining ridges of them. Except they were both as good as trapped. His hands holding Fen’s hands. Their bodies locked together.

So Alfie kissed him and kept kissing him until they were both beyond breathless, and everything was wet and hot, and Fen was moving under him, not struggling but clumsily driving their bodies together.

Alfie’s mouth was full of groans, incapable, so he pressed it against Fen’s neck, tasting sweat and fever.

“Yes, oh…oh yes.” Fen’s voice was sweet and wild, heedless, his head thrown back, straining against the hotel pillows.

Their bodies writhed and twisted, rough, uncertain pleasure conjured between them like flame from flint. It was beautiful and maddening, and Alfie never wanted it to stop.

Fen was all in pieces: broken words and fading gasps, touching Alfie everywhere and nowhere in flashes of too-much-too-little sensation, soft and harsh and strong and fragile, all skin and sweat-slick heat. He rolled under Alfie, restless but relentless, a wave with its own currents, its own tides, turning everything to bliss, his cock pressed between them, sliding within and against the constrictions of their pressed together selves. His heart was beating so hard and fast that Alfie almost thought he could reach down, gather it into the palm of his hand, and hold it safe against the world.

“God,” he muttered. “Fen.”

Fen’s eyelashes flickered in answer. Sweat gleamed on his brow and his upper lip, made the hair stick to his neck and shoulders like curls of gilt on marble. He was flushed, flushed all over, as if he was some fresh-made creature from a world of silk and fire.

“You’re…so…beautiful like.” Fuck, what was he doing, what was he saying?

But then Fen stiffened, shuddered, and came with a shattered cry that sounded as close to despair as it did to pleasure. He fell back against the pillows, breathless, eyes still pressed tightly closed in stark contrast to the sudden slackness of his body.

Alfie, thrown into uncertainty again, hastily released his wrists and rolled away, landing on his back at Fen’s side.

Fen was still shaking, his hands clenched and abandoned on the pillow where Alfie had left them.

The silence went on forever, and Alfie wasn’t sure what to do about it. He tried to ignore the fact his cock was bouncing in the air like a commuter trying to hail a taxi through rush-hour traffic.

“Uh, look.” When Fen opened a tiny sliver of one eye, Alfie pointed to the twin silver-white smears that crossed their bodies. “Matching.”

Fen’s eye closed again.

He tried desperately to think of what to say.9 But his blood was too busy carrying oxygen away from his brain. “Like that jewellery with the white silhouettes. My mam used to have one.”

The slap of skin on skin resounded through the room as Fen’s hand crashed onto his own chest and began to scrub ineffectively at the mess there.

Shut up, Alfie. Shut up, right now. “I think it was a brooch.”

Fen mumbled something.

“Eh?”

“Cameo.” His head half-turned in Alfie’s direction, his eyes easing reluctantly open. His expression was blank, his eyes reflected nothing, and he sounded annoyed.

“What?”

“It’s called cameo. It’s a form of carving.”

“Oh right.” There was another endless silence. “Thanks.”

Slowly, so slowly that Alfie barely saw the movement, Fen’s body curled in on itself like wilting petals.

“Are you… Was that… Is everything…okay?”

No answer.

Alfie had no idea what he was supposed to do now. He was getting the sense things had gone badly wrong, but he couldn’t figure out exactly where. It had seemed fine, better than fine, a lot better than fine, when they’d been touching. So he reached out a tentative hand and brushed it over Fen’s pale, shivering shoulder. Gooseflesh rose immediately to greet him, and he felt the tension ease from the muscle.

He shuffled a little closer over the wrinkled sheets, and to his surprise, Fen twisted round, tossed his glasses aside, and rolled straight into his arms. Alfie wrapped him up and pulled him close, fitting their bodies into a new togetherness. Fen’s head found a place to nestle against Alfie’s neck, and one of his hands curved possessively over Alfie’s upper arm, his fingers sliding over the spirals of ink.

Alfie’s erection, which had flagged a bit during the cameo business, came bouncing eagerly back. He winced. “Sorry, mate.” He shoved a hand between their bodies and tried to stop his cock pushing into Fen like it was hinting. “Just ignore it.”

Fen pulled back just a little, enough to raise his head again. Without glasses, his face looked different, younger, his eyes exposed and vulnerable. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, it was fine. What we did before. It was so good. I don’t need—” But Alfie had absolutely no chance of finishing that sentence because, suddenly, there was a hand on him, and all his words vanished into a gasp.

Fen’s touch was rough, almost too rough, but Alfie arched into it anyway, wanting it, wanting those long, merciless fingers, the rasp of dry skin against tender. It was like he could feel all the deep furrows of Fen’s palm pressed into him like a brand. Like a new tattoo.

He meant to say, You don’t have to do this, but he couldn’t catch his breath. His world was spiralling into Fen’s hand. Into the long, sure strokes that dragged him to the precipice of ecstasy and pulled him back again.

It made him ache. But wonderfully.

Fen was watching him, expressionless, his eyes burning. Though when he spoke, his voice was far from steady. “You want me.”

It wasn’t quite a question, but Alfie nodded.

Fen’s hand tightened. “Say it.”

Alfie kind of thought the fact they were in bed together, and he was frantically thrusting into the tight channel of Fen’s fist, had given the game away there. But he could barely keep a thought in his head, let alone construct an entire sentence.

Fen pulled back, and Alfie heard himself make a sound that was almost a whimper, his body stilled with the pure shock of rejection.

“Say it,” whispered Fen a little desperately. “Tell me how much you want me.”

Alfie’s mouth had gone completely dry, but he managed to scratch out the basic idea. “I want you. Please, Fen. Touch me.”

He was immediately rewarded by a touch so sweet it made him groan shamelessly for more. And Fen gave him more until he came so hard it made his ears ring, stars the colour of Fen’s eyes dancing in the sudden darkness of his pleasure. He fell stickily against Fen, too blissfully spent to care much about anything just then, including the state of the sheets.

Fen was still and silent again, but not pulling away. Alfie didn’t know what to say again, but he was full of questions. He wanted to know about the stranger who lay in his arms. But he didn’t dare. Instead he watched, through half-closed eyes, as the man slowly—miraculously—relaxed. His breathing grew deep and steady. He slept.

Not everyone Alfie had casually sexed had left immediately afterwards. A few of them had stayed the night. But this felt different. It felt trusting, in a way nothing had for quite a while. He knew it was creepy to stare while Fen was sleeping, but there was something very…very enchanting about him just then, curled up against him like a pale comma in the half-light. He looked younger and gentler and, in a strange way, less pretty, the irregularities of his features pronounced. He was all points and planes, sharp bones and angles, a fairy creature stripped of glamour. And he had the longest lashes Alfie had ever seen. He wanted to touch them. To feel their softness, their tiny, spindle-needle points. He could still remember the faint taste of salt from when they had brushed against his lips.

He reached down and carefully drew the duvet over them both—well, mainly over Fen, who was so thin he looked like he needed all the warmth he could get. His body was such a collection of contradictions. Alfie didn’t know how he could be so skinny and so inviting at the same time. But then that was hardly Fen’s only mystery.

He eased a stray lock of hair away from where it had tangled over Fen’s eyes. Fussing. He was fussing over a sleeping stranger. But there was this sense of familiarity about him that was probably more about Alfie being back here than Fen himself. It made him sort of lonely for a past that had always maybe been a lie.

He must have moved or jostled him, because Fen startled into wakefulness. He gave a distressed little murmur—the sort of sound you made when you weren’t sure where you were—and half pulled away. “Oh God, I… I…”

“’S’okay.” Alfie drew him back down. Tried to soothe him with long strokes to all that lovely skin, rough and smooth and tender like Fen himself.

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“’S’okay,” said Alfie again. “I’ve got you.”

Fen snuffled, almost laughing maybe, and vanished under the covers, his very cold toes nudging their way between Alfie’s knees. His fingers swirled idly across Alfie’s arm and chest, crossing back and forth over the lines of his tattoo, before coming to rest over his heart. After a moment, he asked, “Are you okay?”

It was the first time Fen had shown him anything that wasn’t sex or anger. Alfie was so dazzled by the attention—by the unexpectedness and the sweetness of it—that he blurted out the truth. “Dunno. It’s weird being home with everybody knowing…knowing I’m, y’know, gay. And realising I can’t ever go back. To them or to me or to anything.” He shut his mouth with a snap. It was definitely long past time to stop saying things. “Just ignore me. I’m not making sense.”

“Saudade.”

“You what?”

“It’s the name of that feeling.”

“Are you sure? Because it sounds like one of those posh cabbages.”

Fen turned his face into Alfie’s shoulder, stifling a sound that was almost…no, definitely a giggle. “It’s Portuguese. It’s the intense longing for a place or a person or a time you know is probably gone forever.”

“Like nostalgia?”

“Nostalgia’s more sentimental, I think? Missing past happiness. Saudade can encompass a yearning for things that have never been.”

Alfie preferred to think of himself as a simple man. He liked his emotions, when he had to have them, to be unambiguous: anger, protectiveness, love, desire. But he got this. Found it surprisingly comforting to know there was a name for this restless, needy ache.

Fen seemed to have dozed off again while he was thinking. That was okay. He didn’t really want to talk, but he liked having a body tucked up next to him. Especially when the body in question was gorgeous and naked, and smelled of fresh sex, and you, and something sweet and slightly dusty. Like flowers. Maybe Fen really was magical. And Alfie would wake up in the morning with fairy dust on his eyelids, and there’d be nothing left of Fen but petals and sea-foam.

He drew him in a little closer, not wanting to let him slip away just yet. Obviously Fen wasn’t going to vanish storybook-style, but he was still going to leave in the morning, and so was Alfie. That was kind of sad, really. It made him wonder what life could have been like if he’d stayed in South Shields. Met a nice boy and settled down. Well, maybe not a nice boy. Someone like Fen, who was wicked and sexy and fearless, and about as far from nice as you could imagine.

No point thinking about it really. Building sandcastles in his head. Except he sort of was. All sorts of sandcastles, as he drifted slowly off to sleep, holding a stranger in his arms.

3

An instinct jarred Alfie awake again later. He still was under the covers, but there was only empty space beside him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. But it was. He sat up, groped for the lamp on the nightstand, and flicked it on. “Fen?”

Fen, still naked from the waist up, whirled away from the door like a thief in, well, the night.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving. What do you think I’m doing?”

“Yes, but…why?”

Shit, he sounded pathetic. This was what happened after a hookup. One of you left. Except this hadn’t felt like a hookup. At least not to Alfie. And he couldn’t believe that was all it had been to Fen either, not after the way he’d trembled and moaned in Alfie’s arms and clung to him afterwards. Fallen asleep next to him. Told him weird words for the way he was feeling.

Fen pulled on his jumper, rolling the sleeves midway up his forearms, exposing those gorgeous, supple wrists and—oh no—a ring of bruises that looked like the imprint of Alfie’s fingers.

“Fuck, I hurt you.”

Fen shrugged. “I wanted it. At the time.”

“Don’t go.” Alfie ran his hands through his hair. “Can we talk?”

“Talk.” Fen’s lip curled, and just like that, they were back at the Rattler. Two strangers, one of them angry.

“Well, why not? You might like me, you know, if you gave me a chance.”

Fen laughed. Actually laughed. Except he didn’t sound the slightest bit happy. “You…you really don’t know who I am, do you?”

“Well, we’ve only just met.”

“Jesus Christ.” Fen’s hands curled into tight fists. “Look at me, you fucking bastard. Look. At. Me.”

Alfie looked. “I don’t think—” And, just like that, memory snapped into place like a mis-set bone. A thin, yellow-haired boy. Weird, friendless, and stubborn. “James? James O’Donaghue?” He felt kind of dazed and sick. Suddenly things were making sense. Some things anyway. Others weren’t. Actually, no, nothing made sense. “Wait, you told me your name was Fen. What the fuck?”

“It is Fen.”

“But…at school…”

“Yeah, you don’t think I had enough shit to deal with already without everybody knowing my parents called me Fenimore?”1

It was completely the wrong reaction, and he didn’t mean to do it, but somehow, Alfie laughed. Well, it was funny. Sort of. Fenimore. Who called their kid Fenimore?

Fen—Fenimore—glared. “Oh fuck you.”

“Yeah, I think you already did.”

It was a reaction born of confusion and defensiveness, but Alfie hadn’t meant it to sound quite so harsh. And he was horrified when Fen sort of crumpled to his knees on the floor.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad. It was…it was great. But I don’t see why you didn’t just tell me. I’d still have wanted you.”

“How generous.” Fen glared at him through the falling strands of his hair, and Alfie remembered how soft it had felt, soft and a little bit sharp.

“Howay,”2 he said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yes, you did. It didn’t even fucking occur to you that I might not want you.”

“You seemed pretty into me earlier.”

Fen’s expression would have made the North Sea look warm and welcoming just then. “Yes, Alfie Bell,3 I was indeed pretty into the school bully demonstrating what a good little cocksucker he’s grown into.”

It was like a knee in the ’nads. Next thing Alfie knew, he was out of bed, had Fen by the collar of his jumper, and was yanking him to his feet, staring down into those furious, too-familiar eyes.

“Going to hit me now?” Fen was trembling, but the words were a taunt. Another blow. “Tell me how you’re not like me. How you’re not one of those queers.”

“No… I…” Shit. What was he doing? He swallowed. Let go of Fen. Clenched his hands helplessly.

But Fen didn’t give an inch. Just stood there, beautiful and as breakable as moon snail shells.4 He ran his hands through his already wild hair. “God, this was fucked up.”

What was especially fucked up was that they were having a conversation like this and Alfie was stark bollock naked. He retreated to the bed, dragged the sheet off it, and wrapped it round his waist.

“Look,” he said, as calmly as he could, “I get that we weren’t exactly friends back then, but—”

“You made my life a living hell.”

“I was a kid. It was just a bit of fun.”

“A bit of fun? Are you a fucking sociopath?” Fen curled his arms tightly around his own body. “Every day. For six years.”

Alfie made a frustrated gesture, nearly losing the sheet. “It wasn’t just me.”

“That’s the best justification you can find? God, you’re pathetic.”

There was a long silence. Fen was shaking slightly. If he squinted, Alfie could just about see James O’Donaghue in him. So fragile and defiant.

“Look,” he tried. “I’m sorry, okay? I should have said that first, but you should have told me.”

Fen said nothing. He didn’t need to. The look on his face was enough.

“Okay, forget that. I’m sorry. Just sorry. But it was a long time ago. I’m not the same person.”

“Oh, right, yes. Because you’re gay now and you feel all sad about it.”

Alfie’s mouth dropped open. He knew his sense of betrayal was probably out of proportion. But it was like he’d shown his belly in a moment of weakness and Fen had responded by ripping his guts out.

Before he could muster any sort of answer, Fen had torn right on. “You think you have it rough? Try growing up queer in a place like this.”

“I did grow up gay. I just didn’t know it like.”

“Well, it didn’t stop you making my life miserable.”

Alfie was still feeling too unexpectedly wounded to be capable of controlling what came out of his mouth. “Yeah, but you didn’t exactly help yourself either.”

Silence. Again.

“What,” asked Fen very quietly, “the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you could have kept your head down. You didn’t have to make a big deal about it.”

Fen’s hand came up, trembled, and then dropped. In some ways, Alfie might have preferred it if Fen had tried to hit him—he knew how to deal with that kind of thing—but Fen never had. Not once. He had struggled and protested but never pleaded. Never struck back. And there it was in those gorgeous, sea-glass eyes: all the old hurt, the helpless anger, and the same stubborn pride. Only Fen was a man now, strong and beautiful, and as lost to Alfie as he had ever been.

“Look, I’m—”

Fen darted for the door and pulled it open, making Alfie wince in the sticky yellow light that flooded in from the hallway. He paused, hand on the handle, half-turned-away. “You’re wrong, Alfie Bell. You haven’t changed. Maybe you suck cock these days, but you’re still a coward and a bully, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

And then Fen was gone.

For a long time after, Alfie just stood there in the awful quiet, clutching his sheet and staring at the fire notice pinned to the back of the door. He thought of getting dressed and going after Fen, but how would he find him? What would he say? He’d already tried to apologise, and Fen had been awful. Although admittedly it hadn’t been one of Alfie’s better apologies. He’d been too startled.

Not really knowing what else to do, he got back into bed. It was cold again, but it smelled like sex. Like Fen. His brain felt weird. As if there was a gap in the middle of it and he couldn’t get the edges to join up straight again. Fen. James O’Donaghue. Now. Then. And Alfie: who he used to be, who he was, and who Fen thought he was—which was some kind of monster.

He tried to sleep, but bits and pieces of memory kept washing back on him like sea-wrack. Everybody had teased Fen. Or James, as he’d been. It was what kids did. And, yes, it had occasionally been a bit rough, but that was just the way it was. Same for everybody. They would probably have done it to Alfie if he hadn’t been the biggest and the strongest. The ringleader. And even that wouldn’t have made a difference if they’d known the truth.

If they’d known he was just like Fen.

Faggot. Puff. Sissy. Pansy. Fairy. Fudge-packer. Cocksucker.

His hands tingled suddenly. Remembering Fen across the years. Holding him down. It had all been petty. Small hurts. Humiliations. But relentless. And heedless. A habit.5

He was too hot, then too cold. He shoved the sheets aside. Blundered into the bathroom and drank and drank, directly from the tap. The water was so cold and clean, it tasted sharp somehow. Straight from the Kielder Reservoir. Not like the mineral-heavy shit they had down south.6

He pulled back, gasping, hardly daring to meet his own eyes in the mirror—bully, coward—but he looked exactly the same. He searched his face for a reason. Maybe he’d always fancied Fen, and beating him up, taking the piss, generally harassing him, had been the only safe way to get his attention. Like pulling a girl’s pigtails in the playground. Or maybe it came down to some psychotherapy bullshit: attacking the part of himself he couldn’t accept. But, no. There was nothing. Nothing to redeem or comfort him. Nothing to lend meaning to it. Fen had simply been there, and it was what you did to people who were different, even if you couldn’t exactly work out why they were different, or why it mattered that they were.

Fuck. He was fifteen years too late to be thinking about this stuff.

Which meant he also had fifteen years’ worth of bad to feel about it. And if nothing else, he owed Fen a proper apology. No more excuses or defensiveness. Maybe then he’d realise that Alfie really had changed. That he wasn’t like that anymore.

God… Fen had slept with him. Wanting him and hating him at the same time. Alfie had no idea how he was supposed to feel about that. Used? Deceived? Fucked up? But he kept remembering the sweetness. The scent of Fen’s hair, the salt in the crevices of his lips, the roughness of his hands.

He left the bathroom, couldn’t face the bed again, and crossed to the window instead. Pulled back the curtains. Across the bay, the lights from North Shields cast shining shadows over the still, black sea.7

Alfie let his head fall forward against the cold glass with a pathetic little thunk. He couldn’t go back to London. Not until he’d sorted this out somehow and made things right with Fen. Maybe it shouldn’t have mattered so much, but it did. It really did. And, yes, it was a bit selfish—not wanting to leave this bad memory of himself in South Shields—but there was more to it than that. Because under Fen’s anger and the pain there’d been something. Something Fen had wanted from him and had given in return, perhaps even without intending it. A sort of…understanding. Well, that, and the mind-blowing sex.

Except he had no idea where Fen was now. Where he might have gone. Surely he knew someone who knew Fen? It was a small town. Except he couldn’t think of anyone. Maybe his family would be able to help, but there was no way he was admitting he was interested in someone like Fen. It would confirm all his father’s worst fears about the sort of man his son was on his way to becoming. Could he ask Kev? Kev was bound to know or know how to find out. But how would that go? I ran away in the middle of your wedding to sleep with the kid we used to pick on at school. Any idea how I could get back in touch with him?

That was when he remembered: Fen’s mother owned a flower shop on Prince Edward Road. It was part of a parade of shops locals called the Nook after a pub that had closed down ages ago.8 When Alfie had been growing up, there’d just been the Cranny on the corner, and the Black Prince, which became the Prince Edward, which was supposed to be the roughest pub in the area. Kev had dared Alfie to have a drink in there once. He had been absolutely shitting himself the whole time, but nothing bad had happened at all. Everyone had just ignored him.

So. There. A plan. That he’d planned. As soon as it was morning, Alfie would drive down to the Nook, and hopefully, the shop would still be there.

Now he’d started thinking about this stuff, the memories came back far more strongly than he would have expected. Details he hadn’t even noticed at the time, like the sweet-dusty smell of the place, and the way the sunlight fell in thick golden strips over the floor. The hand-painted sign and the spill of bright flowers over the pavement.

His mam used to go there every Saturday for the week’s flowers.9 Even though it was out of her way. Dragging with her, occasionally, a resentful Alfie.

He remembered Fen’s mother. Her coils and coils of sun-yellow braids. And Fen too, sometimes perched on the edge of the counter, wary-eyed behind his glasses, listening to whatever he listened to on that Sony Walkman he carried everywhere.

The hours dragged by. Alfie slept a little. Thought too much. Watched the grey light creep between the sea and the sky.

He checked out of the hotel at 9:00 a.m., hair still damp from the shower he’d taken to try and wash away the night. Then he stuffed his case into the boot of his car and made for the Nook.

It was a heavy sort of morning, the kind of morning you only really got up north, so close to the sea. The air was thick with salt and spray, and the cloud-churned sky sagged low like the belly of some monstrous beast. The sea was sullen too, the waves turning over and over each other in clots of dirty white spume. Alfie watched the old lighthouse recede in his rearview mirror, its redness dulled to the shade of an old wine stain against the horizon.

The Prince Edward roundabout had always been terrible for traffic snarls, but it was early enough that Alfie glided straight over, turned into the parallel access road that ran alongside the shopfronts. He managed to find a prime parking space right in front of the Ocean Pearl Chop Suey House,10 which used to be one of the few Chinese takeaways in South Shields. It looked exactly the same as it always had: dirty yellow sign with blue lettering, two Chinese lanterns hanging in the window. It reminded Alfie that there was a time when kung po and spare ribs had seemed unbelievably exotic to him.

There’d been a handful of changes, here and there. They had a Subway now, though the sea air had dimmed the glowing green paintwork. And a Tesco Express, open every day from six in the morning until eleven at night. He could have gone there for condoms. Alfie wanted to laugh about it. But there was nobody to share the joke.

Most things were pretty much as they’d been before he left. The salon where he’d gone with Kev to get his tan done before a night on the town. The paper shop. The post office. The butcher. The bookies. The dodgy place that promised to buy your gold and cash your cheques. God, even Munchies, the tiny little takeaway sandwich shop where you could buy soft, floury stotties as big as your head.11

Alfie hurried along the pavement feeling like he was in that movie about the birds turning evil. Except it was memories pelting him from all sides.

He was starting to think maybe he’d got it wrong, or the shop had closed down, when he saw the familiar florist racks up ahead. They were different. Not like he remembered. He remembered flowers everywhere, jostling for space, practically pushing pedestrians off the pavement, gleaming even on the darkest of winter days. These were fine. But neat. Modest.

The door and the sign had faded to mustard. The painted purple flowers to dusty lilac.

But the letters were still just about readable: Pansies.

How had he forgotten? They’d certainly never let Fen forget. It wasn’t even funny. He couldn’t believe he’d ever thought it was.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door. The bell jangled. So familiar, ringing across the years, cutting across whatever music was playing. Jazz or something. Some angry women singing about murder.

And there was Fen. Right in the middle of the shop, his back to Alfie, manhandling a big plastic bucket full of water and dead plant bits.

“Can I help—” He turned. Went white. “What the fuck?”

Alfie just stared. This was the last thing he had expected.

“Get out.” Fen’s voice swooped up at least an octave. “Leave me alone.”

“I just wanted to—”

“I don’t care. If…if you don’t leave, I’m calling the police.”

“But”—Alfie blinked—“why?”

Fen hefted the bucket into his arms, as if he wanted to put something between them. “You stalked me. And you’re harassing me.”

“I didn’t expect to see you. I was looking for your mam.”

There was something, something Alfie couldn’t read. A pause or a look. A flicker in Fen’s eyes. “Well, she’s not here.”

“Yeah, I can see that. I was hoping she’d tell me how to find you.”

“I never want to see you again.” Fen sounded calmer, but his knuckles were bloodless against the bucket.

This wasn’t going well. But Alfie wasn’t ready to give up yet. They’d held each other and talked to each other and shared something that mattered, even if it was nothing more than a moment of unexpected connection across the years that separated them. If only Fen could understand… He held out his hands. A peace offering of air. “Look, Fen, mate, I fucked up. I fucked up badly. Before, and last night. I just really want you to know that I meant what I said: I’m not who you think I am. Not anymore.”

“I don’t care. Don’t you get it?” Fen was yelling now. “I don’t fucking care.”

“Yeah, but you have to know that I’m sor—”

Suddenly Alfie was drenched. In freezing, foul-smelling water, and it was everywhere. Stinging his eyes. Soaking through his clothes. Dripping from his hair. The shock of it hit him first. Hard enough to hurt somehow, like a punch in the face. Followed by the cold and the stench, and the sour taste filling up his mouth and nose. And only then the slow realisation of deep, physical discomfort. The sort that wouldn’t go away until you got in a really hot shower.

He tried to wipe his eyes. The liquid clung to his fingers, slimy with rotting plant matter. The smell made him gag. God, he’d probably swallowed some. He spat on the floor, but that only made it worse. When, finally, he could see and breathe and think again—at least a little bit—the first thing he focused on was Fen. Standing in front of him, trembling with fury, the empty bucket hanging from one hand.

“I said get out.”

So Alfie got out.

Stood for a while by his car, wondering what to do. He knew he could go to his parents’ house for a shower, but on balance, he preferred driving all the way to London in wet, smelly clothes to facing his family. And there was Kev, of course, but the last thing you needed the day after your wedding was your best mate turning up on your doorstep. Especially when your best mate had fucked off in the middle of said wedding.

In the end, he covered up the driver’s seat as best he could, sacrificing his wedding suit to save the interior of his car, and headed for home.

He knew it would be a miserable journey. But he didn’t look back.

4

Dear Mum,1

I’ve done the most messed-up thing.

You remember that boy, Alfie Bell, who used to tease me all the time? Well, I met him again the other night. At the Rattler of all places. I don’t even know what I was doing there. I just had to get out. So I started walking, and that was where I ended up.

And he came in, and I recognised him straightaway. He hasn’t changed. Well, he has, but only in the sense of being more somehow—more everything, more like himself, as if the boy who used to hurt me all those years ago was just a rough cocoon for the man. The ridiculously beautiful man. If you like them big and dark and rough-hewn, that is, which—God help me—I always have.

He walked right up to me and asked if he could buy me a drink. And, you know, all I thought was that it’s been something like fifteen years, and he was still finding new and special ways to make me feel worthless.

I thought he’d finally worked it out. And come back all the way to South Shields just to taunt me. But it wasn’t some imaginative new torture. Or a cruel joke. He didn’t even recognise me. Which was really its own cruel joke.

But he wanted me. He really wanted me. So I went with him.

I’m such an idiot. I know I shouldn’t have gone. But I did. And I’m so completely ashamed. I was pathetic. I can’t even bear to think of it. Thank God nobody will ever know. Well, except me and him, and when it comes to him, what’s one more humiliation or one more hurt?

I’m writing that, but I don’t believe it. I can’t make myself believe it, no matter how hard I want to. And he’s probably sitting in his fancy car right now, laughing at me. Remembering all the things I did and said and let him do.

It wasn’t like I thought it would be. He was…kind to me. Why? He’s not kind. He’s Alfie Bell: an arrogant, thoughtless, bullying, cowardly caveman. But I just needed someone to touch me. Someone to make me feel warm. And it was like he knew. Knew all the terrible, messed-up, shameful things I’ve never admitted.

I never told you. I never told you how bad it was. And how much I dreaded, God, I dreaded everything. Waking up in the morning, knowing he would be waiting for me, him and his friends, and all the rest of them. Old taunts or new ones, it didn’t matter, I never learned to shrug them off. I never learned not to care. I didn’t dare tell you. You would have been so sad. You would have wanted to protect me, but you couldn’t. Nobody could. But at least I got to save you that heartbreak. It’s the one thing I’m proud of. In all this weakness.

And it gets worse.

I don’t know if it was because of or in spite of, but I really thought I was in love with him back then. For all those years. Because he was the only boy who touched me. He was all I had. His hand on the back of my neck, forcing my head down the toilet. Or his body shoved against mine to stop me fighting. His bruises on my skin. His fingers in my hair.

I’d lie awake in bed, terrified of tomorrow, and I’d think about him touching me. I’d dream about him and want him. And imagine how it would feel if he was gentle with me. If he gave me all his strength. If maybe he put his hand on the back of my neck because he wanted to kiss me and his arms around me because he wanted to hold me.

So there. That’s the truth I could never tell. A sickness I would have lived with safely if Alfie Bell hadn’t walked into my life out of nowhere and pulled it right out of me and made me look at it. And now everything’s stirred up again. Bad memories and good memories, and I’m so messed up, feeling things I don’t want to feel.

Except he made me. Or, no, I let him. Truthfully, I begged him. I just didn’t think he could…that I could…that anything could be so good again. It was too much, sharp and awful like peeling off a scab before it’s ready. So that underneath there’s nothing but a wet wound.

Oh, what’s the matter with me? Alfie Bell is supposed to be my past. But he’s left me bleeding all over again.

Love always,

Fen

5

Greg had found this bar in Earl’s Court which was disguised as a speakeasy disguised as a detective agency. It was the sort of thing you were supposed to love about London.

Except it was the sort of thing Alfie hated about London.

And he’d only been back a week.

Greg had to make an appointment to discuss their “case,” and they’d spent the first twenty minutes of the evening being semi-interrogated in a detective’s office before they were led through a false bookcase into a basement bar. The sort of place that had been carefully designed to look like shit.

Alfie whispered this to Kitty, and she told him it was chic, not shit, and that Prohibition was very in right now. She wrote for Tatler, so she would know.

Eventually they found their table, which was tucked into a dark corner beneath an overhang of exposed brickwork. Greg looked delighted to be on what he was probably thinking of as “an adventure,” but Alfie had worked a long day, in a long week, and all he wanted was a drink. He snagged the menu from a typewriter and held it up to the nearest candle so he could read the damn thing. He remembered from school that one of the effects of Prohibition had been to push up the price of alcohol so, in that respect at least, the place was pretty realistic.

J.D. Jarndyce (formerly Jarndyce & Dance)1 paid him enough that he didn’t have to care. But it was a matter of principle. He pointedly ordered the cheapest thing he could find, a pint of London pale ale, which he didn’t like anyway, and was, on this occasion, dispensed from a radiator. Kitty’s wine was smuggled over in a brown paper bag. And Greg had a cocktail called a Grapefruit Blossom which was thankfully served quite conventionally. Albeit pinkly. Alfie didn’t trust pink drinks.

“So.” Greg leaned back in his chair and draped one long leg over the other. He had a way about him that made public places feel like they were his living room. “How was t’north?”

Alfie gave him a look of mingled affection and irritation. “I think you mean oop north. T’north would only get you as far as Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire, Manchester, same difference.”2 Greg had literally never been further than Barnet. He was proud of it. Alfie had tried to ask him about it once, and all he’d said was, “Darling, you know I prefer going down.” It hadn’t been much of an answer, but it had led in a suitably interesting direction, so Alfie hadn’t cared much. At least, not at the time.

“You know,” said Kitty, “there are studies showing that shameless displays of snobbery are thirty percent more likely to get you laid.”

Greg’s head whipped round. “Really?”

“No, of course not. I can’t imagine anything less attractive, can you?”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just”—Greg sighed dreamily—“I love London. It’s full of places like this. There’s nothing exciting up north. Just hills and sheep.”

Alfie stared at him, deadpan. “Yeah, last time I was in the city of Newcastle, it was full of hills and sheep.”

“Also,” added Kitty, “places like this usually turn out to be stupid.”

“Hey.” Greg gave them a wounded look. “You said it was in.”

“Oh, because fashionable is never stupid.”

“If it wasn’t for me,” he muttered, “you two would sit at the same table in the same pub drinking the same drinks every day for the rest of your lives.”

Kitty propped an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Sounds like heaven to me. What do you think, Alfredo?”

“I’m in. As long as it’s a proper English pub, not too quiet, not too busy—”

“Always the same two men always propping up the bar—”

“Good selection of booze—”

“And they know how to pull a pint properly—”

“And,” finished Alfie decidedly, “they do egg and chips for £4.99.”3

That did, in fact, sound just about perfect. The sort of pub his dad went to, and his granddad, and probably his great-granddad.

“Well, the next time I find a restaurant in a hydraulics plant or a bar with beds in it or a rooftop hot-tub cinema, I’m not going to invite you.” Greg paused. “So I’d have to go by myself. And sit there weeping into my hot tub.”

“As if we’d ever let you do that.” Kitty leaned into him and rested her head against his shoulder, tight spirals of honey-brown hair tumbling over his arm. “Sartre only thought hell was other people because he never went to a rooftop hot-tub cinema on his own.”

“That’s not a real thing, is it?” Alfie could hear the horror in his own voice. “Because nothing on earth is getting me to a…what was it…a rooftop hot-tub cinema?”

Kitty seemed to be struggling with inappropriate mirth. “You said that about the hydraulics plant.”

“And I was right.”

“The food was nice,” offered Greg plaintively.

“Yeah, but power stations aren’t edgy features of the urban landscape. They were, like, somebody’s livelihood.”

“Isn’t it better these places get used for something?”

Alfie snorted. “Take a hipster to a restaurant in a hydraulics plant and you will feed him for a day…”

“A hipster,” returned Kitty gravely, “is for life, not just for hydraulics.”

“A hipster in the hand is worth two in the turbine.”

Greg glared at them over the rim of his martini glass. “Oh, why don’t you two just fuck off and get married.”

“Yes”—Kitty shrugged—“we already thought of that, but unfortunately, he turned out to be gay, so what’s a girl to do?”

Alfie shifted uncomfortably on the church pew that passed for seating in this bloody place. It had been more than a few years since he’d dated Kitty, but it still wasn’t nearly as funny as Greg thought it was.

“The good ones,” murmured Greg infuriatingly, “usually are.”

“Snobbish and smug, you must be beating them back with sticks.”

Not for the first time, Alfie wondered if it was weird that his two closest friends in this part of the world were his ex-fiancée and his ex-boyfriend. Of all the people he knew, they were the ones with most reason to hate him. But the breakup with Greg had been so easy, it had almost freaked Alfie out. With Kitty it had been more complicated, but once she’d stopped yelling and throwing things at him, and after they’d had some time apart and she’d had a high-profile fling with a rap artist, they’d gradually drifted back into each other’s lives.

“As it happens,” Greg was saying, “I have other talents.”

Alfie nodded. “It’s true. He can play the ukulele.”

“I’m so glad you said that. For a moment”—Kitty arched a brow—“I thought he was crassly implying he was good in bed.”

Greg had gone a little pink. “My reputation speaks for itself. And, for the record, I rock that ukulele. Wild thing plink plink. You make my plink plink.”

“Can’t believe you let this one get away.” Kitty gave Alfie one of her most sardonic looks.

Alfie shrugged. “He dumped me.”

“Well,” said Greg, with typical nonchalance, “you didn’t love me. You were just incredibly excited I had a dick. I can see how you got confused, but it’s not exactly a kiss to build a dream on.”

“A dick to build a dream on.” That earned him a look from Greg that could only be described as withering.

“Wait a minute.” Kitty shoved her hair over her shoulders. “Alfie broke up with me because I didn’t have a dick, and you broke up with him because you did. I’m going to become a nun.”

Greg laughed and lifted his glass. “I propose a toast. To love, to sex, and to dicks. Whether we have them or whether we don’t.”

“Or whether we are them,” Kitty added.

They clinked.

“And,” Greg went on, “don’t think I haven’t noticed this transparent attempt to be evasive. How’d it go back home, Alfie?”

Alfie stared into his drink. “Weird.”

There was a long silence.

“Well”—Greg turned to Kitty—“I feel illuminated, how about you?”

“Like I was there.”

“Sorry.” Alfie held up his hands. “That was crap. Sorry. You know how I feel about feelings.”

“Can you tell us what was weird?” asked Kitty, who had developed a sort of talent over the years for getting Alfie to talk about things. Even feelings.

“Just being home again. Everything being the same. And I…” God. How was he supposed to explain Fen? “I need a proper drink.”

He extricated himself, shoved his way to the bar, and flagged down one of the bow tie-sporting bartenders.

“What would you like?” The man had bright eyes, even in the gloom, and a brighter smile.

“Uhh…” Alfie scoured the cocktail menu in a panic. “Look, just make me something.”

“Of course. Do you normally go for—”

“I really don’t care.”

Five minutes later, Alfie was handing over twelve quid and receiving, in return, an austere tumbler, untouched by cherries or umbrellas or other slices of crap. “What is it?”

The bartender smirked. “An Old Fashioned.”

“Okay.” That was something Alfie could live with. He took a sip and found himself surprised. Possibly pissed off. “That’s not an Old Fashioned.”

“It’s a pink peppercorn Old Fashioned.”

“Do I look like the kind of bloke who wants pink peppercorns in his Old Fashioned?”

The bartender leaned towards him. Alfie wasn’t sure, but his eyes might have been greenish. “Maybe. Why don’t you let me know?”

He picked up his drink and went back to his table, unsure whether he was being mocked or hit on. Or both at once.

“Oh, what’s that?” Greg pounced on the drink and took a sip.4 “It’s gorgeous. Smoky and sweet and a little bit spicy. Just like you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“If you don’t want it, I’ll have it.” His eyes were on the bartender.

Alfie reclaimed his drink. “Get your own.”

“So what happened in South Shields?” Kitty nudged him.

“Well, first off, I sort of came out by accident.”

A moment of silence. Then Greg was laughing. “So you fell out?”

“Don’t laugh. It’s all right for you, you were born gay.”

“Um, so were you, sweetie.”

“Yes, but I didn’t notice, okay? It’s different. There’s not, like, space for that stuff up there. But then I sort of met this guy in a bar—”

“I do love stories with a happy ending.”

“Greg, will you shut the fuck up for like two minutes? I’m trying to talk about my feelings.” Probably Alfie shouldn’t have bellowed that like an emo teenager. “Which you asked about,” he finished, lowering his voice. “And which I could just as easily bottle up forever like I’m supposed to.”

“I’m sorry.” Greg looked about thirty percent contrite. “Please continue.”

Alfie sighed. “So, I met this guy, and he was sort of odd, but sort of sweet as well, and at first I thought he didn’t like me, but then he seemed to really like me, and then he didn’t like me again. And it turned out we went to the same school.”

Greg and Kitty exchanged confused glances.

“Is that a big deal?” she asked, at last.

Alfie shook his head. “Not really. Except the thing is, I wasn’t very nice to him back then. So it was messed up. I tried to say sorry, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

“Wait, was this before or after you slept with him?”

“After. I didn’t recognise him before.”

“Wow.” Greg stared at him wide-eyed. “That is messed up.”

“Well, why would I? I haven’t thought about any of that for years. And now he thinks I’m this evil bastard, which is fucking unfair because I’m not.”

Kitty leaned across the table. “Let me get this straight. You slept with a guy, and now you’re annoyed with him because you were horrible to him at school?”

“Yes. No. I mean. No. But it was a long time ago. And he threw plant water in my face.”

“He what?”

“When I tried to apologise.”

“Plant water?”

“Yes, it’s bloody awful.”

One of Kitty’s brows twitched into a perfect, quizzical arch. “Is this like gay pepper spray?”

“No, this happened later. At his mum’s shop.”

“I’m so confused right now.” Greg propped his chin in a hand. “You had sex in his mum’s shop? My word.”

“No, I went there after he ran away from me.”

“He ran away from you?”

“No, no, not like that.” Alfie drank most of his Old Fashioned, pink peppercorns or not. “You’re making this sound way worse than it was.”

“Darling”—Greg seemed to be stuck somewhere between sympathetic and appalled—“I’m not sure I could if I tried.”

“This isn’t my fault,” muttered Alfie. “I was trying to make it right. And he threw things at me.”

“Because you wouldn’t leave him alone, by the sounds of it.” Greg’s voice was gentler than his words, but not by much.

“I didn’t want to leave him alone. I liked him.”

There was another long silence.

“Well,” said Kitty, “if that’s how you treat people you like, I can see why he started throwing things.”

Alfie’s carefully nurtured sense of resentment popped out of existence like a soap bubble. “Oh fuck.” He slumped onto the table. “I’ve fucked this up, haven’t I?”

They exchanged looks.

Greg shrugged. “Our survey says…yes.”

Alfie groaned. Kitty reached over and gently petted the spiky ends of his hair.

“It’s not all on me,” he mumbled. “He could have told me. And he didn’t have to sleep with me. And he really didn’t have to cover me in plant juice.”

“Generally”—Greg made his wise face—“when people do ridiculous things, it’s because they feel they don’t have a choice.”

“Bollocks. He had choices. You don’t put your cock in somebody’s mouth because you’re confused.”

Greg gave a splutter of laughter. “You have much to learn, young Padawan.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Alfie reslumped. “It was fifteen bloody years ago. He should be over it by now.”

“Isn’t that up to him?” asked Kitty.

“Not if it’s stupid. It’s like he’s just decided I’m some kind of fucked-up monster based on some shit I did when I was teenager. And it’s not like he ever asked me to stop.”

“Oh right,” she snapped, “because that works so well with bullies.”

“Come on, I’m not a bully. You know I’m not.”

“And you’re telling us if he’d only said, ‘Hey, you, Alfred Bell, stop making my life miserable,’ you would have apologised and left him alone.”

Alfie reached up and clenched his fingers into his hair. “Oh God, I’m a horrible person.”

“You’re not a horrible person,” Kitty said, slightly more soothingly. There was a pause. “You’ve just done some horrible things.”

“Thanks. I feel so much better.”

“We’ve all done horrible things,” offered Greg.

“Yeah? What’s the most horrible thing you’ve ever done?”

Greg thought about it for a long time.

“Now you’re just taking the mick.”

“I’m not,” he protested. “I’m trying to think of something. Okay, once when I was using the self-service checkout at Marks & Spencer’s, I put a chocolate Easter egg through as garlic, and I didn’t correct it.”5

Alfie blinked. “That’s the most horrible thing you’ve ever done?”

“It’s actually theft. I could have gone to a prison.”

“Mate, when I was a teenager, we nicked cars. Not Easter eggs.”

“You nicked cars? But why?”

“How else were we supposed to get a car?”

“That’s the whole point of being a child.” The thing about Greg was that he had this kind of angel prettiness to him. Right now he looked like an angel who’d been told some people had eaten an apple they weren’t supposed to. “You don’t have access to automobiles.”

“We had fuck all else to do,” said Alfie, shrugging. “And there was this hill with a tight turn at the top called Lizard Lane. We used to race.”

“In stolen cars?”

“And we weren’t insured either.”

Greg was still staring at him, genuinely shocked and also, if Alfie was any judge, slightly excited. “You’re a dangerous criminal. Gosh, that’s so sexy.”

Kitty cleared her throat. “Finish it later, gentlemen.”

“Look, I’m not that kid anymore.” Hauling himself up into a more dignified sitting position, Alfie wished he hadn’t finished his drink. “I’d never hurt anyone.”

“I know that.” Kitty met his eyes across the table. “But you did.”

“I know. Okay. I know. I get it. I’m a shithead. I tried to say sorry. But he wasn’t having it.”

“It takes a while.”

“He’s had fifteen years. How much longer does he need?”

She made an exasperated noise. “Sometimes I wonder how you tie your shoes in the morning. Alfie, just because it’s trivial to you, doesn’t mean it’s trivial to him. And anyway, you don’t really get over things. You learn to live with them. Seeing you again probably stirred it all back up.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t a big deal.”

“You’re making me wish I had some plant juice.”

Alfie closed his eyes. “I just hate that I…y’know…that I affected someone’s life like that. In such a bad way. I didn’t mean to.”

“Well, I suppose that’s something you’ll have to learn to live with.”

Greg licked his finger and made a sizzling noise. They both glared at him. He looked sheepish. “Sorry, I got carried away.”

“I can’t believe for a minute,” said Kitty, eyeing him, “that you weren’t picked on at school. Tell Alfie what it was like.”

“I went to Bedales. I was head boy.” Greg looked pensive for a moment. “Though now I think about it, when I was about eleven, Gyles Cadell walked up to me right in the middle of breadmaking—”

“You what?” spluttered Alfie.

“Breadmaking. We did it on Thursday mornings. It was very soothing. Anyway, there I was innocently kneading my dough, when Gyles Cadell walked up to me and announced, ‘You’re gay,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ And then he looked confused and went away again.”

“Wow,” said Kitty, “you must have been so traumatised.”

“Well, I’m sorry I was insufficiently oppressed for you. I’m not dead of AIDS either. And both my still-married parents like me.” He clapped a hand to his mouth. “Oh God, Alfie, I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine,” Alfie lied. “It’s fine. I’m over it.”

“Sure you are.”

“Living with it, then.”

Kitty summoned a fresh glass of wine and knocked back most of it. “Just so you know, I had a shit-awful time at school.”

“Oh, darling, really?” Greg patted her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“As Alfie keeps insisting, it was a long time ago.”

“I just can’t imagine it. You’re, well, I love you, but you’re terrifying.”

“Believe me, I was born to be in my midthirties.” She made a sweeping gesture. “Mine is a body one grows into. When I was a teenager, I was all limbs and hair and teeth. I was a Giant Hermione Granger.”

“You’re beautiful,” Alfie told her.

“I know. But it took me a long time to learn. And girls are vile. They hunt in packs and prey on the weak.”

“But you’re over it now, right?”

“As I said, I live with it. If I saw any of them again…well…I wouldn’t actively set them on fire, but if they already happened to be on fire when I encountered them, I might hesitate to spit on them.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?” asked Alfie helplessly. “Be glad I wasn’t on fire when I met Fen again?”

“I think one should generally celebrate not being on fire.”

He sighed and stared moodily into the shadows of the room. “I liked him, you know. Really liked him. I thought there might be something there. And now it turns out I’m just some dick-bag who made him miserable. And who isn’t worth forgiving.”

“At least you got laid,” said Greg.

“There’s more to life than sex, y’know.”

“Steady on, straight boy.”

“I mean it. I’m nearly thirty. And I’ve spent most of my life looking for”—Alfie didn’t quite have the balls to say for love—“for a person in totally the wrong place.”

“Which is why you need to put yourself out there.” Greg did something that was probably supposed to be a grand gesture. “Have some adventures. Make terrible, glorious mistakes.”

Kitty nodded. “I definitely approve of terrible, glorious mistakes.”

“What part of thirty are you two ignoring?” Alfie squirmed on the crappy pew thing he was sitting on. Though he wasn’t sure whether he was uncomfortable physically or…emotionally. “I’ve already made enough mistakes to last me a lifetime. And I don’t want to be fucking around. I want to be settling down. I want to wake up next to the same person every day.”

“Well, I want to be mercilessly ravaged by six or seven incredibly gay firemen. But”—Greg shrugged—“as a great philosopher once said: you can’t always get what you want.”

“God.” Alfie tried to get to his feet and nearly knocked the table over. “God. I wish I was straight. I want straight things, I don’t want gay things. I’m shit at being gay.”6

Greg put a hand on his arm. “Trust me, sweetie, you’re very good at some of it. I’m sorry this…fling you had in South Shields didn’t work out, but you’ll meet someone.”

Finally Alfie managed to stand up, shaking off Greg at the same time, because he really wasn’t in the mood to be stroked or soothed or treated like a pet. “I did meet someone. And he hates me because it turns out I bullied the shit out of him fifteen years ago. And there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

“Alfie, come on.” Greg gazed up at him with an infuriating mixture of pity and frustration. “Sometimes sex is just sex. You don’t need to invest deep meaning into it.”

“So, what, that was eight meaningless months we had?”

It was not a good time for Greg to roll his eyes. “No, of course not. I didn’t say that. You’re just so provincial sometimes.”7

“Provincial? Just because I have some fucking values? Fuck you. No. Really. Fuck you.” Alfie pulled out his wallet and tossed some twenties onto the table. “That should cover my round. I’m done.”

He shoved the whole pew physically out of his way, scraping it over the flagstones with a nails-on-blackboard squeal, and stormed out.

6

Alfie hailed a cab on the street and was home in about half an hour. He lived in—or rather slept in and occasionally visited—a penthouse apartment at the top of the Landmark West Tower in Canary Wharf. It had interior design.

Sometimes, he kind of hated it.

Dragging a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale out of his otherwise empty fridge, he drank it on the glass-walled balcony. The city glittered silver and gold, its reflection burned into the river and onto the sky.

His phone rang. Kitty. He ignored her.

He was trying not to think. He’d been doing too much of that.1 Except it didn’t seem to be helping with anything. It just meant he was distracted at work, distracted at home. And every time he looked in the mirror, he wasn’t sure who was going to look back at him. He thought he’d finally got a handle on who he was, but South Shields and the wedding and Fen had messed it all up again. The truth was, the boy that Fen had known—known and rightly hated—was still part of him. He would be as long as that was all Fen saw when he looked at Alfie.

A text came in. It was from Greg. It said: Oh and fuck you too.

Alfie’s thumb hovered over the touch screen. It wouldn’t take much to send a Sorry mate.

But he didn’t.

Because tonight he was Alfie Bell: Shithead.

When they’d been carefully finding their way back to being friends, Kitty had told him she thought caring about someone was pretty resilient, once you got past hurt and anger and all the bad stuff. It was a nice idea, this tough-toffee love of hers stretching between people, but Alfie wasn’t sure he believed in it. He thought maybe it was more like those sugar sticks he used to get from the corner shop, glossy and brittle and easily snapped.

He stared across the water, his mouth full of the taste of home, and remembered different lights.

The ringing of the internal telephone cut across his nonthoughts. It was the front desk. Someone to see him. Greg.

Alfie didn’t really feel like dealing with him, or anyone, but you didn’t send your friends away in the middle of the night. Even if they’d pissed you off.

He met Greg at the door and ushered him wordlessly inside.

Greg’s eyes were faintly red-rimmed as they flicked to the bottle Alfie was still holding. “Tell me there’s something else to drink.”

“You know there is.” He tossed the Newky Brown into the recycling, crossed to the wine rack, and pulled out a bottle. “This do?”

Greg took it from him and studied the label. “With zis merlot you are really spoiling us.”

“Oh shut up.”

“It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“The fact you like wine.”

Alfie grabbed a corkscrew and set to work. “Can we go like five minutes without you making a big deal out of it?”

“I don’t know. Can you?”

The cork came free with a neat pop, and Alfie set the bottle down on one of his pristine work surfaces. He really wasn’t in the mood to have his provincial irrationalities dissected. “Look, what’s this about?”

Greg stared at the floor. “I thought you might like the opportunity to apologise for being a judgemental prick.” He paused and shuffled. “At the very least, you owe me a hug.”

You couldn’t stay angry with Greg. He got all small and vulnerable. In Alfie’s opinion, this was cheating, but he’d never been able to withstand it. He held out his arms. “Come ’ere.”

“It has to be a proper hug. Not one of those back-slapping-pretending-to-be-straight hugs.”

“Get the fuck over here.”

Greg stepped closer, and Alfie enfolded him. There was something shockingly comforting in the familiar warmth of a body he knew well. He put his lips to Greg’s ear. “I’m sorry I was a judgemental prick, okay?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously.”

Alfie squeezed.

“I kind of…need to inhale now.”

“Oops. Sorry.” He released a squished and tousled Greg. “Should I get the wine?”

“Yeah, and close those balcony doors. It’s freezing in here.”

“God, what did your last servant die of?”

Greg managed a slightly wobbly smile. “I dumped him.”

While Alfie made a vague attempt to make his apartment habitable, Greg picked up the wine and a couple of glasses and took them over to the sitting area. “You know,” he said, making a futile attempt to get comfortable on Alfie’s leather sofa, “it’s okay to like wine.”

“It’s poncy,” muttered Alfie, sprawling out next to him, and then wincing. The sofa had cost a small fortune, and it certainly looked good. But in every other respect, it was a disaster.

“No, no, pretending is poncy. I pretend. When actually I always choose wine by the label. The blingier the better. So, as far as I’m concerned, this”—Greg sloshed the wine haphazardly into the glasses, and Alfie tried not to wince—“is already something of a disappointment. Just a bunch of grapes. Not even gold grapes. Tragic.”

“You’ll like it. It’s bold but not over the top.”

Greg took a sip. “Oh, you’re so right. Bold. But not over the top.”

“Yeah, but you see what I mean? You like it?” There was something about wine—as uncomfortable as he was with his interest in it—that made Alfie anxious about other people’s approval. Their enjoyment was somehow important to his own. He’d snuck off to a fancy wine tasting once, and the wine itself had been some of the best he’d ever tasted, but it had been infinitely less fun without Greg’s wild guesses (“raspberry, no, plum, no, cinnamon, no, motor oil”) and his eventual, giggling capitulation to whatever Alfie said (“Okay, okay, it does have a velvety finish—and you know what else has a velvety finish?”).

“Yes, Alfie, I like it.” There was something a bit soft in Greg’s voice now. “In my clueless way, I can tell this is a good wine you’re wasting on me.”

“One of the best merlots of 2007. And I’m not wasting it, I’m sharing it.”

“God, you’re sweet sometimes.” Greg slanted a smile at him.

Given what had happened earlier that evening, given, for that matter, the way their relationship had ended, amicably but a bit weirdly, Alfie didn’t know how to tell Greg how much he liked this. How much he missed it. Just the simple stuff. The talking and the quiet. So he shrugged instead. “I shouldn’t have flipped out.”

“Sometimes I…I worry you mean it.”

“You what?”

“That you”—Greg was paying a lot of attention to his wine, and Alfie didn’t think he was assessing its viscosity—“believe I’m some kind of flighty man-slut.”

There was a long silence.

“Oh God, you do.”

“No, I don’t. I, you know, I admire it.”

Apparently, Greg was not reassured. “You admire that I’m a flighty man-slut?”

“Just,” Alfie explained hastily, “you know what you want and you don’t let what other people think mess with your head. For me, I guess…” He found he was staring into his glass too. The wine was a deep, dark ruby; the light fell into it and drowned. “I guess I feel things should be a certain way.”

“What do you mean?”

The truth was, Alfie didn’t a hundred percent know what he meant. Or rather, he did, but he didn’t know how to put it into words that Greg wouldn’t pull apart like a kitten with a ball of wool. “That life should be a certain way.”

“And you don’t think,” Greg asked predictably, because they’d had this conversation before, and more than once, “part of the reason those kinds of ideas feel so real and important to you is because they’re culturally constructed?”2

“Yeah yeah, I know. I’m a sad victim of perfunctory heteronormativ—what? What are you smirking about?”

“Nothing.” Greg was still smirking.

“What did I say?”

“Nothing. You said it exactly right.”

Leaning forward, Alfie topped up his glass. “Doesn’t change the fact my best mate from school got married last Saturday, and I’m sitting here on a sofa I don’t like getting wankered with my ex-boyfriend.”

“Life isn’t a race to socially significant events.” Greg sounded somewhere between sympathetic and exasperated. But then, a lot of wine had been drunk on this sofa. Usually as a prelude to something more mutually satisfying than Alfie’s whining. “It’s not… Oh, what’s the name of the board game where you’re like in this car and you get little pegs to represent your plastic kids and your, forgive me a heterosexist shudder, plastic wife?”

“The Game of Life, you divvy.”

Now Greg actually shuddered. “God, yes, the most boring game in the universe.”

“What, you mean because you can’t drive off the board to get a blowjob from a trucker?”

“I’ve never had a blowjob from a trucker. Something for the bucket list. But, seriously, that game was the most depressing, normative, banal, reductive pile of crap ever produced.”

“It’s just a game.” Alfie took another drink. He felt a bit fuzzy round the edges. What was that thing of his dad’s? Beer and wine, that’s fine. Wine and beer, oh dear. He’d done it right; he should be fine. Except there wasn’t space in the saying for pink peppercorn cocktails. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It doesn’t mean anything that it only presents a single way to live a worthwhile life? Get an arbitrary job, get an arbitrary wife, produce arbitrary children, accumulate arbitrary possessions.”

This was annoying. Alfie should have been used to it, but somehow he wasn’t. It was easy for Greg to dismiss all this stuff because he’d probably never cared about any of it in the first place. Alfie tried to concentrate on the wine. How much he liked it. The heavy, dark taste of it, black cherries and autumn leaves, sweet and smoky. Fen had been drinking rosé in the pub. Did that mean he liked wine too? And then he found himself imagining the meeting of stained lips.

Which panicked him with its killer combination of being both vivid and inappropriate, so he blurted out in his angry voice, “You do know that for a lot of people those choices aren’t actually arbitrary, right? Like, they’re actually things they want.”

“People want all kinds of pointless shit.” For better or worse, Greg had never been particularly responsive to Alfie’s angry voice. “And the game just feeds into this by treating everything you claim is a choice, like marriage to someone of the opposite gender and the gradual acquisition of money and children, as inevitable. And all that matters in the end is how much stuff you’ve got.”

“It’s a game for six- to ten-year-olds, not Das Kapital.”

“My point stands. Life is not—”

“Events and things, I get it. Except it is events and things.”

“But not,” Greg insisted, “arbitrary events and things.”

“Will you stop with the ‘everything is arbitrary’ shit? You sound like a teenager who’s just read Sartre.”3

“Dear me, what a philosophical evening we’re having.”

Alfie slammed his suddenly empty glass onto the coffee table that had never had coffee on it. “Look, I get this is abstract to you, but it’s real to me. I know I say ‘bastad’ not ‘barrrstarrrd,’ and my parents didn’t pay thirty grand a term for me to go to school, but just because I don’t think like you doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

“Want some ketchup for that chip on your shoulder?” Greg always got pissed if someone drew attention to the fact he was loaded. “Just because my family happens to be wealthy doesn’t make my perspective less valid than yours.”

“All I’m saying…” Alfie paused. What was he saying? “All I’m saying is that the people who don’t care about things are the people who already have ’em.”

“That would be like”—Greg mimed being stabbed through the heart—“totally touché, except we’re sitting in your two-million-quid penthouse drinking fifty-quid wine.”

“Oi! I earned these things. I didn’t take them and nobody gave them to me. I work really hard and I fucking deserve them.”

“Yes, but you don’t like them. What’s the use in having them at all if they’re nothing more than symbols?”

“Jesus Christ.” Alfie stifled a groan. “That’s what I’m saying, man.”

Greg also set his glass aside and slipped off a pair of tatty canvas shoes that had probably been artfully distressed by ethically employed marsupials and cost a fortune. He twisted sideways and crossed his legs under him. Alfie stopped making dramatic gestures and shuffled backwards, fighting both the sofa and the sudden intensity of Greg’s complete attention. The first time Greg had looked at him like that, with all that hunger and focus, he’d been about to give Alfie a blowjob (the first he’d ever had from a man).

“Okay, then.” He spread his hands as if Alfie were about to fill them with confidences like bags of sand. “So what’s it for? What’s the dream?”

“There’s not…there’s not a dream. I just want normal stuff. Somebody to come home to. Build a life with. Take care of. This”—Alfie indicated the flat and the wine and the sofa—“would be for them. Except for the bit where they don’t exist and don’t need it.”

Greg’s eyes went wide. “Omigod, you want a wife!”

“What? No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You want dinner on the table, how was your day dear, once-a-week sex in a boring position.”

“Actually, I don’t. You just went there on your own, Mr. No-Roles-No-Boundaries, when I said I wanted to share my life with someone.”

Greg, at least, had the grace to blush. “Okay, okay, but you do realise that you’re never going to have what your parents have.”

“Yeah, I got that memo when I realised I liked to suck cock.” Some part of Alfie was pleased at how easily he offered up the words. Not even defiant. Matter-of-fact: I like to suck cock. Unfortunately, the rest of him was pretty sure he only managed it because he was slightly drunk. “It’s just…” he went on. “It’s like…pattern recognition, you know? How else do you figure out how the world works, or what a relationship is, or anything, except by looking at what’s already there? You don’t have to do the same things, but you have to start somewhere.”

“Things aren’t their outward signs, Alfie.”

For a moment, they were still and silent, looking at each other. Greg’s eyes were soft and dark, honey-blurred at the edges like when he was being kissed. Perhaps he was slightly drunk as well.

Then Alfie let out a long, slightly exasperated breath. “That doesn’t actually mean anything. And the only message I’m getting here is you don’t have a fucking clue about any of this, and neither do I.”

“Welcome to the club, sunshine. It’s only you, me, and the rest of the world.”

There was a pause.

“I think,” said Alfie slowly, “I’ve just worked out what I want.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I want to never hear you call me ‘sunshine’ again.”

Greg drooped. “I thought you were serious.”

“I am.” Alfie got to his feet, pins and needles bursting across his arse and down the backs of his thighs, and wove to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that surrounded the hundred and fifty square meters he owned of London. His reflection swam up from beneath the distant light and wobbled there like the shadow of a fish. He reached out and touched the glass, misty circles forming beneath his fingers. “I wish Fen didn’t hate me.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Alfie lifted a shoulder. “Dunno. Summin else I want.”

“You get all northern when you’re drunk.” Greg unwound himself and padded barefoot across the room, cringing a little from the cold floor. “It’s adorbs.”

“Oh shurrup,” returned Alfie without rancour.

“Why does it bother you so much?”

“Well…because I’m not adorbs. That’s for bunnies on the internet. I’m sexy and manly and stuff.”

Greg made a sound perilously close to a giggle. “Yes, darling, you’re very sexy and manly and stuff. What I actually meant was why does it bother you so much that…whatshisname—”

“Fen.”

“—doesn’t like you?”

“That’s kind of a weird question coming from someone who once spent an evening crying because of a subtweet.”4

“Subtweeting is super mean. But, look, you haven’t thought about this guy in fifteen years. And you clearly didn’t care about him when you were growing up because, in your own words, you bullied the shit out of him.”

Alfie flinched. “It’s not…like…it’s not something you actively decide, you know? You don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘Hey, I think I’ll ruin someone’s life today.’ So it’s really horrible to have to face up to the fact you kinda did.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“What about Fen?”

“So will he. But, at this point, it’s none of your business.” Alfie must have made some kind of face, because Greg went on, “Oh God, what?”

“I guess I sort of wish it was. Or could be?”

“Well, it can’t,” Greg said mercilessly, “and you should leave him alone.”

“But I’ve fucked everything up so badly. Shouldn’t I at least get the chance to make it better?”

“No…I mean, yes, you should make amends if you can. The thing is, you’re not automatically entitled to try. Especially since Fen has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

Greg had a point. Alfie clung on doggedly anyway. “That was only because I didn’t get it when he first told me.”

“And if you had, he would have jumped into your arms while rainbows flew out of your arse?”

“He probably wouldn’t have thrown plant water over me.”

Greg sighed. “You still can’t make it better, Alfie. You did what you did.”

“I know that.” He banged an impatient hand against the glass, shocking both of them with the dull thump it made. “But I can at least say sorry properly. Show him that I get it. That even though he didn’t matter then, he matters now.”

Greg was staring at him with big, bewildered eyes. “How can he matter? He’s a guy you had sex with once and didn’t even recognise.”

“But he recognised me. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“Yes, it tells me you’re really hot.”

Alfie blushed. He still wasn’t used to being complimented by other men or to how much he liked it. The occasional bluntness of it. None of this you have nice eyes crap that he usually got from women when they had their hands between his legs. And, of course, that made him remember Fen’s rough touches. His pale lips. His fierce glares. The taste of salt. Wrists beneath his hands.

“It felt like more than that. Like…I dunno…like he needed something from me. I was so fucking lost up there, Greg. So lost and…sort of at home at the same time.”5

Greg nudged lightly at the top of his arm. “Look, I know being gay is kind of a big deal to you. It doesn’t have to be, though.”

So people kept telling him. People who didn’t think it was a big deal. Except Alfie couldn’t be buggered to argue about it now. He slid a hand around Greg and pulled him a little closer. It felt nice. Not sexy nice. But nice. To want to a hold a man like you would a woman, in friendship, for comfort, because you could.

Greg sighed and nestled for a moment. He still fit very sweetly. “Alfie, you know you could probably have any guy in London? You could feel at home here too.”

Alfie stared into the muddle of light and shadow, their mingled reflections, hazy in the glass, and didn’t know how to answer. After a moment, he pulled out his phone and recoiled from the time. “Shit. I need to grab a couple of hours sleep before work. Are you crashing?”

Greg had that awkward look he got when he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to begin. In the end, he just stuffed his hands into the pockets of his designer-shabby jeans and nodded. Followed Alfie slowly to the spare room.

7

Dear Mum,

Winter is coming. That’s funny, and you won’t know why. But winter is coming, undramatically, in a gathering of grey. It wasn’t until I moved away that I realised how much winter is its own kingdom here. I wish I could see things the way you did. But all I see is this ghost of a ghost town.

I walked through the promenades at Little Haven today.1 That’s such a Victorian word. Promenades. A place where you promenade. I probably should have had a parasol, and a pink dress with a bustle, and a gentleman to take me by the arm. But all I had was the echo of my footsteps, and the promise of winter’s silence all around me.

Not even a group of kids with skateboards to shout obscenities at me as I passed. Do kids still have skateboards? But that’s what I remember, the rattle of wheels on tiles, the kick-punch laughter of recognisable strangers. Alfie Bell never had a skateboard, but he was here sometimes, slouched against one of the pillars, self-conscious, with a cigarette between his fingers.

They were so frightened of cigarettes, these rough-tough boys with their mincing inhalations. By the time I was fourteen, I was on a pack a day, and so proud of it. And I didn’t just stand around trying to look cool, I smoked. I really smoked. It was the perfect vice for me, so good, so bad, teaching you how to love the thing that hurts you.

I used to imagine, sometimes, smoking with him. With Alfie Bell. I’d watched him, fumbling, trying to make it look casual, like he knew what he was doing. (The way he kissed me by the Rattler, all bravado and confusion and tenderness.) So I would have to light his cigarette for him, just like in the movies, and give it to him, his lips pressed to the place where mine had been.2 And I’d dream of this too. Not this mediated kiss, but the light wavering at the tip of his lighter or the matchbox slipping from his unpractised hands.

I didn’t know you knew about the smoking, but of course you did. It was Dad, in the end, who made me stop. I’d come in from school, and I was making toast with too much butter, just like we like it, so that the plate glistens afterwards. I can’t remember what he was doing, but I remember what he said, sort of conversationally like he was asking if I had a lot of homework or if I’d had a good day at school (I always said yes, but I never had good days at school).

He said, “Why are you making your mother watch you kill yourself?”

Which is ironic on some level, isn’t it?

So, anyway, I stopped. And I’ve never smoked since. But maybe it wouldn’t matter since there’s nobody to hurt right now but me.

And Dad. But what would he say? How would he stop me, how would he help me, now he can’t sneak his love in next to yours as if I wouldn’t notice, and say “your mother thinks” or “your mother wants”? How do we do this without you?

He said it to me yesterday. As if nothing has happened or changed. As if it’s still true. “You know, Fen, your mother loves you very much.”

And why am I still thinking about Alfie Bell, when I have so much else to think about? Your shop to run. Which I’m failing at, by the way, ruining everything you loved, losing you all over again. It’s so funny, though, if funny is the right word, which I think it probably isn’t, that he’s a Londoner now. It was all over him, from his voice to his suit. It was only when he was naked—all hair and muscles and that gorgeous, vulgar tattoo—that he was real to me. The same boy who had hurt me inside this man who held me. The strangest thing is that I could never imagine him anywhere but here. And yet I’m the one who’s here. He’s the one who’s gone.

I’ll never see him again. Not after what I did when he came after me. I’m almost glad it’s just another thing you’ll never know. It should have been a victory—payback even—but I’m just embarrassed. I wish I could have been cold and scornful and indifferent or, at the very least, calm. But, instead, I keep showing him all these cracked and desperate bits of myself, everything I thought I’d put behind me a long time ago.3 It was probably just the shock of him, making the past feel closer than it should. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How I’m supposed to bear this. Old anger and new pain, and the pure simplicity of missing you.

The truth is, I never expected to see Alfie Bell again. I haven’t thought of him in years, except for the occasional flash of remembered resentment. And I told David,4 of course, lying in his arms as we swapped the stories of our pasts until it all seemed as trivial as cockle shells and sea-glass, compared to this fresh, new love. But, somehow, it’s all become real again: this bold, beautiful man I have loved, hated, and forgotten, who has never, ever spared a single thought for me.

Beyond the promenades the amphitheatre is empty, and beyond the amphitheatre the half-shell fountains are dry.

I’m cold all the time, except I don’t feel cold. A proper Northern boy, at last, wandering the clifftops without a coat.

Love always,

Fen

8

Alfie spent most of the next week torturing himself by Googling South Shields. It filled him with an awkward mixture of pain, longing, and uncertainty, and seemed a fair substitute for Googling Fen, which was what he really wanted to do. He’d typed Fen O’Donaghue into the search box so many times, it was starting to autopopulate whenever he typed anything beginning with F. Though he’d just about managed not to actually click on any of the links. He was pretty sure that would cross the line from slightly weird into actively unhealthy. It was hard not to be curious, though. Because Fen was the last person he would have expected to find still living at home. There’d always been something different about him—not just the gay thing, but something…else, restless and delicate and almost magical, like a wet-winged butterfly, newly emerged and struggling to fly. So why hadn’t he flown? What was in South Shields for someone like Fen? What would hold him there?

On Thursday morning, Alfie finally cracked and did the unthinkable. He walked into the office of the old man, J.D. Jarndyce himself, explained that everything was in order and that he needed a long weekend to take care of some personal business. And then he left, putting his odds of still having a job on Monday at about fifty-fifty. Clearly his priorities were all screwed up because he was finding it hard to care. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his job—on the contrary, he liked the money and the power a lot—but the idea of doing something a bit less intense, a bit slower paced, had been nudging the back of his mind for months. It was a dangerous thought for London. Best ignored, like the fact his fancy sofa was really fucking uncomfortable.

Half an hour later, Alfie was flinging a suitcase into the boot of the Sagaris and heading north, nudging impatiently at the speed limit all the way. The landscape shifted as he drove, but he couldn’t track the point it changed, when the yellowy fields started rucking up around him, and the sky grew grey and heavy. He got his first glimpse of the Tyne as he skirted the edge of Jarrow, where it was curled around an oily jumble of run-down shipyards and closed-down docks. The ugliness of it was comforting.1 Before he’d seen other towns, he hadn’t even known it was ugly. It was just stuff that was there. Salt-pitted, algae-smeared concrete pressed against the edges of the river like the teeth of a comb.

He’d been back barely a handful of times since he’d started working for J.D. Jarndyce, but he still knew where to go without having to think about it, without even having to remember. Somehow, though, always in a rush or preoccupied or on the road well after dark, he’d forgotten how green it was. Even at the edge of winter. Or maybe it was just the way the sky made everything vivid. Like Fen’s eyes, so fierce in his pale, narrow face.

As he approached the town centre, he was struck by the way everything had become familiar and alien at the same time. London was a hodgepodge of centuries, banging elbows like drunks at a bar, but South Shields was barely built up at all. Everything was as scattered as Lego bricks. There were posh bits, like the town hall with its famous ship-shaped weather vane, but mostly it was like being stuck in the seventies. Right now, he was driving between a disused office block with mirrored windows and a Sofa Carpet Specialist warehouse made of brick and corrugated plastic. Then came the town hall itself, with its never-on fountains and the podgy statue of Queen Victoria, flanked by a pair of naked, torch-holding blokes.

From there, it wasn’t far. Past the Morrisons that used to be Asda that used to be Safeway, and he was turning onto Ocean Road. The club on the corner had changed its name, but he couldn’t remember from what, only a jumble of nights in a hot, wet basement, drenched in blue light and noise. Other names had changed too, but somehow it still looked exactly the same as it always had: a faded row of curry houses, pawnbrokers, newsagents, off-licences, and bookies. At the place where the road fell into the horizon, the sky gleamed with the reflection of the unseen sea.2

Turning onto a side road, Alfie slid the Sagaris into a space against the kerb. Then he grabbed his suitcase and went to find himself a B&B. It didn’t take long because it was out of season and there were lots along here. Grand old Victorian houses with bay windows and the occasional dodgy turret. He took a room at a place called the Atlantis, which didn’t strike him as the best name for a guesthouse in a seaside town, dumped his stuff, went back to his car, and drove to Pansies.

Trying not to think too hard about what he was doing. Or had done. Or if this had really cost him his job. Or what he was going to say to Fen. Or if Fen was going to cover him in plant juice again.

He found somewhere to park on the Prince Edward Road and raced into the shop before common sense got in the way of action. The bell jangled, announcing him.

Fen was standing with a customer over by the main flower display. Just like at the Rattler, he had his back to Alfie, his weight resting lightly on one leg, and Alfie found it just as enticing. He hardly knew the man Fen had grown into, and yet it seemed like him, somehow, this carelessly tempting pose.

“I’ll be with you”—Fen’s head turned slightly, and Alfie caught the flash of his eyes, the sudden tightening of his mouth—“in a moment.”

The customer, a broad-shouldered bloke in his late fifties, was leaning slightly, but visibly, away from Fen. “Look, I’ll just tek the roses, mate.”

“But Wendy doesn’t like roses. You haven’t bought her roses in the last twenty-five years.”

“Nora used to sort it oot fer us.”

“Well, my mother isn’t here,” snapped Fen who, whatever his other skills, seemed to be struggling with the basics of customer service, “and I am, and I know what flowers your wife wants on her birthday.”

“Aye, but Nora—”

“Still isn’t here.”

“Let us choose fer mesel. And I’ll tek the roses.”

Fen didn’t quite sigh aloud, but his irritation was obvious in every line of his body. “You can’t buy a woman red roses for her birthday. You might as well just tell her you don’t have a clue who she is.”

“Ah reet.” Fen’s customer folded his arms and glared at him. “And wha’ do ye knaa aboot wimmin?”3

“Oh for God’s sake. Enough to be able to make up a bouquet for one.”

Alfie stepped forward quickly. “Me mam likes them tulips. Ha’ ye got any o’ them?”

He told himself it hadn’t been deliberate, but his voice had roughened to match the other man’s, his accent sliding into the familiar grooves of his childhood. He was, once again, the Alfie Bell everybody liked. And, sure enough, the customer, who could have been Alfie’s dad or any of his dad’s friends, was looking at him with approval. Instinctive friendliness. Like he saw something he recognised. When the reality was that Alfie probably had more in common with Fen. It gave him a sudden sense of seasickness almost, not being able to tell who he was letting down or lying to.

“Yes.” Fen cut coldly into the silence. “I do have tulips.”

“They’re bonny, aren’t they?” offered Alfie. “Do ye think your missus would like ’em?”

“Nae bloody clue, mate.”

“You could get the red uns, like the roses. That’s the colour for love, isn’t it?”

“Actually,” put in Fen, “white is love. Red is passion.”

“Oh aye. Reckon that’ll do nicely.” Alfie elbowed the stranger, earning a grin.

Fen pushed between them and carefully lifted a selection of ruby-red tulips from their bucket, the flowers bright in his pale hands. “Anything else?”

“Well, yeah. He can’t just give his wife a bunch of tulips on her birthday.”

Fen gave Alfie a sardonic look. “Of course he can’t.”

There was a long silence. It was like, Alfie thought, a Bermuda triangle of awkwardness. “What do you think?” he asked at last.

Fen opened his mouth, but then he closed it again, some of the frustration fading from his eyes, leaving them weary instead. He looked down at the flowers he was holding and then at the displays. “Irises.” And when this drew no response, he went on, “The tall blue-purple ones with yellow tongues. I’ll do you a dozen of each, with some salal leaves. It’ll look…striking.”

The customer finally nodded. “Yeah, alreet.”

“Okay, good. Give me a moment.”

Fen gathered up a matching handful of irises and crossed over to the counter. While he was busy, Alfie and his new friend talked softly about women, the footie (which Alfie had honestly stopped following), and the weather. Safe, comfortable topics that no longer made Alfie feel either safe or comfortable. They’d just about run out of conversation when Fen was done.

The bouquet looked more than striking. It was spectacular. Simple and bold, and far beyond anything Alfie had imagined when he’d remembered his mum liked tulips. The man paid up hurriedly, dumping the money on the counter rather than passing it to Fen, and left without a thank-you.

Alfie felt oddly betrayed. “Ungrateful git.”

“You know tulips wilt like motherfuckers?” Fen’s voice was as flat as the customer’s coins. Touched by the bitter tang of old metal.4

“Serves him right then.”

They stood for a moment or two, surrounded by the hush of flowers.

“What are you doing here this time?” Fen asked at last. “Other than dazzling the locals with your sudden interest in floristry.”

He was standing with his hands braced, palm down, on the countertop. He looked just like Alfie remembered: thin and pale and angry, with his too bright eyes and his too bright hair. Not handsome, not pretty. And deeply, deeply sexy. Like the ungettable girl all the boys wanted. But not.

The truth was cowering pathetically in a corner of Alfie’s brain. But he tried it anyway. “I came to see you?”

“Oh?” Fen’s lips got even more thin and sneery. “You were just passing through, were you? From London.”

“I took a…sort of holiday.”

“I’m not a tourist attraction.”

There was another silence, longer than the last, and even more unpleasant.

“You’ve changed your glasses,” said Alfie suddenly.

“What?”

He had. They were thin, silver rectangles that made the angles of his face even sharper and his eyes all glittery.

“You’ve changed your glasses.”

Fen put a hand to the edges of the frames and pushed them up his nose. “Is this really what we’re talking about? Yes, I’ve changed my glasses. I own several pairs because I put them on my face and I’ve never understood why the thing you wear on your goddamn face would be the thing you never change. Now answer my fucking question.”

“I told you. I wanted to see you. I’ve thought a lot about—”

“Stop. Don’t. Please.” It was the least pleading please Alfie thought he’d ever heard.

“But—”

“What part of ‘I never want to see you again’ did you miss the first time round?”

“No, I got the message. What with the plant juice and everything. But I thought maybe when you weren’t so angry and I wasn’t such a dick…”

“What? That we’d overcome our indifferences and grow as people?”

This wasn’t going well. Probably it had been silly to hope otherwise. But there didn’t appear to be any buckets nearby, at least ones that weren’t full of fresh flowers, so it was already going better than last time. Which meant it was basically now or never.

He took a deep breath. “Honestly, Fen, I dunno. I just wanted to tell you I was sorry. And you were right, I didn’t understand. But I do now. So I’m proper sorry. For everything. The shit I did when we were kids, not recognising you, and then not getting it, chasing you down like a psycho—”

“Chasing me down like a psycho twice. Even though I explicitly asked you not to.”

“Yeah. All of it. Everything. Except being with you that night. You can regret it if you want and turn it into this big mistake in your head. But I can’t, and I won’t, because it was, y’know, really good.”

For a moment, Fen just stared at him. There was a streak of pink over the ridge of his cheekbones that Alfie wanted to lick up like sherbet. Then Fen looked away and began to clean the stems and tatters of cellophane from the countertop, his hands not quite steady. “‘Really good,’ was it? That must have been life changing for you.”

“Oh come on. You know I’m not good with words and shit. It was”—Alfie made a helpless flaily gesture—“great. And you were…”

Fen’s spring-day eyes flicked back to his, only it wasn’t a nice spring day, it was one of those chilly ones, where the wind bit right through you. “What? What was I?”

“B-beautiful. I know I didn’t deserve to be with you after…because of…because of what I did. But you let me. You needed it just as much as I did.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Fen told him too quickly, far too quickly. “I don’t need anything from you.”

“You sure about that?”

The wire cutters slipped from between Fen’s fingers with a clunk. “God, you never change do you, you cocky piece of shit? You think the whole world is yours for the taking just because you’re Alfie fucking Bell. But I’m not. Not again. Not anymore. So why don’t you take your fifteen-years-too-late crisis of conscience and get the hell out of my flower shop.”

Fen had gone pale and taut and trembly, and it was familiar in all the wrong ways. Alfie wasn’t sure if he was remembering the Rattler or some deeper bit of the past—the other times Fen might have stared up at him with that same mixture of anger and fear—or if he was remembering something else entirely. Fen in pleasure, his body sleek and tight and shuddering for Alfie.

Suddenly, Fen slumped over, and for a horrible second, Alfie thought he might be crying. But then realised he was laughing. Sort of, anyway. It sounded rusty and a little wild. Could probably just as well have been sobbing.

“You alreet?” Alfie asked.

Fen blinked, lashes glimmering, and nodded. “Y-yes. I just…I just—” Another burst of laughter shook him. “I just realised how utterly r-ridiculous I sound. You can’t really order someone out of a flower shop and keep your dignity.”

He had a point. It was kind of funny. He risked a grin.

“Don’t you smile at me, Alfie Bell.”

Impossible. “You started it.”

Fen put a hand to his mouth, covering its softness. “This isn’t… You’re not… Oh, why won’t you leave?”

Because there was something there. He could feel it—tender and full of promise—under the hurt. Problem was, he didn’t know how he was supposed to explain that to Fen or convince him to take a chance on it. To believe that Alfie could bring him something good instead of bad, when he had absolutely no reason to trust Alfie at all.

So he found himself leaning across the counter, offering a different kind of answer. A deep tremor ran through Fen’s whole body, like he wanted to pull away and press close at the same time. But he didn’t pull away. Which meant Alfie was close enough to feel the unsteady ripple of Fen’s breath against his lips as Alfie whispered, “Because of this.”

Fen’s eyes had closed, leaving his face open and full of longing. “This isn’t anything.”

“Liar.”

Alfie kissed him. Very lightly. Slowly enough that Fen could have stopped him. The tight set of his mouth yielded the moment Alfie touched him, and he moaned softly, breathlessly, though it was barely a touch at all. His hands clenched on the countertop, a circle of white skin appearing beneath the band of green wire he still wore on his finger.

Something was fucking with the focus settings on Alfie’s world. Flowers blurred at the corners of his eyes. He noticed, suddenly, the way the shop smelled. Cool and sweet, like Fen’s skin. And there was singing coming from the speakers, something sweet and weird about the joys of maidenhood.

But everything else was pinned on a single, simple kiss. His whole existence: a song, a scent, and Fen’s mouth, not quite opening, but not closed either, a whisper of warmth, and the clinging tenderness of the exposed arch at the top of his upper lip.

Alfie drew back, just enough to shape words. “See.”

“No.” Fen’s eyes snapped open again, pale and cold behind his glasses. “No. That doesn’t count.”

“Why?”

“Because”—the words came out slowly, but very precisely, like they were razor blades and Fen wanted to hurt him with them—“I don’t like you. You’re a bully.”

“I was a bully. Now I’m just someone trying to say sorry.”

Fen’s fingers skittered clumsily through the debris in front of him. “With your mouth?”

“Well, obviously with my mouth?”

“No, I meant…the kissing thing. Oh God, why can’t I say anything right? And don’t you dare start smiling again.”

Alfie did his best to seem grave. “Look,” he said, as gently as he could, “I know you keep saying you don’t like me and don’t want me, but that wasn’t… When we… I mean, that’s not how you act. At least, not all the time.”

“I don’t normally throw things at people I like.”

“Do you fuck them?” The words came out more aggressively than Alfie had intended. With his head on straight, he knew Fen had every reason to be mistrustful, and that he had no right to be annoyed at him over it, but the plant water incident was rankling.

Something darkened Fen’s eyes for a moment, and Alfie thought it was maybe shame. He’d seen it often enough in the mirror to recognise it. And he knew just how it felt: a hot squiggle of pain and defiance, buried deep. Was that what he’d done to Fen? What he’d given him? It was like a punch. Like freezing water to the face again. And Alfie couldn’t remember the last time he’d hated himself more.5

“God, I’m sorry, I just—”

But Fen, who’d gone all sharp and scowly again, cut him off. “So I fucked you. So what?” He shrugged, the movement too abrupt to be convincing as a casual gesture. “I’ve wanted to fuck you since I knew what it meant. I used you for sex. That’s all it was.”

Alfie stared. “Wait. What. You what? Since when?”

“Oh God.” Fen’s hands went up and tangled in his hair. “Oh fuck.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“Why would you? Normally when people are torturing you, you don’t want to sleep with them.”

The bitterness in Fen’s voice made Alfie flinch for him. Though it took everything he had not to protest the language. Torture, really? It hadn’t been that bad. Except to Fen, it clearly had. He wanted to say something comforting, but he didn’t know where to start. Honestly, it was probably best he hadn’t known about the whole…the whole fancying him thing. How much worse would it have been for Fen if he had? Or would it have changed everything? Opened the door in Alfie’s mind he hadn’t even known was there. His imagination strained, struggled, and then gave up. He just couldn’t see his past with Fen in it. Not like that, anyway. He could get partway into an oddly appealing fantasy of holding hands on the pier and buying Fen candyfloss at the fair, or whatever you did when you were fifteen and a boy with a boyfriend, but it was a picture postcard. Not a life.

Fen had turned away. He was wearing a dark-blue dress shirt with short sleeves and a mandarin collar that made Alfie’s London-developed hipster-sense scream vintage. His shoulder blades pressed against the fabric like trapped wings. Before he could think better of it, Alfie rounded the counter and drew Fen into his arms, just like he’d wanted to do when he’d seen him standing in the Rattler. Fen didn’t even struggle. Just pressed against Alfie like it was all he wanted to do, his body finding places to fit so very naturally that it did weird things to Alfie’s heart. He leaned over Fen’s shoulder and brought his mouth to Fen’s ear, a fall of yellow-white-pink hair tickling his lips.

“Come on, Fen, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” Fen’s body might have been compliant, but his voice was ice. “It’s fucked-up and humiliating, and it sometimes feels like I’ve spent my whole life being humiliated by you or in front of you.”

“Nowt embarrassing about the night we spent together.”

“Are we thinking of the same occasion? I should have thrown my drink in your face. But instead I…I demanded you kiss me. Begged you to fuck me. How isn’t that embarrassing?”

“Because you were amazing and honest and sexy as hell. I wanted to know everything about you. Still do.”

Fen shivered, which Alfie felt everywhere. “You already know everything about me. I’m the weird kid you bullied at school.”

“No. You’re a hot, interesting guy I once treated really badly.”

“And you think that’s a good basis to…what? I don’t even know what you’re doing here.”

Alfie drew Fen in a little tighter. He was so warm and strong, some wild thing temporarily stilled in Alfie’s embrace. “I told you, I just wanted to say sorry properly. Show you that I got it.”

“Okay.” Fen’s head was still turned slightly away, the silken arch of his neck exposed and vulnerable. “You’ve done that.”

“And then I was thinking maybe we could go somewhere. Talk and get to know each other a bit? Put the past behind us.”

“Oh no, no, no. It’s way too fucked-up for that.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Alfie nuzzled him. The secret curve of his ear. The flyaway strands of his hair. They smelled like flowers and a little bit of conditioner and a little bit of nicotine. “Let’s just try.”

Fen sighed. “That’s not how it works. You can’t make me feel better about all the shit you did to me. It’s not some kind of scale you can balance up with a few good deeds now.”

“No, I get that. But I’d really like to make this right. Just a little bit. I think it’d be good for both of us.”

“I don’t know.” Fen shifted restlessly in his arms. “I’ve lived quite a lot of my life being overly aware of you. Whereas you’ve only just remembered I exist.”

“So?”

Fen’s jaw pulled tight, like he was biting his lip. For a long moment, he didn’t answer. And then, “It’s not fair,” he burst out. “You shouldn’t be able to do this, and I shouldn’t let you.”

“It’s not only about me. If I had nothing to offer you, nothing you wanted, you wouldn’t have gone with me that night, and you wouldn’t be talking to me now.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Alfie Bell.” From over his shoulder, Fen flicked him what was probably supposed to be a sardonic look. “If I want a big cock to ride, I can get that anywhere.”

It wasn’t a good time to think about that. Really not a good time. Alfie tried to file the image away before he could get completely distracted by it. (The shift of muscle beneath gold-stippled skin, head thrown back, throat naked, mouth open—wait, stop, stop right now.) “Aye, but you still chose me. You knew exactly who I was and you went with me anyway.”

“I know.” Fen drooped. “And I wish… Oh, I don’t know. How do you always manage to get everything you want? Why do you get to treat me like you did and then expect my forgiveness five seconds after you apologise for it?”

“I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m just trying to…y’know…put the past behind us.”

“It’s not fair,” Fen repeated, helplessly. “How can I be this stupid and pathetic and miserable? Why are you never the one who suffers?”

Alfie could have disputed that in quite some detail, but it didn’t seem like it would be helpful just then. “Dunno. But I’m not really sure what to do about it, short of you sticking my head down the toilet this time.”

Fen was suddenly quite still. “You shouldn’t joke. You’ve no idea how often I’ve thought about it.”

“About…putting my head down the bog?”

“About getting even. Of making you feel even a tiny bit of what I did.”

“Fuck.” Alfie let out a long breath. He kept thinking he understood. Then realising he didn’t. He felt like the obnoxious one in The Chronicles of Narnia who Aslan had to rip the dragon scales off. “I really hurt you, didn’t I?”

Fen’s glance was strangely desolate. “Yes, Alfie Bell, you really did.”

The bell jangled into the silence, startling them both. Alfie had practically forgotten he was standing in the middle of a flower shop, holding another guy. And while you could maybe get away with that in London, at least in certain bits of it, this was South Shields. Every instinct he possessed was pulling at him like a Rottweiler on a lead, but he was determined to be better than that. To show Fen—hell, to show himself—he could be better than that.

Except then Fen basically clawed himself free. Leapt so far away it was like Alfie had suddenly started generating a Fen-repelling field. It felt kind of weird—not good—to be on the receiving end of that sort of recoil. What did Fen think was going to happen? That a roving gang of violent homophobes was spot-checking local flower shops for inappropriate male-to-male contact?

He needn’t have worried, though. An old lady emerged through the crack of the laboriously opened door, moving as slowly as if she was made of glass. Fen knew what she wanted without having to be told—a single gerbera daisy, the colour of sunrise, which he wrapped up in paper for her like it was precious. The exchange was clearly familiar to them both. A ritual. They didn’t exchange more than a few words, but Fen’s gentleness made Alfie feel strange and awkward. Lonely, somehow.6

And when she was gone, something was different. The quietness in the shop had a heaviness to it now. And Fen…Fen looked breakable, in a way he never had before. Not even when Alfie had been tormenting him.

“You alreet?”

Fen shrugged. “She comes by every Friday. The flower is for her husband.”

Well. That seemed nice. Didn’t it? “Aww,” he tried.

Fen gave him a glittery look. “He’s dead.”

Alfie tried to feel sympathetic. And not totally set up.

“He was in the Royal Air Force. He died in 1944, at the age of twenty-two.”

“Oh. Uh. That’s harsh.” Bloody hell, he was so bad at this. It just seemed too big somehow—as if it could crack open the universe if you thought about it too much, sadness running out like yolk. And, truthfully, Alfie was…a little bit scared of sadness. It was about as alien and taboo as falling in love with men should have been.7 “I mean,” he blundered on, “I’m sorry. Must be hard and stuff.”

Fen, however, had no such concerns. He came at the subject with a kind of fearlessness—a sort of naked, desperate bleakness—that left Alfie unsettled and admiring at once. “I don’t know…how that happens. How you do it—how you keep living with grief. Forever.”

“God, I dunno, mate. My granddad died when I was a teenager, but you sort of expect your grandparents to die, don’t you? I was upset, but it wasn’t really a big deal.”

Fen was silent, arms folded so tightly it looked almost as if he was hugging himself. Alfie could have hugged him instead, but when he reached out, Fen jerked away. Which meant he had to fall back on words. And there were a hundred, maybe a thousand things he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get any of them to line up properly into letters and words and sentences.

“My friend Kitty,” he blurted out finally, “told me that when bad stuff happens, you just sort of learn to live with it. It sort of becomes who you are like.”

It had sounded good when it was coming from Kitty. Here, in a flower shop in South Shields, beneath the scathing gaze of the man who had once been a boy Alfie had hurt, it sounded just plain daft. Hollow as could be.

“People aren’t patchwork quilts.” There was that emptiness in Fen’s voice again. Sharp words blunted against the rocks of some deeper sorrow. “Pieces of pain that can be stitched together into the shape of something human.”

“No, but…”

“But what?”

“I don’t know,” Alfie admitted, and felt shit and useless all over again.

Not that it mattered. Fen clearly didn’t care or need reassurance from Alfie. Well, Alfie’s attempts at reassurance, anyway. He uncoiled, straightened, tipped his head up challengingly. Which would have been a little bit adorable—he looked so pointy like that, all chin and nose and cheekbones—if there’d been any warmth in his gaze. “So what now, Alfie Bell?”

“That’s sort of up to you.” Alfie shrugged. “I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you really want. But what’s the harm in dinner or summin?”

“You’ve heard my terms.”

“Your terms?”

A short, sharp nod.

The conversation—and Fen himself—had wavered about so much that it took Alfie a moment to catch up. “You want to shove my head down the netty? And afterwards you’ll come to dinner with me?”

“Well”—the faintest ghost of mischief curled the corners of Fen’s lips upwards—“maybe not immediately afterwards.”

Alfie might have laughed if he hadn’t been otherwise preoccupied. “I wasn’t… That was… Give over, mate, you know I was kidding.”

“Fine.”

“You can’t be bloody serious.”

Fen adjusted his glasses—a swift, neat little flick with his fingertips—and said nothing.

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“Am I?” Fen’s voice rose abruptly. “Then tell me, Alfie Bell, why the fuck should I be reasonable? Why do I owe you that?”

Alfie had been on his way to annoyed, but it didn’t last. How could it, when Fen was right? He groaned. “You don’t. Of course, you don’t. You don’t owe me anything.”

“We finally agree on something.” Fen had the meanest eyebrows. Especially when they went twitchy and sardonic. He’d folded his arms again as well, so Alfie could see the twist of sinew over the bones of his forearms and the deep groove of muscle between. The faint gleam of gold at the tips of the lightly curling hair.

He stifled a sigh. “All right. If this is really what you need, let’s do it.”

“What… You”—Fen’s lashes fluttered, almost like they did in pleasure, pale suggestions of moving light—“you…you’re going to let me…”

“Well, not if there’s an alternative. But if I have to, I have to.”

Except now Fen seemed to be hesitating. And while this would probably have been a really good time for Alfie to make a strong case for not having his head shoved down a toilet, instead he found himself getting reckless and belligerent. He wasn’t exactly keen on the toilet-head-shoving thing, but on a solely abstract level, there was something almost appealing about the parity of it all. Checks and balances. Punishment and redemption. What went around coming around.

He’d felt the same way as a kid when—or, at least, after—his dad had taken a belt to him. Which wasn’t something that had happened all that often. It was hard to explain to southerners, though, who went straight from “hit occasionally” to “horribly abused,” which Alfie thought was kind of weird considering a lot of his London friends barely knew their parents.8 Greg actually called his mater and pater, which might have been a joke of some kind, and spoke of his nanny with a great deal more warmth. At first, Alfie had assumed he meant his grandmother, but it turned out he meant the trained professional who had been hired to raise him. Before he’d been sent off to school to learn breadmaking or whatever. Apparently this had done Greg no harm. Which was what Alfie was inclined to think about his own upbringing.

Because he knew the difference between cruelty and consequences. And while he was pretty sure he had no intention of raising his hand to his own kids, he tended to imagine they’d somehow be like Greg. Sweetly middle-class and respectful and easy to manage. Not a set of too-tall, testosterone-fuelled, riot-running hooligans who needed whatever discipline they could get. Neither he nor his brother had ever meant any harm, but they’d often inadvertently caused it, and Alfie wasn’t resentful of being called to account.

He hadn’t even been resentful at the time. He hadn’t liked being on the wrong side of his dad’s belt, any more than he’d liked being grounded or shouted at, but there was something very direct and immediate about it. It was a clear line. And, on the other side, everything was okay again, so Alfie didn’t have to feel bad or guilty or ashamed of himself. All that mattered was that he’d done wrong and taken his punishment as a man should.9

Which was exactly what he was going to do now.

“We doing this, then?” he asked, when Fen showed no sign of speaking. “Or do you want to drop it and get dinner?”

Fen stared at him for a long moment, and Alfie had absolutely no idea what he was thinking. Then he nodded. “Okay…yes.” He sounded a bit dazed. “We’re doing this.”

He stepped past Alfie to the door and flicked the latch down. It landed in its cradle with a clatter. Then he turned the key in the lock and flipped the sign over.

“Can you just do that? Say you’re closed?”

Another of Fen’s tight little shrugs. “My shop. My rules.”

“Ehm, what about your mam?”

“She’s not here. Come on, it’s this way.”

So Alfie followed him into the back room, along a narrow corridor, and up a twisty staircase with a faded runner. He got a vague impression this area was lived in, but he didn’t really have time for sightseeing before Fen yanked open a door and he abruptly found himself standing in a bathroom. Cracked tile floor. Mildew streaking the walls. Alfie, who barely spent any time in his flat and paid someone he’d never met to keep it pristine, winced. He’d half-convinced himself that Fen was just fucking with him—that nobody really lived here—when he caught sight of the clean, slightly damp towel hanging from the rack. And there was a toothbrush and a razor by the sink. Shampoo bottles (and conditioner too, which Alfie had long believed to be a scam for women) balanced on the edge of the scabby bathtub.

“Is this where you’re staying?” he asked.

“Problem?”

“Well, it’s, uh, kind of a dump.”

Fen did his irritated fast-blink. “I’m a florist, not Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“What?”

“Why are you still here? In South Shields?”

“None of your business.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.” Alfie rolled his eyes. “You have to stick my head down the toilet before I’m allowed to talk to you.”

He hadn’t exactly been stalling—or maybe he had—but since no reprieve seemed imminent, he took hold of the hem of his T-shirt and peeled it off his body.

There was an odd sort of squeaking sound. “What are you doing?”

Alfie emerged to discover that Fen was staring at him, shameless and ravenous, and in a different context, it would have been hot as hell. As it was, it just made him grumpy. “Mate, it’s not pay-per-view. I just don’t want to get bog water all over my clothes. This is Calvin Klein.”

Fen turned very, very red and covered his eyes.

Somehow, that was even worse. Alfie hadn’t meant to embarrass him. He reached for his wrists. And Fen let him have them, let him draw his hands down, and hold them there, between their bodies like a bridge. Beneath Alfie’s thumbs, Fen’s pulse thudded as hard as hoofbeats. Oh God, the memories, bodies moving together, heat and skin and salt, and he knew Fen was thinking the same thing. He could see it in his eyes. So light and bright, like the first apples of spring.

If he didn’t do something, he was going to do something else, something bad. Like ignore the rest of this nonsense, and push Fen up against one of those grotty walls and take him. Until there was nothing left between them but this. This sweet, senseless wanting that wouldn’t go away.

He dropped Fen’s hands abruptly, and Fen actually bit his lip, another strange, uncertain sound, not quite moan, not quite whimper, echoing through the bathroom.

Somehow Alfie managed not to kiss him. He wanted to taste that noise.

He turned away and dropped to his knees on the bathroom floor. It was painfully hard. Cold, too. He shifted his weight, trying to get something close to comfortable. Apparently that was impossible.

“I’m doing this,” he announced, since Fen, still standing somewhere behind him, was giving no indication of moving. Alfie only knew he was alive because he could hear him breathing.

He adopted what he assumed might be a helpful position. Screwed his eyes tightly closed. It was, all things considered, fairly clean down there. Well, for a toilet. But he didn’t think close scrutiny would benefit anyone right now. Also, there was no denying it. When you got this intimate with a bog, even a fairly clean one, you couldn’t escape the purpose for which this particular piece of furniture had been designed. It smelled.

He turned his head, trying not to gag. “I’m ready. All yours.”

Then. Nothing.

“In your own time, mate.”

Fen’s hand touched him so lightly on his naked shoulder that it made him jump. He tried to settle down again, but that just ground his knees deeper against the tiles. And he was trying to find a way to get air into his lungs without inhaling through his nose or opening his mouth but, unsurprisingly, not having much success.

Callused fingers traced the top edge of his tattoo. Awareness swooshed over his skin, making it prickle and dance. He swallowed something that might have come out of his mouth as a groan. “Can you maybe do that later?”

A palm closed over the back of his neck. God, that was warm, so ridiculously warm. Where it touched him, the way it touched him, made him squirm, it felt so sweet. Made him so fucking vulnerable. He wanted to arch, gasping, into Fen’s hand. Lean into the suggested closeness of his body. Tip his head back for a kiss.

And, instead, Fen was about to shove his head down the toilet.

“Look,” he said, and he could hear the desperation in his own voice, “I know you want to do this…and…I’m going to let you, but can you do it, please? Can you do it now like?”

Great. He’d just literally asked for it.

Fen’s hand tightened.

Okay. Fuck. This was happening.

Alfie tried to brace himself. Externally. Internally. Whatever would help.

Come on, come on. Take it like a man. Like he had his father’s belt. The occasional knock in a fight.

But that kind of stoicism seemed far away right now. When all he could remember was doing this to Fen. A thin body struggling against his. Sobbing gasps and splutters. Wet, defiant eyes. The furious white line of that hard-soft mouth.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He was a fucking terrible person.

He genuinely deserved this.

“Do it. Fucking do it.”

Fen’s fingers curled into his neck, hard enough that he could imagine pale crescents pressed into his skin from the nails. But then Fen’s whole hand slipped away, and Alfie was sufficiently messed up by the whole business to miss his touch. He shivered helplessly with something that felt a bit like cold but wasn’t.

“I…I can’t,” Fen whispered.10

“Course you can, it’s easy. I’m not going to fight.”

A pause. No hand. No anything.

“Fuck.” Fen’s voice sounded so thin, so close to broken. “Why the fuck can’t I do this?”

“Uh.” Alfie cautiously raised his head. “Because you’re a better person than me? And you always have been?”

“I don’t want to be a better person. I want to make you feel bad.”

“I already feel pretty bad. If that helps.”

“It doesn’t help. That’s the problem. Nothing is going to help.”

There was a long silence. Alfie wasn’t sure whether to stand up or stay where he was, but once it became clear Fen wasn’t going to try again he sat back on his heels. At first he was mostly pretty relieved to be able to turn away from the toilet, but then he saw Fen was perched on the edge of the bath, head in his hands, looking utterly defeated.

“You alreet?”

“No. No, of course I’m not all right.”

“Y’know, if you don’t want to put my head down the shitter, you don’t have to. I’m okay with that.”

Fen looked up briefly. Offered a wan sort of smile. “Generous of you.”

Tentatively, Alfie grinned back. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but frankly anything was better than hovering over the toilet. “Howay there. You seem more upset about it than I do.”

“Were you really going to let me?”

“Aye.” Alfie shrugged. “Seemed like the least I could do.”

“You feel that guilty?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not here because I feel guilty. I’m here because I like you.”

Little lines of sunset pink streaked over the arch of Fen’s slightly too prominent cheekbones. “You don’t know me, Alfie Bell.”

“I know you like rosé and that you’re pretty when you’re smiling. I know how you like your cock sucked. And that you’re from the same place I am.”

“That doesn’t make you a friend.”

“No, but it makes me more than a stranger.”

Fen covered his face with his hands again.

“Come on, don’t do that.” Alfie knew he was pleading, and he didn’t care. “So, we can’t change the past or balance the scales or whatever. I’m still on my knees on your bathroom floor because I want the chance to know you.”

“I thought I’d left all this behind,” Fen mumbled. “I thought I was done. You wouldn’t believe it to see me now, but I had a life, you know?” He glanced up, just for a moment, eyes nearly grey in the gloom. “I was happy and fun and special to someone. And yet here I am in South Shields. Hung up on the same fucking guy. The same loser I always was.”

The idea that Fen might be hung up on him, even a little bit, would have been a lot nicer if it hadn’t been part of a list of things Fen obviously considered horrible failures. Alfie wasn’t quite sure what to say or what would be comforting, but he wasn’t just going to sit there blankly while Fen seemed so desperately in need of comfort. “That…that’s not how I see it. I mean, if there’s a loser here, it’s me. I’m a bully and a coward, remember? You’re not.”

But Fen wouldn’t look at him, and the silence went on and on, and it was crap. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he shuffled over to the bath. Except that brought him right up against Fen’s legs, and the last time they’d been this close, with Alfie looking up at him from the floor, he’d been about to suck Fen’s cock. Which was suddenly all he could think about. The power and the vulnerability and the taste of Fen’s skin.

Fen’s hand dropped to his lap, his eyes opening slowly, like he was just waking up. The silence was different now. Heavy and sweet as syrup.

“Oh, mate…” A world of regret in Alfie’s voice. And a world of hope.

He reached out, the tips of his fingers brushing Fen’s. It sent a little spark through him, pleasure and relief and homecoming, and Fen gave a sharp gasp. Then reared back wildly.

Not such a good idea when you were balanced on the edge of a bathtub.

Alfie tried to grab him, but it was too late. Fen was already toppling backwards into the bath, legs waving, one of his flailing hands wrapped in the shower curtain.

“Fen, be careful—”

Too late again. The entire rail came down on top of him, along with the curtain, and quite a bit of plaster.

Alfie stared at the daisy-patterned mound quivering in the bath. “Are…are you okay?”

No answer.

So he reached in and very delicately twitched the curtain aside. Fen was grey with dust, pink beneath, his hair sticking in all directions, and his glasses askew. He looked entirely ridiculous and entirely adorable, and Alfie was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to kiss him. He was pretty sure Fen would have appreciated neither.

“You’re not hurt, right?” he asked instead.

Fen had a hand pressed tightly over his mouth, hiccoughy, high-pitched sounds leaking between his fingers. It took Alfie a moment to realise he was laughing. Well, giggling, really. “I…I fell in the bath.”

“Yeah. You fell in the bath.”

“I’m the most ridiculous person.”

It was impossible not to smile. Alfie felt sort of goofy about it, like squinting, half-dazzled, into the sun. “The most ridiculous? Out of everyone, in the whole world?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I dunno. Seems to me you’ve got some pretty exaggerated ideas about your own ridiculousness.”

Fen blinked up at him, lashes glittering. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. There’s videos of kittens on YouTube toppling over and stuff. They’d be pretty strong competition.”

“Alfie Bell. Are you seriously telling me you watch videos of kittens on YouTube?”

“Uh, no.” He cleared his throat. Climbed to his feet and held out a hand. “Come on, up with you.”

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

“No, I’m trying to help you out of the bath you fell into.”

“The bath I fell into because I didn’t want you to touch me.”

Alfie froze. “Look, you’ve got no reason to believe me, but I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“It’s not that.” Fen’s fingers curled around Alfie’s wrist, his grip as rough and strong as Alfie remembered. He was so light and supple, though, that it took only the smallest of tugs to de-bath him and bring him flying into Alfie’s arms like a dancer.

They were pretty much hip to hip now, crushed together in that tiny, grimy bathroom. And Alfie should probably have been letting go and stepping back, but Fen was not only still holding on, he was pressing closer, tucking himself into Alfie like he belonged there. He sighed, the waves of his breath lapping warmly against Alfie’s neck. “You see the problem?”

Alfie really didn’t. “Problem?”

“When you’re touching me, I have trouble remembering why I don’t like you.”

“That doesn’t give me much motivation to stop.”

No answer from Fen. Just the rub and press of his callused palms.11

“Are you telling me to?”

Fen swallowed. Lifted his gaze to Alfie’s. “No.”

He’d meant to be classy about it—he could totally be classy—but the moment he got his mouth on Fen’s, felt it open to him, warm and slick and eager, all he could think was more. Fen tasted so right and smelled so…so nice. Man and flowers, which should probably have been weird, but it just made Alfie want to strip him naked, hold him down, and lick the sweat and all that sweetness from his skin. But maybe Fen wanted the ravening-beast version of Alfie, because he came at him just as wild, moaning and clinging and sort of fighty, but fighty in a good way, until everything got full-on, face-sucking, cock-groping porno.

It was strobe-light sensation: electric bright flashes of hands and lips and bodies. Alfie’s belt was half-undone—clumsy fingers against his stomach—Fen’s teeth were at his neck, rough breath in his ears. And his hands were full of Fen, full of that perfect, provocative arse, which fit his palms like it had been designed for Alfie to grab and paw at. Though for all his wiry strength, Fen was slight compared to Alfie, which meant one particularly urgent kiss-squeeze-fumble nearly sent them both toppling back into the bath.

Alfie had just enough of his brain left to try and steady them. Unfortunately, the bathroom was too small for miracles, and the best he could manage was slamming Fen into the wall. Sexy, in a way, especially when Fen flung both his legs around him. Less so when a network of little cracks exploded across the tiles and a fresh shower of plaster tumbled down on top of them.

It was just enough to give Alfie pause.

“Shit.” He realised just how heavily he was leaning into Fen and eased up. “I’m really sorry.”

Fen wheezed, but he didn’t seem upset. The opposite, actually. He was pink and fluffy, his hair a fuzzy halo, and his glasses crooked. The closest to happy Alfie’d ever seen him. Even when they’d been together at the hotel, there’d been other things going on—a legacy of anger and hurt. This was a glimpse of Fen as he truly was, or should have been, breathless and laughing and free. He squinted upwards. “I think we did more damage to the bathroom. But we should probably…um…stop. In case you blow my house over like the Big Bad Wolf.”

“There’s a joke in there somewhere.”

“Only if you want to be obvious, Alfie Bell.”

Truthfully, Alfie was more than willing to risk the future of the bathroom, the house, and the entire building. Partly out of general Fen-based lustfulness, but also because if they stopped touching, Fen might remember he didn’t like Alfie much and get sad and bitter and sharp again. Not that it was fair, or probably practical, to try and keep someone out of their mind on sex. Especially straight after a cease and desist.

Stepping away, he let Fen get his feet back on the ground. And then—in a kind of panic, because now they weren’t kissing, he didn’t know what to do with himself—Alfie found himself going up on tiptoes to examine the place where the shower rail had ripped out of the wall.

“It’s fine,” he declared with great authority for someone who knew absolutely nothing about DIY. “Bit of filler, drill a new hole, job done.” It sounded very like the sort of thing his dad would say.12

It must have been convincing because Fen rolled his eyes. “Of course you’d know what to do.”

“It’s just DIY.” Where was this coming from? This sudden need to prove he could fix bathrooms as well as break them. When Alfie was pretty sure he couldn’t.

“I don’t do DIY. I do CSE.”

“CSE?”

“Call Someone Else.”

Alfie laughed. But, just as he’d feared, things were sliding into awkward again. Fen had gone quiet and twitchy and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“What now like?” he asked, after a moment or two.

“Well”—Fen shook plaster dust out of his hair, the pink tips settling haphazardly on his shoulders—“since you’ve already fucked me and embarrassed me and seen me fall into my own bath and then very nearly fucked me again…I suppose we might as well go to dinner.”

Alfie reached out and brushed his fingers up the inside of Fen’s wrist. “You sure?”

“Didn’t I just say I would?”

“Yeah, but we had a deal. And while I really want to take you out, I don’t want to force you.”

“You want enthusiastic consent for dinner?”

“I dunno what that is, but it sounds like the sort of thing I’d want for most things.” Alfie brought Fen’s hand to his mouth, turning it to expose the pale underside of his forearm. Kissed the gathering place of the veins, as blue as the irises in the shop. “So you gonna say yes?”

“Oh…oh, all right.” It wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. But it was something.

Alfie glanced up, hopefully. “Tomorrow? I’ve got my car. I can take you somewhere nice.”

“A boy with his own car who wants to take me somewhere nice.” Fen put his spare hand to his heart. “If I was still sixteen, you’d be so in there.”

“And now?” Alfie pressed his lips to the very centre of that rough, line-scored palm.

Fen swayed, his arm stretched between them like the string of a kite. “Now you’re just pushing your luck.”

Alfie grinned and—only a little bit reluctantly—released him. “I’ll pick you up at seven, okay?”

All things considered, this could have gone a lot worse.

9

Alfie left Pansies, got back in his car, and just drove for a while, which felt weird and comforting at the same time. It wasn’t something you did down south. Nobody who lived in London got in their car for pleasure. But as a teenager, once he’d passed his test and he’d got his own ride—a rust-red, D-registered Nova his dad had bought for five hundred quid and fixed up for him—this had been how he’d spent most of his time. Just driving. Kev slouched in the passenger seat with a beer and a joint. Taking turns to choose the minidisc. And talking, always talking, about nothing he could remember now. Back when friendship had been effortless. When everything could be taken for granted.

Eventually, he headed back to the town centre and turned onto Fowler Street. It was eerie how well he knew these routes. He didn’t even have to consciously remember; he just knew where to go, like automatic writing. What he had forgotten, though, was how different things felt. There was plenty of urban ugliness to be found in London, but the transitions were less abrupt than they were up north. The moment he was off the main road, he found himself in a tangled wasteland of car parking, derelict buildings, and scrubby, undeveloped grassland lurking just behind the shopfronts. A couple of streets over, a disused timber yard and a closed-down garage which still bore a stained red-and-yellow sign reading THE D’AMBROSIE FAMILY: SELLING CARS FOR…OVER 50 YEARS IN SOUTH TYNESIDE. Beyond that was the green-and-brown blur of the Metro tracks and the empty gas holder, casting the shadow of its skeleton against the darkening sky.1

After that, Alfie hadn’t really expected the place he was looking for to still be there, but it was. It really was. And it hadn’t changed in the last fifteen years. Same dirty white building. Same blue-and-red sign. Same diamond patterns set into the glass of the front window. He didn’t remember it being quite so small and quite so dingy, though. In his head, it had been a posh joint. It was where he’d taken all his dates. Now it kind of looked like an Indian restaurant someone’s gran was operating out of her living room.

He left his car in a space in front of the boarded-over, fenced-off building opposite and went in, nearly knocking himself out on the low ceiling. The whole place could have fit into his flat with room to spare. Inside, it hadn’t changed either. Two-tone walls in saffron and gold, fancy velvet curtains in a colour Alfie might tentatively have described as ochre, and some pretty serious plaster wibbling on the ceiling. Bar at the back, booths down the side. One of which had been Alfie’s. He’d been here on a Friday or Saturday night once, maybe twice, a month, sometimes with Kev, sometimes with a date. Who were those girls? The ones he’d pursued. Touched. Gone steady with. He couldn’t remember.

It was still early enough that it wasn’t busy, which was probably for the best given the stir Alfie caused by appearing in the doorway. Amjad, the owner’s eldest son, was behind the bar. The last time Alfie had seen him, he’d been an awkward youth. Now he was a grown-up and attractive enough to make Alfie uncomfortable. He grinned, flashing very white teeth, and called out: “Hey, Dad, Alfie Bell’s come back te marry oor Parvati.”

And before Alfie really knew what was happening, he’d been surrounded, pushed into his old booth, and given a pint of Cobra.

“So, I was wondering like,” he said when he could get a word in edgeways around the questions, “if I could have a table for tomorrow? For half past seven?”

Mr. Ali gestured expansively. “For you, Alfie, there will always be a table.” A pause. “Are you bringing someone special?”

Alfie, blushing, answered without thinking. “Kinda.”

Later, he sat in his car with his head resting on the steering wheel and tried not to panic. What was wrong with him? He should have said, Just a mate. How were they going to react when they discovered his definition of special meant a man? Maybe he could just not turn up and find somewhere else to take Fen. But then he wouldn’t be able to go back again. Ever. To his favourite restaurant in South Shields. Maybe the whole world. Fuck Michelin stars and hydraulic plants. The Raj was his kind of place.2 He’d grown up in it. But once he rocked up with Fen…he’d lose it anyway.

His stomach was jumpy, even though he hadn’t drunk anything like enough to merit it. He just hated having to think about this stuff. He wasn’t used to it, and it wasn’t fair. It was like being stuck in a game of hot potato you hadn’t signed up to play: there you were, just getting on with your life, and suddenly you’d realise your hands were burning and everybody was pointing and laughing at you.

When he felt a bit calmer, he drove back to the Atlantis. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had literally nothing to do. He was either working, in the gym, or out with his friends. But an evening in South Shields stretched out in front of him like the sea.

He could leave again. Go somewhere for a drink. Like the Rattler. Or somewhere he actually liked. If he could remember somewhere he actually liked that was still there. He thought of calling Kev, or some of his other old friends, but he wasn’t sure how they felt about him, or if they’d look at him funny or treat him differently now he was a woofter.

It was so quiet. The occasional car, the distant whisper of the ocean, occasionally a gull. It was sort of…soothing. And must have sent him off to sleep, because the next thing he knew it was 5:00 a.m. and he was being trilled at because he’d forgotten to turn off his alarm. He manhandled his phone until the noise stopped, and then lay back, revelling for a little while in the realisation that he didn’t have to get up. Then he rolled over luxuriously and slept again.

When he was finally conscious, he’d missed breakfast, but he managed to coax a plate of scramblies and too-buttery toast from the landlady. He sat in the dining room, where the wintery sunlight dappled in sharp little diamonds through the bow window, ate his eggs, and read the Shields Gazette, and felt strangely peaceful. He usually started his day on a double espresso from Starbucks.

Then he walked—actually walked—fifteen minutes up the road to King Street, just because he could. This was kind of the main shopping area, and it was pretty much the opposite of bustling. Just some pensioners and parents with small children drifting about haphazardly with the litter left by last night’s club-goers.

Before he’d got his car, Alfie and Kev had squandered entire Saturdays on this meagre row of shops. He could remember when the big Woolworths had gone, when the McDonald’s had arrived. There was an HMV now. A Caffè Nero. Another Subway. Totally metropolitan, except at the top of the road, he could see the weird, pepper-pot shape of the old town hall and the flapping green-and-white awnings of the flea market stalls. He popped into the local Greggs and treated himself to an enormous sandwich and an equally disproportionate Belgian bun. Ate them sitting on a bench like an old man, throwing pieces to the pigeons and seagulls.3

Which left him with an entire afternoon and nothing to do, and falling asleep probably wasn’t an option this time. He headed back to his car, climbed in, and stared moodily out of the window. Clouds had furrowed the sky, squeezing out the sun, drenching everything in grey. And his thoughts pretty naturally turned—or returned—to Fen. All the pain Alfie had so heedlessly caused him. He was like an escaped bear rampaging through Fen’s life, wrecking it, over and over again.

He’d been relatively at peace with the whole “can’t change the past” thing. But it was looking a lot like an excuse right now. Just another way for him to avoid having to feel bad about himself. No wonder Fen had considered stuffing his head down the toilet. Which he was broadly glad hadn’t happened, but he did find himself wondering if it had might have helped with this…uncomfortable, unbalanced feeling. With Fen having to give everything—including forgiveness—while Alfie did nothing.

Well, not nothing. There was definitely something Fen wanted from Alfie. But since Alfie wanted it too, and just as much, it didn’t really count. There had to be more he could do. Stuff Fen needed. But he didn’t know him well enough for that.

All he really knew was how he liked to be kissed and held. That he was gay and pretty—was it okay to say Fen was pretty, but he was, so very pretty—and sharp-tongued and sexy as hell. That he worked in his mum’s flower shop. Drank rosé. Was unexpectedly kind sometimes. Couldn’t deliberately hurt someone, even someone who had deliberately hurt him. Didn’t seem very happy.

Had a broken shower rail in his bathroom?

It wasn’t much. But it was a start. How hard could it be, after all, to fix a shower rail? What had he said with such confidence yesterday? Bit of filler. New bracket. Job done. It was probably true. And his dad and Billy were handy. So Alfie could very well have a hitherto underexploited genetic predisposition towards DIY. And while he would be doing it for Fen, not Fen’s gratitude, he couldn’t help imagining how it might go. How happy Fen might be. And how good for them both for Alfie to show how far he’d come from the bully Fen remembered.

He zoomed off to raid the nearest B&Q DIY superstore, which actually turned out to be quite fun. He didn’t know where anything was, or what he actually needed to complete the job he had planned, but he still felt like he was doing Approved Man Shopping. There were women there too, of course, but there was an unspoken sense of community from the men who would glance his way or nod at him as he wandered the aisles. And, for once, it didn’t seem to matter that it was other men he wanted to touch and kiss and fall in love with. Because he was buying multi-finish plaster just like the rest of them.

He left with a lot of stuff and a warm glow. And twenty minutes later, he was pushing through the door of Pansies. There was no Fen, just a hulking young woman, dressed entirely in black, standing behind the counter and fiddling dedicatedly with something pointy and awful and wedged into lime-green foam. She peered at him from under ornately drawn-on eyebrows. “Can I help you?”

Alfie tried not to stare. “I was looking for Fen. Who are you?”

“Gothshelley. I work here Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday.”

“Gothshelley? That’s your name?”

A cloud of black taffeta heaved in an upwards direction as she sort of shrugged. “Might as well be. ’S’what everybody calls me.”

“Because you’re a goth?”

She opened her mouth and then closed it again. Thought for a long moment. And then said, “Yes.”

“Didn’t goth go out in the nineties like?”

“So? I’m retro.”4

“And”—Alfie tried very hard to keep the disbelief out of his voice—“you’re a florist?”

There was another endless pause. “No, I’m just standing here in a florist shop. For the lulz.”

Her delivery was so beyond deadpan, it was barely the last archaeological remnants of a pan, and Alfie shuffled his feet sheepishly. “Sorry, I just asked two pointless questions in a row.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be working on my customer service.” She sighed heavily. “I have issues.” A perfect beat. “With stupid people.”

“Shelley…” Fen’s voice drifted warningly from the back room.

“But it’s not a customer.” Shelley gazed at Alfie, her expression no more encouraging than her voice. “It’s your bloke.”

“He’s not my bloke.” Footsteps sounded against the flagstones, and Fen appeared in the doorway, secateurs in hand, which Alfie thought was a bit of an ominous sign. He lounged against the frame, the pose a little bit studied, a little bit too controlled. Like his mouth. Which was maybe trying not to smile. “Can’t you go a day without seeing me, Alfie Bell?”

Alfie plonked his bags on the floor. “I’ve come to fix your shower rail.”

There was a long silence. Fen blinked. And Alfie suddenly realised it was an expression that had somehow become familiar. Confusion, frustration, weariness, amusement. All the shades of Fen’s blinking, lightly dipped in gold like Fen himself. “Well,” he murmured finally, “that sounds…porny.”

“Er…” It sounded like a flirty opening—so to speak—but Alfie found himself glancing at Gothshelley instead. Talking about gay porn in front of trainee florists probably counted as corrupting Britain’s youth.

“Don’t mind me,” she told him. “I’m sixteen and I read a lot of yaoi.”

“Does that help?” he asked blankly.

She just smirked.

“Look.” Alfie gave up trying to understand what on earth was going on. “I really have come to fix your shower rail.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s not a big deal. Won’t take me long.”

Gothshelley had been watching them like someone at a tennis match. “I’ve lost track of this euphemism.”

“God, it’s not a euphemism. It’s, you know”—Alfie waved his hands wildly—“literally the thing you hang the shower curtain off.”

She mimed being blown backwards by an overwhelming force. “Wow, hello outside voice.”

“Look,” interrupted Fen, “thanks for the thought and everything, but I’m not your project. I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not saying you can’t. I just want to help.”

“Well.” Fen’s chin got all pointy and stubborn. “I don’t need your help.”

Gothshelley heaved a theatrical sigh. “Oh come on, Fenimore James. Let the man get his hands on your rod. This is getting boring and he’s standing in my light.”

Alfie was tempted to point out that he was also standing right there. But he didn’t want to alienate his unexpected ally.

“It’s complicated,” protested Fen. “You couldn’t possibly—”

“Yes, I can. Because it’s not actually complicated. You like having the hot guy who bullied you at school practically begging for the privilege of doing you a favour.”

Fen flushed the same colour as the tips of his hair. “I…I…”

“It’s fine, it’s not a crime. I’d be the same if it was Trent Reznor maybe. In those opera gloves he wears in the ‘Closer’ video.5 And if he wasn’t like fifty. But”—Gothshelley seemed to remember herself—“what is totally a crime is the fact he’s messing with My Muse.”

Fen, who was still very pink, threw up his hands in a gesture of grudging surrender. “All right, all right. Come in, Alfie, DIY away. Shelley’s Muse must, after all, remain unmessed with, so she can get back to her—Oh holy Christ, what is that?”

Alfie had been meaning to ask the very same question.

“Fen,” Gothshelley explained wearily, “is a traditionalist. He only ever wants to make things that are…pretty. But I’m an Artist. And Art is Pain.” She gestured proudly to the thing on the counter. “This is an experiment in negative space and triadic disharmony. I call it Suffering.”

Alfie glanced away, conscious of a measurable sense of relief now he was no longer obliged to witness Gothshelley’s Suffering. “Sounds about right.”

Fen made a sound that he tried to turn into a cough, but Alfie had heard Fen’s laugh enough to recognise it. He grinned, and for a moment, Fen was looking right at him, his eyes still full of light. But all he said was, “I need to get back to work.” Then turned away abruptly and disappeared into the back room.

Alfie picked up his bags and made his way up the twisty little staircase to the flat. When he’d been hustled through here on the way to his nondunking, he hadn’t realised the state it was in. He had to turn a light on, even though it was the middle of the day, and the dull glow from the bare bulb showed him peeling paint, damp walls, and bits of old furniture shoved into random corners. This was a place you stored shit, not a place you lived. It smelled kind of mouldy too, like stale air layered on stale air. Why was Fen staying here? Or, at least, why didn’t he clean it up a bit? He really didn’t seem like the slovenly type.

He shoved the bathroom door open with his hip and dumped everything on the floor. It looked even worse in there than he remembered. Not dirty precisely—well, apart from plaster dust—but old and uncared for. There were rust stains at the bottom of the bath and a pinkish tidemark. A spiral of pale hair in the plughole.

Now he had come to the actual Doing It Yourself bit of DIY, Alfie discovered he was at a bit of a loss. But it wasn’t enough to really dampen his enthusiasm for trying. Maybe in a bit he could take a break and have a cup of tea with Fen, just like at home. Alfie had usually been shooed off because he tended to knock things over and get in the way, but he had good memories of his dad fixing things for his mam. There was a bit in the middle when everything was slightly chaotic, so it was like the normal rules got suspended, and it felt almost like a holiday, and they’d eat cheese sandwiches sitting on the stairs, Alfie wedged in between his parents, his dad in his coveralls, smelling of paint and dust and chemicals. Afterwards, it would all get put to rights again, better than before. And now Alfie was doing that for someone else. Making things right.

Reassured, he took a closer look at the shower rail, and then at the hole in the wall. The edges were ragged, which he was sure was bad, and he poked at them a bit, trying to smooth them down. Which made quite a bit more of the wall fall off. So he stopped doing that. It probably wasn’t helping.

He closed the toilet lid, sat down, and read the instructions on the plaster mix very carefully. Water and plaster—hah, easy—in a bucket. Oh shit.

He went back into the shop to see if they had one.

Gothshelley gazed at him and then shook her head sadly. “Sorry, no.”6

Alfie was just getting into his car in order to drive back to B&Q when Fen came running after him, pulled him back inside, and pointed wordlessly at the main display.

Which was full of flowers. Standing in buckets.

Gothshelley snickered into Suffering.

Fen’s hand had somehow slid into Alfie’s as he led him into the back room and to an immense, wobbling stack of plastic buckets.

Alfie peered up Mount Bucket. “Oh.” And then slanted a sideways look at Fen. His lips were pressed so tightly together they were little more than a pale line. “Are you laughing at me?”

A little shake of the head. But then, as if he couldn’t stop himself, Fen smiled. Wide and slightly goofy, cutting two deep brackets into his cheeks and showing slightly pointy, slightly crooked teeth. Alfie grinned in return and squeezed his hand. And to Alfie’s surprise, Fen squeezed back before letting him go. “If you need anything else,” he offered finally, “just ask me. I’m sorry I…um. What Shelley said.”

Alfie shrugged. “Mate, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to be grateful. And I should be. I mean I am. Because truthfully, I probably couldn’t pay to have someone come in, and there’s no way I could do it myself. So…” Fen lifted his eyes to Alfie’s. “Thank you.”

Alfie was entranced, caught in a green-and-gold fairyland, and touched by the possibility of trust. Which made this a truly terrible time to admit he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. So he busied himself with the buckets, snagged one from the pile, and escaped to the bathroom. As he ran the tap, he couldn’t help daydreaming a little, imagining his life was something like this—DIY and a man to take care of—instead of the work-and-play treadmill of London.

When the bucket was about a quarter full, he tried to add approximately the same amount of plaster. This turned out to be a lot trickier than he had expected. First, none of the stuff wanted to come out of the packet, then nearly all of it did, so he had to add more water to balance it out, but then it went too runny, so he added more plaster, and eventually he had an entire bucket of lumpy sludge. So he got another bucket, decanted off the worst of it and tried again. And then he had two buckets of the lumpy sludge. Which was probably a bit much for one smallish bit of wall. He prodded at the mess with the tip of his trowel. It looked kind of like the lightning sand in The Princess Bride.7

Well, maybe it was supposed to be like that.

He optimistically battled some of the rapidly hardening goop onto the trowel and then tried to get it to stick to the wall. It sort of did. But when he tried to smooth it down, it just rolled over and over itself until it was covered in fluff and flaky bits of old plaster, and looked, frankly, terrible. Worse than before he had started fixing it.

Alfie’s dad’s favourite saying was, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging,” and it was a good one, but Alfie wasn’t sure that it applied to plastering. Because if he stopped now, all he had was a bigger mess than when he’d started. No, probably the thing to do was keep going. Add another layer. It would cover everything up, and there was no way it could be as bad as the first.

It was as bad as the first.

There were still random bits of crap stuck in the grain, along with the trowel marks even Alfie’s best efforts left over the surface. And the more he tried to make it better, the more weird and lumpy it got, like he’d murdered a mouse and attempted to hide the body in the bathroom wall. It briefly crossed his mind that he could replaster the entire room. Then the new bit wouldn’t be so obvious because everything would look the same. By which he meant, uniformly shit.

Sweating and panicking, and swearing under his breath, but still refusing to give up, Alfie went in for a final attack. The trowel was in open rebellion now, just like everything else, and he somehow managed to get a long slug-spiral of plaster looped across the edge of the bath.

Never mind. One thing at a time. He could clean that up later.

All was not lost. He was starting to get the hang of things. Or, at least, he was getting a better handle on all the ways it was going wrong. Which meant, when he put the trowel back down, he was left with something that looked only quite bad. The whole experience had broken Alfie’s spirit sufficiently that he was prepared to accept this as a positive outcome. Still slightly high on the closest he had come to success, he stepped back to admire his handiwork. His foot banged against one of the buckets, and he leapt away just in time to avoid a concrete boot.

Of course, it also meant he knocked the bucket over.

There was this fairy tale Alfie remembered called “The Magic Porridge Pot.” It was kind of like that. Except plaster, not porridge. But, fuck, the stuff was everywhere. He actually had to climb into the bath to avoid the flood. When it seemed safe, he reached gingerly out to rescue the trowel, only to discover it was stuck to the floor. Really seriously stuck to the floor.

“Oh God. Oh fuck.”

So much for cups of tea and cheese sandwiches on the stairs.

But looking on the bright side… Okay, there was no bright side. He’d essentially just redone the bathroom floor. In cement.

Alfie sat, awkward and cross-legged, in the bottom of Fen’s scummy bathtub and took stock of the situation. In basic terms, it was pretty much the opposite of good. Not least because he still hadn’t finished the job he’d actually come here to do. How was he supposed to face Fen now? He’d been so sweet and grateful, and had trusted Alfie, when he had no reason to, and Alfie had made a pig’s ear of everything. Was ruining someone’s bathroom better or worse than bullying them for years? He honestly couldn’t tell. He just knew Fen was going to hate him again. And offering up his head for a bogging probably wasn’t going to cut it this time.

Basically he had two choices: give up and admit he’d made a big mess, or finish up what he could and then admit he’d made a big mess, only less of a big mess than it could have been. Both were awful, but there was no way he was leaving Fen to deal with it. His dad was very clear on that sort of stuff: men saw things through.

Alfie hauled himself up and prodded very gently at his plasterwork. Unlike the floor, it hadn’t turned into insta-concrete. It was, in fact, very slightly soggy. Typical. The packet said you should leave it to dry overnight, but since he wasn’t going to be working with that bit of wall, it was probably safe to fit a new bracket and hang the rail. Right? He reasoned that he’d already done the hard bit, that it would be plain sailing from here on out, except he must have buried his confidence with the trowel, because he wasn’t convincing himself. All he felt was stressed and inadequate. Disappointed that he wasn’t very good at this. When he should have been. He should have been.

He found a good spot, a little to the left of the original hole, took out his thankfully unplastered tape measure and marked everything up very precisely. It helped him feel a little better. At least he’d get something right. He readied the bracket, laid out his screws in a neat row on the edge of the bath, and set up the drill. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d used one, but the principle was pretty straightforward. Turn on, apply to wall, what could possibly go wrong? But then he’d thought the same thing about plastering. Unfortunately, he was sort of committed now. He was the Winnie-the-Pooh of DIY: couldn’t go backwards, couldn’t go forwards. Maybe Fen could use him as a towel rack.

Alfie lined everything up, braced himself for some unimagined disaster and…

It was fine. Perfect, even. There was the bracket, pinned to the wall by one skilfully drilled screw.

He held his breath as he did the second.

Still fine. Still easy.

So he did the third.

This time, there was a horrible grinding noise and half the wall just crumbled away, dragging Alfie’s fresh plasterwork with it.

“What the fu—”

And then a jet of cold water hit him right in the face.8

To his credit, he didn’t freak out immediately. He put the drill down slowly and carefully, making sure he wasn’t drenching any electrics. Then he stepped away from the water. Then he freaked out.

He’d hit a pipe. Well, obviously.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Water was starting to form little pools, and the little pools were starting to join up and spread. Making big pools. He leaned out of the bath, grabbed Fen’s towel from the rack, did not notice how soft it felt or how it smelled like him, and knotted it tightly round the exposed and grimy pipe. For a moment, it looked like it wouldn’t hold…but then it did. And Alfie let out a sigh of relief, before remembering exactly why he was relieved. Being relieved now was kind of like being pleased at the deck chair arrangement on the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg.

There was now absolutely no way he could make this right. It was completely fucked. And he had to face up to it. He found Fen in the back room, surrounded by freshly made up bouquets and the scent of flowers, and sheepishly asked him to come upstairs for a moment. When Fen saw the carnage, his mouth actually fell open in cartoon shock. “What…what have you done?”

“Um, yeah. It didn’t quite go to plan.”

“Was this revenge? Because I briefly contemplated putting your head in the toilet?”

“What? No. It was an accident.”

“You did this by accident? How bad at DIY are you?”

Alfie cleared his throat. “Pretty bad, apparently.”

“No fucking shit.” Fen pressed his knuckles over his lips and made a slightly hysterical, hiccoughing noise. “Oh my God, what am I going to do?”

This was worse than he’d imagined. And he felt terrible. “Look, it’s fine, I mean it’s not fine, but it’ll be okay. I’m going to fix this. I’ll get an emergency plumber out, and then I’ll get someone in to, y’know, deal with the rest of it.”

“This is South Shields, not London. Everyone will be booked up months ahead.”

He slithered his iPhone out of his pocket and tried to get a signal. “I’ll figure something out. Worst-case scenario, it’ll be a couple of days.”

“A couple of days?” Fen’s voice cracked. “You’re standing on top of a flower shop.”

“Yeah?”

Fen threw his hands into the air. Alfie didn’t think people really did that. But it seemed they did when you pushed them to a certain point. “A flower shop, Alfie Bell. You know what flower shops sell? Flowers. You know what flowers need? Water.”

“What, there isn’t a separate”—Alfie flapped—“thing?”

“No, Alfie Bell, there isn’t a separate thing. When my mother’s mother set this place up, she didn’t think to herself, ‘You know what, I’d better use a different water supply for the shop on the off chance my grandson gets entangled with a complete gibbering potato who will flood his fucking house.’”

That was kind of harsh. Except Fen didn’t sound angry—he sounded like someone trying really hard to be angry. When actually all Alfie heard in his voice was despair. “It’s only a little bit flooded,” he protested.

Fen was blinking rapidly, and Alfie was horrified to catch the shimmer of tears under his lashes. “Oh God, my stock. My orders. I…I’ll have to close. I can’t afford—”

“Fen, I’m sorry.” Unthinking, Alfie grabbed his hands, Fen’s rough, restless fingers lying chill and quiescent against his. “I’m going to sort this out. Just trust me. Please.”

“But I did.”

Alfie cringed. “Trust me a bit more.”

“Dear God, Alfie, if this is how you help people, I hate to think what happens when you set out to harm them. But”—Fen’s mouth twisted wryly—“if you think there’s anything you can do, be my guest. At this point, I don’t see how much worse it could get.”

“I could bust the electrics?” That earned him the faintest of smiles. Gave him courage. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Fen gazed up at him so intently, it was all Alfie could do not to squirm. He didn’t feel judged, exactly. It was more just the sense of being looked at. Deeply looked at. “You know,” said Fen softly, “you really are just the same.”

“Uh, last time you said something like that, you meant it in the bad kind of way.”

“Well, it was a bad kind of moment.” Fen wriggled a hand free, lifted it to Alfie’s face, tracing the line of his jaw. “But I meant the good things, this time.”

Alfie’s mouth opened, but words entirely failed to happen. How could Fen possibly have seen any good in him back then? When, right now, he was having trouble seeing it in himself. If you’d asked a month ago what Alfie thought about his teenage self, he’d probably have said he was a bit of an idiot but a good mate and a decent bloke. And maybe that was still true, but it was hard to reconcile with what he’d done to Fen.

“There’s this confidence you have,” Fen was saying. And it sounded sincere—like he really believed in an Alfie who was strong and capable and who would fix things and sort things and make them right. And that was amazing, but also scary, because he didn’t feel very much like that Alfie anymore. Hadn’t for years. At least not since the gay thing happened. But then Fen’s eyebrows got all ironic, and he added, “And, of course, that entitled golden-boy magic.”

For some reason, it made Alfie laugh. There was something kind of…focusing about Fen’s sharpness, when he could be so disarming in other ways. The bite of lemon after a tequila shot. “Leave it to me.”

“All right.” Fen stepped into the hall. Hesitated. Spun back and struck an absurdly imploring, lash-fluttering pose in the doorway. “Help me, Alfie Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”

“Oh my God, you proper nerd.”

A rare smile from Fen, not hesitant, or bitter, or mocking. “Yes. I…I haven’t changed all that much either.”

And, with that, he was gone, leaving Alfie alone with his promises in the war zone he had made of the bathroom. He gazed round, horror dawning afresh as he took in the scope of the mess. How had it got so bad? Why hadn’t he stopped? Instead of charging forward, hoping it would miraculously get better the harder he tried? Shit. He had to fix this. Come hell or high—higher—water. He plonked himself down on the toilet lid and rang every plumber in South Shields. Sadly, Fen had been right. The earliest someone could get out to them was next Friday, and that was only because Alfie had begged so pathetically. Except it might as well have been next month, or next year, for all the good it would do.

Alfie’s stomach had curled up like it wanted to eat itself. Because the truth was, when he’d fucked up this completely, there was really only one thing he could do.

He rang his dad. Who actually answered the house phone, which meant Alfie’s mother was dead or shopping.

“Aye?” was Alfred Senior’s wary greeting.

“Hi.” Alfie’s throat had closed. “Erm, it’s Alfie. Alfie Bell.”

“Your mam’s not in.” Though with his dad’s rough lilt—so familiar, even after two years of silence—it sounded more like norrin.

“Actually I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh aye?”

“Yeah, I’m in town at the moment. I’m at”—shit—“a friend’s. I’ve kind of… There’s been an accident with a wall.”9

And so, half an hour later, Alfie’s dad; his brother, Billy; Billy’s mate Joe, who was a plumber; and Joe’s apprentice, Harry, were somehow crammed into Fen’s tiny bathroom like that joke about how many elephants you could get in the fridge. They were assessing the extent of the damage and talking about what to do, which seemed to involve either compression or soldering, and every now and then Alfie’s dad would draw air slowly through his teeth as if what had happened to Fen’s bathroom was too awful for actual human speech. Alfie had asked if there was anything he could do. And his dad had said, “I think you’ve done enough, lad” and exiled him to the hallway. As if he was still a kid.

Billy stuck his head out from behind the door, his cheeky grin very much an echo of Alfie’s, except way more annoying. “I could murder a cuppa, Alf.”

Yeah, I’m gay, not a woman, was what Alfie could have said, but didn’t quite dare.

It would have involved saying the Word to his little brother, and anyway, he could hear Kitty in his head, calling him sexist for the assumption that making tea was a gendered activity. So he just shrugged. “Not my house, mate.”

Billy retreated with a forlorn sigh, and the conversation in the bathroom resumed. Alfie really didn’t want to hang around in the hall listening to a bunch of people, including his own family, discuss how shit at DIY he was, but he would only have been in the way in the shop. That didn’t make it okay to snoop around upstairs either, but surely Fen wouldn’t object to him sitting in the kitchen. Though by sitting, he meant sulking.

Unfortunately, the first door he tried led him into a bedroom. Probably Fen’s bedroom. Another dank little room, floor strewn with piles of clothes. And a futon mattress with rumpled sheets, one pillow still bearing the depression of a head and a few twists of silver-gold hair. He stared in a kind of shock, trying to work out whether he was a complete pervert or there was actually something intimate about the place where someone slept. After all, usually by the time you were being let into someone’s bedroom, they’d tidied it up for you. Made it a reflection of the person they wanted you to see. Whereas this was just a mess. A very human, very private mess. Which Alfie shouldn’t have been looking at. But it was like seeing Fen naked again. Seeing him smile.

There was a familiar pink jumper thrown into a far corner and a book, splayed open, pages down, at the foot of the mattress. A Grief Observed.10 Very carefully, so as not to lose Fen’s place, he picked it up and turned it over. “This is one of the things I’m afraid of. The agonies, the mad midnight moments, must, in the course of nature, die away. But what will follow? Just this apathy, this dead flatness? Will there come a time when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street, because I shall take the squalor as normal?”

He wasn’t a big reader. Didn’t really have time for it now and hadn’t had the patience when he was younger. It had a faint taint of sissy-ness, but also seemed inaccessible: all those fictional lives and worlds. Still, there was something about this scene, and these words, that reached him, stirring a kind of nebulous pain. A…loneliness, maybe, he both recognised and wanted to assuage.

He hastily put the book back where he’d found it and made his escape. Thankfully, he found the living room next, which seemed a more acceptable place to lurk. It had a view of the delivery yard and the wheelie bins, which gave it the rare luxury of natural light. There was a sagging sofa and an assortment of old, mismatched furniture, but it wasn’t exactly what Alfie would have called cosy. He would probably have balked at habitable. All the same, he slumped onto the sofa. They could be friends. It looked about as bad as he felt.

Fen was everywhere again. In the cigarette ends piled up in the ash-stained saucer on the coffee table. In the slick, shiny laptop that sat next to it. In the books on the floor. And the scattered LPs. Alfie picked one up and looked at the sleeve. Rex Harrison & Julie Andrews: My Fair Lady.

His parents used to have a record player. He’d been sort of terrified and fascinated by it at the same time, and he’d never quite mastered it. The fragility of all the bits and pieces, fitting the needle to the groove without scratching or shrieking. The faint, familiar crackle like old leaves and paper before the song began to play. Then came cassettes, CDs, the doomed fad of minidiscs, making music something easy. And now of course it was all digital. Simple and thoughtless. No crackle. No anxiety. Better in pretty much every way, except you no longer had physical things to collect and to hold and pin your love to.11

Was this how Fen spent his evenings? Sitting on this sofa, smoking? On his laptop? Or listening to these records? He wouldn’t fumble with the needle. And he would know exactly how to hold the discs so as not to drop or scratch them, cupped against the heel of his hand, supported by his pale, rough-tender fingers.

When Fen actually came into the room, a few minutes later, it almost felt like Alfie had brought him there by thinking about him too hard. He put My Fair Lady down on top of Kiss Me, Kate and braced himself for another well-deserved shouting at.

But Fen didn’t shout. Or say anything at all. He just stood awkwardly in the doorway to his own living room, not quite meeting Alfie’s eyes.

“Everything’s in hand.” Alfie squirmed in the squidgy embrace of the sofa. It might have looked like an alien from the sixties Star Trek, but it was shockingly warm and comfortable.

Fen still wouldn’t look at him. “Yeah, I saw. I just wanted to say…” He’d gone a little pink. He stepped forward, brought a hand out from behind his back, and offered Alfie a chunky purple flower. “Thank you.”

“Uh.” Alfie really wasn’t sure he wanted a flower. But Fen was sort of half smiling at him, eyes slightly downcast to expose the absurdly opulent sweep of his lashes. “Okay.”

He took the damn thing and stared at it, trying to think of something he could possibly say. It was…well, it was nice? It had a thick, scaly stem, and the flower itself was partially enclosed in similar tough, diamond-patterned leaves, like it was resting at the base of two cupped hands. The petals themselves were oddly delicate, their edges as intricate as old lace. “It’s…uh…hardcore.”

Fen nodded. “You’d better believe it.”

And because it was the kind of thing people did in movies and gardening shows, Alfie obligingly stuffed his nose into the heart of his hardcore man-flower. Then recoiled. “Bugger me.”

“Sorry. I should have warned you not to do that.”

“Smells rank, mate. What the fuck is it?”

“It’s, well, it’s a cabbage.”

There was a pause.

“An ornamental cabbage,” added Fen, as if this would somehow make it better.

Alfie had never been given flowers—well, a flower—before. He was pretty sure it wasn’t the sort of thing that was supposed to happen, but he surprised himself by…well…by not feeling nearly as weirded out or outraged as he thought he probably should. “I love it, mate. Thank you. Do I have to put it in water or something?”

“Yes, yes”—Fen seemed to be trying very hard to be casual, but his still-pink cheeks and his softly gleaming eyes betrayed him—“as we have established, flowers need water.”

There was a second pause. Alfie laid the cabbage carefully on the arm of the sofa.

“I don’t get you, Fen.”

“Oh?” He took another step forward. A lift of the brows.

“Well, I try to make things right, and you want to put my head down the toilet. I completely fuck up your bathroom, and you give me a flower.”

“I’m complicated.”12

Alfie would have replied, but Fen was suddenly standing right in front of him, and that was distracting, because he was all close and smiling and flowery. Then one of Fen’s knees landed on the sofa in the space next to his leg. Followed by the other on the other side. And now Fen was straddling him, not quite in his lap, but it wouldn’t have taken much, and all Alfie could think was, Wow. Because everything about him was hot and taut and straining somehow, like the fabric of his trousers across his very spread thighs. Which was where Alfie instinctively splayed his hands, feeling Fen’s response in the tremor that ran through those long, lean muscles. Which made Alfie imagine having Fen like this again, but naked. White and gold, and rough and smooth, just beginning to sweat and flush and tremble.

Lean forward, Alfie would tell him. Put your hands on the sofa back. And Fen would, he would. Arch his back and lift his hips and offer himself to Alfie.

Fen—the real, fully dressed one—moved a little closer. His hair and his breath tickled Alfie’s cheek. “You sorted it. Just like you said you would.”

“Yeah but”—Alfie dug his fingers into Fen’s thighs, trying to resist the urge to just reach out and claim him—“I was the one who messed it up.”

“I don’t care. You still came through for me. I think I’ve almost forgotten what that feels like.”

Their lips were so close. All this bounty. A mouth, a kiss, a flower. But then came the bang of a door from down the hall, and Alfie bucked hard enough to nearly throw Fen off his lap.

There was a moment of undignified scrabbling before Fen steadied, his hands spider-monkey tight on Alfie’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh nowt…nothing. Just, y’know… Dad’s right there.”

Fen’s eyes met his, sharp behind his silver frames. “You’re not in the closet?”

“No. No. They definitely know I’m gay.”

This time there was more than a pause, and Fen showed no inclination to break the silence while Alfie squirmed.

“They know,” he tried again. “But they don’t need to see me.”

“See you what?”

“You know. Being gay.”

“With me?”

“In general.”

Fen just stared at him, expression unreadable. For a moment, Alfie thought he might have pissed him off, but all he said was, “Oh, Alfie Bell,” in this unexpectedly gentle way.13

“We still on for tonight, yeah?” It was supposed to sound casual, but it came out…not like that. But then he’d shown himself up in a bunch of ways today, what with the Don’t-It-Yourself and being thirty years old and still scared of his dad, and he wouldn’t have been all that surprised if Fen had changed his mind. Somehow, just then, being a bully seemed more forgivable than being useless and pathetic.

“Of course.” Fen slid away, leaving Alfie both regretful and relieved. “I heard a hot boy was picking me up at seven.”

Alfie attempted a smile. “And wait till you see his car.”

“Yes, I will see it, and I will think: that is definitely a car. You could drive me to dinner in a pumpkin, and I probably wouldn’t notice.”

“If that’s true, you are going to be so educated.”

“Great. A man wants to teach me about cars.” Fen pulled a face. “I can’t tell if I feel patronised or turned on.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to be patronising.”

“In which case”—Fen cast a sly look over his shoulder as he left—“maybe a bit of both.”

It wasn’t too long before his dad and the DIY Army were finished in the bathroom. They called him to explain what they’d done, none of which he really understood, except for the fact there was no longer water pouring from a hole in the wall and where there had been a water-pouring-from-a-hole-in-the-wall situation was now neatly plastered over. Needless to say, this also served to make Alfie’s attempt look even more grotesque. Like that story they’d read at school about the guy who freaked out and buried his wife—or was it his cat, or maybe his wife’s cat, or was there an old man—in a wall. Actually, he couldn’t remember. Only there’d definitely been a murder and an impromptu tomb, and then horrible, horrible, guilt.

Now everyone was looking at him. Alfie stared at his feet. “Thanks, Da.”

“You know me.”

His dad was putting away his tools, his movements swift and smooth with familiarity. Alfie wanted to say, No, I don’t. But he was in a room full of strangers. And, even if he hadn’t been, even if it’d just been the two of them, he wouldn’t have said it. Too afraid of the answer.

They all trooped downstairs and through the shop, Alfie trailing along behind like the kid who always got picked last for sports. He’d secretly been hoping to hustle everyone off quickly, but Fen was out front, and so there was no way to avoid him. As it turned out, he’d made little thank-you bouquets for everyone to take home with them. And apparently Alfie’s mam liked peonies. Who knew? Not that he would have previously been able to recognise a peony anyway—turned out, they were the pink puffball things.

Fen was sweetly effusive in his gratitude, though the lack of North East in his accent made Alfie acutely aware of how southern his own must have sounded to everyone else. He was also braced for disaster, because Fen was so very Fen, with his expressive hands and his fluttery lashes and his look-at-me-squeeze-me-don’t-you-want-to-be-in-me arse. But it turned out that breathless admiration for your home repair skills transcended gender, and everyone left in a good mood. Except Alfie, who felt resentful and cheated because it should have been his home repair skills. Apart from the fact he didn’t have any.

“He’s a decent lad,” Alfred Senior said, as Alfie and Billy helped him settle the tools in the boot of his car. “Nora’s boy.” Alfie was so surprised at this rare praise that he nearly dropped…he didn’t know what he nearly dropped. Some kind of T-shaped stainless steel wrench. His dad took whatever-it-was away from him and stowed it with the rest of the gear. “Bent as a nine-bob note, of course.”

Nothing happened. The sky didn’t cave in or fire burst up from under the pavement.

In the end, it was Billy who broke the silence. “Howay, Da. Ye knaa Alfie…”

“Aye, ah do, but it’s not the same. Ye divvent see wor Alfie meking posies, wi’ pink in his hair.”

“No,” said Alfie quickly, “and you won’t. I’m not like that.”

His dad slammed the boot. Then got in the car and drove off without another word. For a second, Alfie thought he’d looked back, but it turned out he was just checking the rearview mirror.

Billy was still there, though, and it seemed like he might say something. Whatever it was, Alfie wasn’t in the mood to hear it. So he got into his own car and drove off too.

10

Fen was about ten minutes late, which was just long enough to make Alfie twitchy and wonder if he’d changed his mind. But then the side door opened, and Fen stepped out. The sight of him, all neat and sharp and strangely sexy, made Alfie grin like a fool. He put his fingers to his lips and wolf-whistled. The sound was too loud in the quiet evening, wrong and right at the same time.

Fen jumped and spun round, and then saw Alfie leaning against his car. He laughed, half-relieved, half-grudging. He was in dark-wash jeans and a pale-pink herringbone shirt, the sleeves pushed back to reveal his forearms with their secret dusting of soft, golden hair. Then there was a pin-striped waistcoat and a matching trilby, dipped rather coyly over one eye. The lenses in his dark-framed glasses were tinted smoky pink.

“What’s with the glasses?” Alfie asked.

“I don’t know.” Fen’s brow tightened, his expression too sad to be a frown. “Sometimes I like my world a little rose-coloured.”

“Ready to go?”

“Give me a moment. I just need to pull down the grille.”

Alfie tried not to stare after Fen’s beautifully denim-framed arse as he walked round to the front of the shop. Or at the curve of his spine and the press of his biceps beneath his shirt as he stretched up to pull down the shutter. He went onto his toes like a ballet dancer, his entire body drawn into a tightly gleaming line, all of it poised, all of it reaching.

“Uh, let me help?” he offered.

But then, with a tug, a rattle, and a crash, it was done, and the grille dropped into place. Someone had spray-painted Faggot’s Flowers across the front in bright, bubbly letters, though the apostrophe and the second g in faggot were in a slightly different colour by a somewhat neater hand.

“What the fuck?”

Fen hooked his thumbs over the pockets of his jeans. “Well, it’s not inaccurate.”

“Mate, get it cleaned.”

“My God”—Fen pressed a hand dramatically to his heart as if to calm its beating—“why didn’t I think of that?”

“What am I missing?”

“You’re missing, Alfie Bell, the very basic fact that there’s no fucking point. They can spray it on faster than I can scrub it off.”

The words, so horrible and so cheerful, swam before Alfie’s eyes. “Can’t you call the police like?”

“And say what? Someone is violating spelling outside my shop?”

“But, but, look at it. Fucking look at it. That’s…a hate crime.”

“It’s graffiti, Alfie.” Fen sighed. He looked very small right then, tucked in on himself. “Not worth anybody’s worry. Please? Can we just go?”

Alfie wanted to say that no they couldn’t, not until they’d done something, but he had just enough presence of mind to recognise that spending the evening scrubbing homophobic graffiti off a wall probably wasn’t the best way to show a boy a good time.

“Yeah, all right.” He went round, unlocked the passenger door, and held it open.1

Fen stared at him like he’d lost it. “What are you doing?”

“I’m inviting you to get in my car?”

“I’m not Cinderella going to the ball. I can get in a car.”

“God. I’m just being polite.”

“If I was your grandma, maybe.”

“Are you going to be like this all night?” asked Alfie, in what he thought was a very patient voice.

“I am if you’re going to treat me like a prom date.”

“Fine. Get in the fucking car. How’s that?”

“Kind of threatening.”

Alfie made an exasperated noise, but then he saw the twitch at the corner of Fen’s lips. Laughing, he leaned over the top of the door and kissed him, right on that fleeting edge of a smile.

Fen gasped. Pressed forward. Reared back. “Oh. Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Doing this to me. You’re such a Neanderthal, and I shouldn’t like it.”2

“How is being chivalrous being a Neanderthal?”

“Oh God.” Fen put a hand to his brow. “Did you just say chivalrous?”

Alfie sighed. “Let me guess, it’s a bad thing now. Because of Tumblr or something.”

More staring from Fen.

“Look, I get it, feminism blah blah, kyriarchy blah blah, but I can’t help how I was raised. And if you tell me you don’t want something, or you don’t like it, or I’m making you feel shitty, then I won’t do it. But I’m not going to stop wanting to take care of you—uh, people.”

“I don’t need taking care of.”

“Everyone needs taking care of.” Alfie wished he could see Fen’s eyes. From the crease running right between them and the shadow behind the lenses, he thought maybe they were closed. He reached out and ran his finger gently up and down that anxious little line until it vanished. “It’s all right.”

“I’ve forgotten what all right feels like, Alfie Bell.” Fen slipped past Alfie and into the car, pulling the door closed behind him with a pointed slam.

Alfie rolled his eyes, but he wasn’t really offended. There was something especially sexy about Fen when he was prickly. It brought light to his eyes and—strangely—softness to his mouth. Made him seem so…bright. The way he was supposed to be. Not the curled-up, strung-tight, hollow person Alfie saw sometimes instead.

He went round to his own side of the Sagaris and climbed in, turning briefly to grin at Fen. “You look great.”

“Don’t go getting ideas. I just felt like it.” But Fen was blushing. And seemed pleased. “And, anyway, look at you, you tart.”

“Who, me?” It was hard to sound innocent, considering he’d deliberately chosen his very tightest and clingiest T-shirt, and a leather jacket that did nothing to conceal it.

Fen gave him a totally-not-buying-that look.

“I can change? I think I’ve got a spare shirt in the boot.”

“Let’s not be hasty. I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

Alfie knew it was just dinner and a chance to talk, and that he’d had to beg and risk putting his head down a toilet even to get that. But it had this…this datey air. Fen had dressed up and Alfie had dressed, well, down. Which meant something. And he felt a little bit nervous, a little bit excited, and a little bit hopeful. Which he hadn’t for years. Not since he’d still been waiting to meet the right girl. His heart beating maybe maybe maybe.

Maybe this one, maybe this time.

There was this extra intimacy to driving someone somewhere. If it was the right someone and the right somewhere. And Alfie loved his car and loved sharing it. His piece of loud, red freedom.

He turned the key in the ignition and the dashboard lit up like Christmas, all the needles twitching excitedly over the faces of the dials.

Fen hooked his index finger over the bridge of his glasses and pulled them down his nose, peering stagily over the top as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “Are we going into space?”

“Cool, isn’t it?”

“Jesus.” Fen caught for the dashboard as the engine roared and the car spun light and wild as fire away from the kerb.

“Nought to sixty in three point seven seconds.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“You okay?”

A shaky sound. Then, “Yes.”

“Sorry, she’s a bit brash.”

“You’re not sorry at all, are you?”

Alfie just grinned again. Settled into driving. Even though it was South Shields, and the best he could hope for was a short stretch at fifty as they followed the cloud-reflecting sea.

“So,” Fen was barely audible over the Sagaris, “this is your…pussy wagon analogue? Whatever that’s called.”

“Um. Cockmobile?”

“Quickly, Robin, to the cockmobile!”

Alfie laughed and slanted a look at Fen, just in time to see the smile fading from his lips. “Okay, I should probably come clean before I—”

“Oh my God, it’s stolen.”

“What? No. And she’s not an it.”

“Sorry. To both of you. I don’t quite know why I went there.”

“You really do have a low opinion of me, don’t you?”

“No. Well.” Fen shifted in the passenger seat. “I just mean, you see a car like this in South Shields and it’s either stolen or the driver’s not from around here. But I guess…I guess you’re not from around here anymore.”

“Dunno about that, but I’m definitely not a crook. And I was going to say, the Sagaris isn’t all that. Not for a sports car. I took a Veyron out for a spin a couple of years ago. Thought about upgrading.”

“I have no idea what any of this means, but why didn’t you?”

Alfie shrugged. “Because I love my car. I bought her with my first bonus. It was really weird. I had the car of my dreams and nowhere to drive her.”

“Why’s it…she…a girl?” Fen asked after a moment.

“I never really thought about it. I guess it’s traditional, like ships or whatever?” He suddenly felt the prickle of Fen’s attention on the back of his hand, where it still rested lightly on the gearstick. “Besides, she’s a bit sensitive. Needs a gentle touch to get the best out of her. Guys don’t usually ask me for that.”

“Surely it depends on the guy.”

“Is that what you want?” Alfie risked another sideways glance, but Fen was resolutely staring out of the window, his reflection as wavering as the moonlight over the waves. “Someone to be gentle?”

“Sometimes, yes, when I’m in the mood for it.”

“And other times?”

“Then I want…something else.”

Alfie’s hand had gone white-knuckled. And his mouth was dry. Drive. Just drive. Don’t think about it.

But he was thinking about it.

About being gentle. And being…not gentle. With Fen.

“Alfie?”

“Uh. Yeah?”

“I know I agreed to this, but I can’t promise I won’t change my mind. And you’ll accept that, right?”

Alfie pulled into the space he’d found yesterday in front of the boarded-up building and turned off the engine. The silence, somehow, seemed even louder. He turned in his seat to look at Fen. “Course I will. I mean, I won’t like it much.”

Fen was staring at his hands, twisting the band of green wire round and round his finger.

Alfie reached out and untangled Fen’s hands. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“I don’t know.” Fen’s fingers were cold and rough, the skin flaking round the edges of his cuticles, but they rested, a moment, between Alfie’s, not quite clinging, but not pulling away either. “I just don’t know. I keep thinking I should, but I don’t. And I can’t tell if that makes me weak, or stupid, or just ridiculously horny.”

“Ridiculously horny?”

Hard to see in the dim light, but maybe Fen blushed. “Oh don’t. You have no idea.”

“I’d…erm…kind of like to.”

“Well, it’s a fantasy, isn’t it? The fucker who bullied you at school on his knees for you.”

And now it was Alfie lost in a rush of heat. Lust, with a ripple of shame. “We can skip dinner, y’know?” It was the closest he could get to, Yes, that. Let’s do that.

“And miss my night out at the Raj?” Fen shook himself free and unclipped his seat belt. “Never.”

Alfie made a really valiant attempt to be normal. “How do you know the Raj is my special date place?”

He was on the pavement, round the Sagaris, and reaching for the passenger door handle before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be helping. He took an exaggerated step back, holding up his hands like Fen had him at gunpoint, earning a look of exasperated amusement through the window. Though, actually, watching Fen slither out of the car in his very tight jeans had its compensations. Even if what he needed now was something quite different. Like another bucket of cold plant water to the face. Or elsewhere.

“Because,” Fen was saying, “this is South Shields, you’re you, and that’s the Raj.”

“You like it, right?”

“Alfie, nobody’s ever taken me.”

“God, well, we’ll get that fixed.”

Fen smirked. “Like my bathroom?”

“Oi.” Still not entirely thinking straight, Alfie landed a playful smack precisely where Fen deserved it. Right on his perfect arse.

He whirled round, pale with outrage. “What the shitting fuck was that?”3

It was a good question. “Um, a joke?”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

He didn’t. He looked like he was furious. “Not really, no. Look, I’m sorry. It’s just, you know, it was there.”

“What was there?”

Oh dear. Now Fen had his hands on his hips. “Your arse.”

A pause. “So’s your face, it doesn’t mean I get to punch it.” Fen scraped his fingers through his hair, making it fluffy and wild and adorable. “God. I don’t even know how to process this.”

“What? Nobody’s ever…?”

“No, Alfie Bell, no. Normal people don’t do that.”

“Yeah, they do. It’s affectionate like.”

“Seriously? When you hang out with your dude-bros, you idly smack each other’s arses like the red-blooded heterosexuals you are?”

“Well, no, but when I’m out with—Shit.”

“Oh God,” Fen muttered, “you’re so fucking straight. Also sexist.”

Nobody had ever complained. Although, admittedly, he’d never dared with Kitty. And, anyway, it didn’t seem like the time for debate. “I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again, okay?”

At last, Fen nodded, and Alfie started breathing once more. He’d honestly thought he’d blown it. With one careless gesture. A habit he’d as good as forgotten. Or maybe a subconscious desire to get his hands on Fen’s, well, on Fen.

They were still close enough that Alfie felt him shiver. “I feel so debased,” Fen murmured in a manner that could only be described as sultry.

Bloody hell. Alfie’s cock had spent the last five minutes doing the weirdest hokey-cokey, but now it was truly committed. He groaned helplessly. “Now you’re just giving me mixed signals.”

“I did warn you I’m very confused at the moment.”

“I’m not.”

Alfie pulled him close, then closer, and it turned out that Fen’s cock wasn’t confused either. They fell against each other, not quite managing anything as coordinated as kissing or touching, but it felt good, so good, the ways their bodies fit, and the ways they didn’t, the fact it was almost a struggle, but not.

“You know we’re going to be late,” Alfie managed at some point.

“Oh,” said Fen. Gasped really. His open mouth pressed to the side of Alfie’s neck. “Oh.”

“Offer stands. Get it out our systems.”

Fen squirmed, his hands pushing restlessly beneath Alfie’s jacket. “God, when did I become the kind of boy who puts out before a first date?”

“Maybe I like it.”

“I doubt it. You don’t fuck, remember?”

“That’s not… It’s just…it’s just I’m not very good at casual.”

“But aren’t you just reinforcing a heteronormative paradigm? In tying acts to intimacy. Centring sex on penetration.”

“I can’t tell if it’s hot or annoying that you talk like you’re on the internet.” Alfie gently tucked a piece of straggling hair behind Fen’s ear. “I know it doesn’t mean anything, like whether you fuck or suck or whatever, but at some point, you’ve got to decide what’s special. Because otherwise nothing is.”4

A smile, like a bright, crooked constellation in the shifting dark. “Take me to dinner, Alfie Bell.”

Alfie nodded. He wanted to take Fen’s hand, but he wasn’t sure if it was okay. It was probably more okay than slapping his arse, but he was lost in the date-non-date-ness of things. Besides, even if it was a date, did that make it acceptable—or normal—to hold hands? He couldn’t remember ever holding Greg’s hand, but they’d basically spent the eight months of their relationship in bed because Alfie’d had about ten years of gay sex to get out of his system and Greg had been only too happy to be the altar at which he worshipped. It was only after that they’d realised they had nothing in common, wanted completely different things, and had no reason really to be together. And it was only now he was starting to realise that his time with Greg had given him an excellent grounding in shagging. Absolutely none in anything like…boyfriending.

So he left Fen’s hand alone and led the way across the road and up the narrow staircase into the restaurant, where Mr. Ali and Amjad came rushing over to greet him.

“Alfie, Alfie, good to see you again. Your table’s all ready for you.”

There was kind of a script for this. One that hadn’t changed in all the years Alfie had been coming here.

This was the moment Mr. Ali would stop shaking his hand and ask, “And who is this beautiful…”

Alfie stepped awkwardly aside. There was a tiny, tiny pause that roared in his ears like the engine of the Sagaris.

“…gentleman?”

His mouth had gone completely dry. He croaked something unintelligible.

“Fen,” said Fen crisply.

“Welcome, Fen.” Mr. Ali took his hand and pressed it warmly between both of his.

“Any friend of Alfie Bell’s.”5

Alfie was quietly dying. Fen was pink. “Thank you.”

“This way, please.” With a little flourish, Mr. Ali was leading them to Alfie’s usual booth.

They faced each other in a kind of paralysed silence as they were supplied with menus, a half pint of Cobra for Alfie since he was driving, and a mango lassi—on the house—for Fen. His attempt to turn it down was completely ignored. Alfie could have told him there was no point protesting. That was part of the script too. There was always a mango lassi for Alfie’s girl. Even, apparently, if the girl was a boy.

Finally, they were alone.

“What have you done?” hissed Fen.

“N-nothing.”

“Did you say I was your date?”

“Sort of…maybe…accidentally.”

Fen pulled off his hat and put it down on the seat next to him. “Oh, Alfie, you’re so messed up. You won’t let me touch you in case your father sees, but you out yourself in the middle of a curry house.”

For some reason, when Fen said it aloud, it didn’t seem that awful. Most of the time being gay, having to somehow let people know he was gay, just felt like a noise that echoed through Alfie’s head all the time, driving him slightly nuts. An alarm he couldn’t stop ringing. But here he was, at his favourite place, with Fen, being Alfie, being gay, and it didn’t seem to matter. He felt himself relaxing, just a little bit, and smirked across the table.

“I’m complicated,” he said, doing his best impression of Fen, which was quite a bit camper, and more southern, than the real version.

“I suppose I deserved that.” Fen had seemed very close to laughing, but he quickly grew serious again. “Um, listen, Alfie. I know this isn’t exactly the first thing you say, but given our history and everything South Shields has always taken for granted about me, I need you to know I’m not actually gay.”

Whatever Alfie’s racing mind had supplied after “uh, listen,” it was not this. It would never have been this. “You what? But you… But we… You seemed pretty damn gay when we—”

“I like men.” Fen cut sharply over his flailing. “But I’ve never identified as gay. Ironic, isn’t it. All those years, getting the shit kicked out of me for something I’m not.”

Okay. Well. Okay. This was okay. It was unexpected, but Alfie could cope. Totally. “So you’re bi or whatever?”

“I don’t use that word either.”

“Um, what’s the word got to do with it? Somebody who fucks men and women is bisexual.”

Even without the glitter of his eyes, Alfie could tell Fen was irritated. “I do fuck both men and women, but I’m not bisexual.”

“That sounds pretty bisexual to me.”

Whatever Fen said, Alfie couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine him with a woman. Except, then, suddenly he could. Fen’s pale, supple body moving over someone else’s, softer legs wrapped around his waist, softer hands spanning his back, all that fierce strength in him harnessed, not surrendered. Shit. Shit. Shit. It was awful. And Alfie realised it didn’t matter whether it was a woman or another man. It just mattered it wasn’t him.

“Dear me,” sighed Fen, “you’ve been gay for all of five minutes, and you’re already looking down on people who don’t exactly fit your categories. Bravo, Alfie Bell.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to understand. If you’re not gay, and you’re not bi, what are you then?”

“Generically queer? I don’t care. I don’t see why it has to be important.”

Alfie stared. “How can it not be important?”

“I just don’t see why it has to be something I have to think about. The world’s an easier, kinder place for me when I’m with a woman, but I refuse to let that be my problem.”

He knew Fen was talking about principles, but Alfie couldn’t get himself unstuck from practice. Couldn’t stop thinking about Fen with someone else. “So, that’s what you’re looking for, then?”

“A world where the gender identity of the person you love is completely irrelevant? Yes. Also, a cure for cancer, an end to war, and actually being able to get a shop-bought sandwich out the container without spilling it everywhere.”

“No. A woman.”

Fen gazed bemusedly across the table, and then smiled a little. “For God’s sake, Alfie. I’m not sure whether to be annoyed or flattered. You’ve managed to focus all the complexities of social equality and sexual identity on who I want to boink?”

“Well, it’s kind of what’s affecting me right now.”

A pause. And then, very softly, “I’m not looking for anything.”

There was no way Alfie was letting him get away with that. “You must be looking for something, or you wouldn’t have let me pick you up that night at the Rattler.”

Fen went a little pink, but when he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly harsh. “I was fucked up, Alfie. I’d broken up with David—my boyfriend—a year ago, and I just felt so completely alone.”

“So you had a boyfriend?”

“Let it go, will you? You can’t weigh my gayness by how many men I’ve been with, and it’s the least important part of what I’m trying to tell you. Which is, if I was looking for something that night, it couldn’t have been anything good.”

Alfie plonked his hand firmly over Fen’s. Fen started at the sudden contact but didn’t reject it. “But we found something good, anyway? Right?”

No answer. Fen was staring at Alfie’s fingers, splayed so possessively over his own. “I don’t know how I can like you,” he said, eventually. All dreamy and confused.

“Cos everybody needs a bit of home sometimes.”

“Are you ready to order?” Mr. Ali materialised at their table, and it took every last ounce of courage Alfie had not to jerk away from Fen. However, if the man noticed they were practically holding hands, there was no outward sign it bothered him.

Fen, who seemed kind of shaken for some reason, politely asked for tikka paneer, followed by vegetable biryani with paratha.

“Fuck no.” Alfie groaned. “You’re a vegetarian.”

“I was vegan for a while, so you can congratulate yourself on a lucky escape.”

“I’d still have asked you to dinner. You just wouldn’t have been able to eat anything.”

Fen laughed, and it had a startled edge to it, like he didn’t quite believe it was Alfie who’d made him. He had such a good laugh, though. It was like his smile: a bit too much.

Alfie wanted to bask in it, but he suddenly remembered he was missing his cue. He held out his menu, grinning at Mr. Ali. “They don’t even bother to ask me what I want anymore.”

“That’s because you always have the same thing.” Mr. Ali tucked his notebook away and took the menu.

“What can I say? I know what I like.”

And, wow, that sounded weird with Fen sitting right there, his hand still trapped under Alfie’s.

But Mr. Ali only smiled and turned to Fen. “And what is it you do?”

Oh God. Too late, Alfie realised that Fen was probably going to get the same polite interrogation as the rest of his dates. He rushed to the rescue. “He’s got a flower shop.”

“I’m a lighting designer,” said Fen.

Huh? They hadn’t even got to starters and Alfie was already losing the plot. The hot gay florist he’d met in South Shields was apparently neither gay nor a florist. Definitely still hot though, so it wasn’t a total bust.

“You mean,” asked Mr. Ali, who was somehow managing to learn more about Fen in two minutes than Alfie had since he’d met him again, “interior design? Or for television?”

“Theatre actually.”

“Theatre?”

“Well, I was working on it. It takes time to make a name for yourself, but I was getting there.” His hand twitched under Alfie’s, inviting the press and clasp of his fingers. “I was getting there.”

Mr. Ali nodded his approval—Fen had clearly passed Round One of being allowed to date Alfie—and left them to it.

“I had no clue you did that.” Alfie hadn’t meant to sound quite so accusing.

“You didn’t ask.”

“And the shop?”

“Is what I’m doing now.”

“But,” Alfie pressed, “you said you were a lighting designer.”

Fen dragged his hand free. “I am. Was. Am.” He sounded, suddenly, on the verge of tears. “I don’t know.”

Alfie was horrified—mainly at himself, his rough and careless ways, rampaging through a conversation like a confused bear. “Fen, it’s all right. I didn’t mean to give you the third degree. I just wasn’t sure what was going on.”

“Why would you be? You don’t know me.” Fen’s anger came out of nowhere, as sharp and brittle as frost. Just as sad, in his way, as tears might have been.

“But I want to know you.”

Alfie wished he could say something comforting. But he hadn’t figured out what he was trying to be comforting about, only that sometimes Fen seemed so lost. The silence that followed lasted well into the starters.

“This is really good,” offered Fen finally, almost pleadingly, like he was trying to get Alfie to play along and forget everything they’d just said and failed to say.

Alfie was only too happy to oblige. “I’ve no idea what you’re eating. It looks like curried polystyrene.”

“It’s cheese, Alfie.”

“Curried cheese? That’s so wrong.”

“Do you want to try it?”

He really didn’t. But Fen was waving a forkful of cheese between them like it was an olive branch. Leaning over the table, Alfie tried not to make too much of an arse of himself trying to eat the thing. He hesitated a moment before he took it, flicking an anxious glance about the restaurant in case the other customers were pointing in outrage or recoiling in disgust, but nobody seemed to care. So he ate curried cheese from the fork of another bloke, and it was fine. “’S’alright,” he mumbled. “Be nicer if it was meat.”

Fen laughed again. It wasn’t like last time. More of a chuckle really. But definitely a sound of amusement. A real one, vanishing too soon. “Alfie?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about before. I didn’t mean to be snappy.”

“No, it’s okay. Nothing to be sorry for.”

“Well, I said we could talk and then shot you down when you tried. So…ask me something.”

“Um, what sort of thing?”

“Anything. Let’s just pretend this is normal.”

Alfie wanted to protest that it was normal. Or it could be. “What happened with your boyfriend, then?”

A clatter as Fen’s fork dropped onto his plate. “That’s not normal.”

“Yeah, it is. You brought him up.” And, honestly, Alfie wanted to know what he was up against.

“Tough. Try again.”

It felt as though every safe, neutral, normal topic of conversation had flown clean out of his head. “What’s a lighting designer?”

Fen opened his mouth.

“And don’t say you design the lighting for shit.”

Fen’s hair fell forward as he ducked his head. Was he hiding a smile? “But I really do design the lighting for shit.”

Alfie gave him a look.

Now there was no hiding the smile. “Okay, sorry. But, at the most basic level, it’s my job to make sure you can see…um, the stage?”

“But there’s more to it than that, right?”

“Well. Yes. It’s…it’s storytelling. I mean a set is just an illusion everybody already knows is hollow. But lighting is part of how you make people forget what they think they know.” Some of Fen’s reluctance seemed to fade, his voice quickening, his hands moving with his words. “It’s not just about how you make something look, but how you make it feel. Like floristry, it’s a kind of art. Painting with light.”

“Wow.”

“Stop looking at me like that. You’re making me self-conscious.”

But Alfie didn’t know how he was looking or how to stop. “I just don’t get how you figured all that out.”

“Well, I’m a fully qualified electrician, and I spent all my time at university doing theatre stuff before I dropped out, and I—”

“No, I mean how you knew that was what you wanted to do.”

“Oh. Well. I didn’t really. I thought I wanted to be on the stage, at first.”

“What, like an actor?”

“Mainly I wanted to be in musicals.”

Alfie didn’t mean to, but he laughed. Sort of guffawed, actually, as the plates were being cleared. “Musicals,” he repeated. And did jazz hands.

Fen flinched, then scowled. “I’ve always loved musicals. You know that. You took the piss out of me enough for it.”

Truthfully, Alfie had forgotten this too. Also he mustn’t have changed as much as he’d hoped, because he was still pretty inclined to take the piss. “They just don’t make sense to me,” he explained. “Like, somebody will be walking down the street, and suddenly they’ll burst into song for no reason. People don’t do that.”

Fen didn’t seem impressed by this line of reasoning. “Fiction is more than mimesis, Alfie Bell.”6

“I don’t understand what any of that means.” Except when Fen used his full name. Which meant he was cross.

“An imitation of what is.”

“Okay.” Alfie thought about it a moment—though why something so bloody simple needed a massive, weird word was beyond him. “I get that stuff doesn’t have to be realistic or whatever, but the whole singing and dancing and everybody just miraculously joining in, knowing what to do, goes too far for me. There’s no way I’m just going to be able to see that happen and not be like, ‘No, that’s daft.’”

“Fine.”

“I know I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I know fine means not fucking fine.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Their eyes met across the table, Fen’s still locked away behind pink glass. “But it obviously matters. Why won’t you explain it to me?”

“Because I hate this argument. And I hate that people always think they’re so bloody clever for not liking musicals. And also, I don’t want to explain it to you.”

Alfie was going to protest, but Fen had sort of hinted in the car that he was too pushy sometimes. And while there’d definitely been times being pushy had turned out okay, he could tell this probably wouldn’t be one of them. Fen didn’t have to talk to him about anything, and he definitely didn’t have to justify what he was into. Even if it was cheesy gay shit like musicals.

It was impossible to tell right now if things were going well. There were definitely moments when they were, except they were mainly sex moments or laughter moments. All of which was great, but still left a vast in-between. Maybe Fen was right. Maybe this was all too complicated. Maybe ridiculously horny (Alfie was going to carry that phrase around with him like a conker in his pocket) wasn’t enough. Not with all that anger and sadness and confusion floating around underneath it. And everything Fen didn’t want to talk about. Wouldn’t trust him with.

Even tandoori king prawn jalfrezi just the way he liked it didn’t do much to cheer him up. It should have tasted so good, but it felt like it was sinking straight down to meet wherever his words were stuck.

It was Fen, eventually, who broke the silence. “I don’t think you said what you do these days?”

He really wanted to be standoffish—to not want to talk about something right back and see how Fen liked it—but Fen was looking at him in a sweetly interested kind of way, which basically turned Alfie to rice pudding. “I work for J.D. Jarndyce, as part of the financing group.”

“You…pardon? What’s the financing group?”

“It’s kind of an umbrella term for a bunch of specialist teams who offer, like, a range of stuff.”

A pause. “What sort of stuff?”

“The usual stuff. Like corporate finance solutions, liability management, or whatever.”

Fen’s eyes were so wide. “Alfie, are you…the wolf of Wall Street?”

That, combined with the way Fen’s expression had morphed from curiosity to astonishment, like Alfie had grown a set of antlers or something, made him laugh. It was the sort of laugh he felt all the way to his bones. And suddenly his jalfrezi was perfect again. “Well, if you take away the fraud and the ludes and basically everything else, yes. I mean, no, not really. Some of the other guys are into all that work-hard, play-hard, snorting-coke-in-the-bogs macho crap. But I’m in equity capital markets, which is pretty civilised.”

“Holy shit.” Fen had put down his knife and fork. His hands were hovering over his mouth, like he was six years old and the Daleks were on TV. “I can’t believe it. Alfie Bell grew up and became an investment banker.”

“Only a little bit,” Alfie protested. “I’m not on the trading floor or anything. I work with companies and governments and financial sponsors. People like that.”

“Okay, but what do you do with them?”

“Uh, equity and bond issuance, and some risk-management stuff, as well as, y’know, like, initial offerings, follow-on offerings, convertibles and derivatives—” Fen’s mouth had fallen open slightly, his brows stuck in shocked little arches. Alfie sighed. “I make money, Fen. I make a lot of money.”

There was a long silence. Alfie absentmindedly stole a piece of Fen’s paratha and used it to mop up the last of his sauce. It wasn’t until he’d eaten it that he realised what he’d done. “Shit, sorry.”

But the corners of Fen’s mouth kicked up. “Be my guest, mate.”

“Oh man, they hate that down south, have you noticed? They get legit territorial.”7

“Right? It’s like they all think they’re going to get food lurgy if you touch their plate.”

Alfie looked at what was left of his jalfrezi, which was basically nothing. “I should’ve got summin vegetarian.”

Fen waved a dismissive hand and stole a swig of his Cobra instead. And, in that moment, with Fen, in South Shields, in his favourite restaurant in the whole world, Alfie felt so happy and so right that his heart got huge and tight and hot, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh, or cry, or have some kind of weird aneurism. Thankfully he didn’t do any of those things. But the possibility of them left this floatiness behind.

“Do you like it?” Fen was saying. “The…the equity risk derivative…whatever it is you do?”

He shrugged. “I’m good at it.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No, but”—Alfie finished the last swallow of his Cobra, tasting Fen—“it’s kind of the answer. It’s…well…it’s hard to describe. I like being good.”8

“But isn’t it a really cutthroat environment?”

“It’s competitive, yeah, but there’s a simple answer to that.”

Fen tilted his head enquiringly.

“Be the best.”

“Arrogant, and yet annoyingly attractive.”

“That’s me.” He grinned.

“Oh, Alfie, why? Why do you do this?”

“I told you—”

“I mean, how. How did you get here? Is this really what happened to you?”

There was something…something in Fen’s tone, or the angle of his head, or curve of his mouth. A kind of hunger, or maybe a kind of despair. Alfie wasn’t sure he liked it. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Something…else, I think. Something golden and special and magic, just like you.”

Alfie spread his arms across the back of the booth, trying to pretend he was comfortable. “I dunno. It all seemed pretty obvious. I’ve always been good with numbers. Did maths at uni.” He wanted to add, Got a first, because he had, but he was afraid it would come across as bragging. Well, it was bragging, but he was desperate to show Fen something impressive. Something he could admire. “And I didn’t really want to stick around here.”

“Because you were gay?”

“I hadn’t figured that out then. Except probably I had.” Alfie tried to laugh. Thumped himself on the chest. “We Bells do things proper, we do. Including denial.”

Fen’s hand did an odd little dance, like maybe it wanted to reach out. But then it didn’t.

“I think,” Alfie went on, “I told myself I wanted to do something with the degree. I mean, what’s the point of having one if you just come back home and be a plumber?”

“You did better than me. I think I lasted a year.”

“Didn’t you like it?”

Fen smiled suddenly, a touch sheepishly. “I liked being at university, I just didn’t like studying. I mean, I did geography. Who gives a crap about geography?”

“You should have gone to drama school or something.”

“I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t actually like being on the stage very much.”

A memory caught him then. The school play one year. He hadn’t been paying much attention. He just remembered Karim being pissed off he had to be a Shark because he was brown. “Wait. When we did West Side Whatsit. You were…” He flapped a hand excitedly.

“Triple threat, baby.”

“No, no, I think his name was Tony?”

Fen laughed. “You doofus. Yes, I was Tony. Triple threat is when you can dance, sing, and act. Although actually I’m not that great at any of them.”

Alfie wondered if Fen was just being modest. Like him and his degree. He couldn’t remember a damn thing about the play, but suddenly he could remember Fen. Alone in the moonlight—or, rather, on a darkened stage—leaning dreamily against the scaffolding that was all they had for scenery at Whitburn Comprehensive, singing about some girl he’d just met. His fluff of pale hair. His hands, stripped of their restlessness, given focus and purpose. Confidence. His body, too, graceful, not nervous. And his voice, its cold, clear swoop through notes Alfie could barely recall.

“It should probably have been,” Fen was saying, “…oh, who was that boy? Karim. He was better than me. But I was white, so, hey, I got the part.”

“You were good. Why’d you stop?”

Fen looked down, his fingers twisting idly with the green wire. “I didn’t…need it in the same way, so I lost interest.”

“Need what?”

“Oh…” He glanced up again and shifted a little uncomfortably. “Oh. Well. I…suppose I learned how to like being me. Your turn, now. What happened after university?”

Fen still looked like he was on an anthill, and Alfie realised the kindest thing he could do right now was answer. “Well, I got onto this National Scholarship Programme, did an MSc in risk and finance at the LSE, and J.D. Jarndyce recruited me after that.” Alfie’s babbling seemed to be soothing for Fen, so he kept babbling. “Promised me the entire world. Pretty much gave it to me, actually. And maybe that’s not golden enough for you, but it was pretty damn golden to me. I made more in my first year than my dad has probably earned in his entire life.” He let out a slow breath he hadn’t even realised was caught inside him. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to think about that.”

Fen folded his elbows on the table and leaned forward. It was one of the few times he’d done that. Actually reached out to Alfie. “But what did you have to give up to get it?”

A defensive kind of annoyance prickled down Alfie’s spine as he tried not to think of the car he barely drove and the penthouse he barely visited. And he definitely didn’t think about the family he wouldn’t have, because that was a different problem. “There were choices, and I made the ones I did, that’s all. I work long hours, my job is hard, but so what? Yeah, it’s not the sort of thing you dream about when you’re a kid but, again, so what? When my dad put his back out, he got to retire. When the recession hit, Billy didn’t go under.”

“It’s for your family, then? You’re supporting them?”

One of Fen’s hands was lying carelessly in the space between them, between the dirty plates. It would have been so easy to touch it. To take whatever it was he kept not quite offering. But Alfie was afraid it might be pity, and he didn’t want that. He wanted the other things: lust, and need, and approval. “You can’t tell anybody. Dad thinks the insurance paid out. Billy just thinks he got lucky with an investor.”

Up went Fen’s brows. “Alfie, you can’t do that to people.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Lie to them. Trick them. Even in the name of helping them.”

“Howay, man. They’re both proud as fuck. It’s bad enough cos they probably think I think I’m better than them. And then being a woofter on top of that. I couldn’t be further away if I moved to New Zealand.” Alfie ran a hand through his hair. “I just want them to be okay. Is that too much to ask? Being able to take care of the people I…” He couldn’t say it. You didn’t just talk about love like a nancy or a Sandra Bullock movie. Love was something you did. Something that was just there. “Being able to take care of people.”

Fen had taken his hand away. Wrapped his arms around himself. He was trembling very slightly, which made Alfie physically ache to hold him. Let that slender body shake in the safety of his arms. “Well, sometimes you just can’t. Things happen and…and you can’t. And all the love and money in the world won’t make a difference.”

Some piece or reflection of the light gleamed for a moment on Fen’s cheek, and he flicked a hand idly across his face. Another gleam, this time on the other side, another flick. Oh God, was he crying?

“Alfie.” He sounded breathless, close to panic. “I’m…s-so sorry. But I have to go. Right now.”

Alfie opened his mouth to say something hopeless like, It’s all right, or Don’t worry, but it was too late. Fen was reaching for his hat, sliding out of the booth, jerking clumsily to his feet, briefly, awkwardly caught in the tablecloth, causing their knives and forks to rattle on their empty plates.

If Alfie hadn’t managed to grab a fistful of fabric, Fen would probably have dragged the whole thing with him. It was the right thing to do—the least embarrassing thing at any rate—but it did mean Fen was gone. And Alfie was left sitting there. On his own. With the whole restaurant staring.

Nobody had ever done this to him when he was straight.

A middle-aged woman leaned over the space between the tables. “Ye should gan after him, pet.”

Suddenly whatever had held him was gone. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, threw down far too many notes, paused briefly to mutter something apologetic to Amjad, and chased Fen into the night.

11

Alfie thought Fen would be long gone, but he wasn’t. He was standing by Alfie’s car, half-swallowed by the darkness, his head bowed, his hands braced on the bonnet.

Alfie didn’t hesitate. He just went over there and gathered him up. And Fen let him. Let him fit them together, Fen’s back to Alfie’s front, and wrap him up in his big arms, and keep him like that. He wasn’t crying, now. Wasn’t trembling. He was simply cold, his soft breaths clouding the air a moment before they dissipated.

Alfie wanted to ask what had happened, what was wrong. But he didn’t dare. At least not yet. In case he broke this moment: him holding Fen, like none of the bad stuff mattered, like Fen trusted him. Could take comfort from him. Or whatever else he needed.

“Look. Dragon smoke.” He leaned over Fen’s shoulder and breathed out too, so they mingled in the mist.

Dragon smoke? How old was he, twelve? Well, it was probably better than the cameo conversation. Even thinking about that made Alfie’s stomach twist itself into embarrassed little knots.

Somehow, even in the tight circle of Alfie’s embrace, Fen swizzled round. When they were this close, the height difference really seemed to matter. Truthfully, Alfie kind of liked it. Especially the way Fen had to tip his head back. There was something intimate about it, hopeful, a bit wanting, like he was waiting for a kiss. Which he wasn’t. But the possibility was there. Had always been there since that night outside the Rattler.

Very softly, as though Fen was a deer and his voice was a gun, he tried, “What did I say?”

“N-nothing. It was me. All me.”

“What’s wrong, pet?”1 The endearment slipped out before he could stop it. But it wasn’t really an endearment, it was just the warmest thing he knew how to say. It was what his mam had said to him through all his tiny childhood tragedies and somehow made them better.

“Well…basically everything. But there was no need to come after me.”

“Oh aye?” Alfie made as though to draw back. “I’ll nip back and get pudding, then.”

Something that might have been a laugh, and the press of Fen’s fingers, tugging him closer. “I’m so sorry I wrecked your evening.”

“Aww, Fen, you didn’t wreck my evening. But can you tell us what’s going on, maybe? One minute you were sort of fine, the next you really weren’t.”

Fen was staring unhelpfully at a spot somewhere at the base of Alfie’s throat. “That’s my life right now. Sort of fine, then really not.” And then he was pulling away, as Alfie had known he would. Though knowing didn’t make that little parting easier to bear, or the sudden cold where Fen’s body had been. His breath came harshly through the darkness, but when Fen spoke again, he was oddly calm. Stripped of everything. “My mother died.”

For a moment, Alfie was…blank. “You what? You mean, Nora? Your mam, Nora? Fuck me. How? When?”

“A while ago now—about a year and a half? Long enough that I shouldn’t be like this.”

“You mean, sad? Fen, if my mam died and I wasn’t sad, I’d think there was summin wrong with me.”

An impatient flick of Fen’s fingers. “It’s more than that. And I’m sick of it. I want to be normal again. To be myself again.”

“You don’t think you’re you?”

“Well, I didn’t used to burst into tears in restaurants.”

“But,” Alfie persisted, “it wasn’t a weird, random event. Something must’ve made you cry.”

“It was…it was you. Well, sort of you.” Fen’s toe scuffed idly at some loose gravel on the road. The clash of pebbles sounded far too loud. “This ridiculous conviction you have that you can fix everything for everyone.”

“I don’t believe I can fix everything. I just like to, y’know…try.”

Suddenly Fen glanced up, the movement catching Alfie’s attention. “But what if you didn’t try? Or didn’t try hard enough?”

The cold air dug its fingers into Alfie’s bare arms and scratched. “Um, I don’t—”

“It doesn’t matter.” There was a pause. “Alfie?”

“Uh. Yeah?”

“Can I drive your car?”

That was kind of the opposite of whatever it was he’d been expecting. Especially after the conversation they’d just had. He was about to say no and insist on some kind of answer, when Fen pushed his glasses onto the top of his head, and Alfie forgot basically everything. Instead he went all chick-flick silly because Fen’s eyes were naked, and beautiful, and looking right up at him. And Fen was monochrome in the moonlight, all silver and shadows and secrets. “Well…if you really want. Just round the car park, though, okay?”

Fen nodded eagerly.

They got into the car, and Alfie drove them round the corner, where they swapped sides and Alfie smooshed himself gingerly into the passenger seat. It felt so wrong.

“You can drive, right?”

Fen gave him a look. “Yes, of course. I just had to sell my car.”

He turned the key in the ignition, and the Sagaris shuddered in response—in response to someone who wasn’t Alfie—the needles performing their dance, the engine stirring itself from slumber like a lion. Fen released the handbrake, put his foot down, and the car leapt forward. Then juddered to a bone-jarring, neck-snapping halt.

Alfie actually yelled.

Fen…Fen laughed. Kind of wildly. “Sorry. God. God.”

“Mate. Seriously. Be careful. There’s no traction control.”

“It’s got a bit of a kick.”

“Yeah, she has.”

Alfie was just about ready to call the experiment off when, suddenly, they were moving again, smoothly this time, at least as smooth as the Sagaris ever was. They thundered back and forth across the car park, spinning occasionally wide at Fen’s attempts to corner. Alfie’s hands were clutched white-knuckled against his thighs, but really, there was no need to panic. He reminded himself he’d been exactly the same until he got used to her. All that power and lightness, the way she roared. For a TVR, she handled pretty well. And Fen seemed to know what he was doing. It was fine. It was all going to be fine.

“Can I take her for a spin?”

No. Absolutely not. Never. “Uh.”

“Please? I’m sick of going round in circles.”

No. No. No. “Uh.”

“It’s Friday night. The roads will be empty. I won’t hurt anybody. Or damage your car.”

There were a million things Fen could have said or done that might have made Alfie say yes. He could have looked at him. Or touched him. Reminded him how shitty he’d been in the past. Or of his recent pathetic failure to hang a shower rail. But Fen didn’t do that, which was maybe why Alfie volunteered his agreement. “Yeah, okay. But carefully, right?”

Fen’s smile was moon bright as he careened them out of the car park.

It wasn’t careful. Not by anyone’s definition. But it wasn’t dangerous. Well, not for anything except Alfie’s insurance. And Fen had been right: the roads were pretty clear.

So it was fine. Absolutely fine.

But Alfie was still tense all the way to his toes. He forced himself to look out the window. At the sea and the sky, blurred to the same shade of dark. And that was why, even though he knew every quiver and growl of the Sagaris probably better than he knew his own body, it took him a while to notice they were edging seventy in a forty zone. He yelped out Fen’s name, and the car slowed almost at once.

The look Fen flashed him was utterly unrepentant. He was all gleams. His grin, and the uncertain light playing over his glasses. It would have been so hot except Alfie felt nothing but a faint sense of foreboding. He would have done pretty much anything to make Fen happy—even letting him take the wheel of his beloved car, a privilege afforded to no one—but this didn’t seem to be actually making him happy. Whatever was going on with Fen right now, it wasn’t joy. It was some brittle, sharp-edged thing, like his anger. Another part of his too-suddenly revealed grief.

Alfie seriously wanted his car back. “Think that’s enough for now, eh?”

Instant disappointment. “A little longer?”

God, Fen sounded like a kid at bedtime. So, instead of saying what he meant, which was, No, stop, just stop, and let me hold you again, Alfie found himself agreeing idiotically. “Just”—he cleared his throat—“Maybe take it easy like?”

A nod from Fen, but this time Alfie was keeping an eye on him. Both eyes. And if he’d had any extras, they’d have been on the case too. The dial twitched, always on the edge of too much, too fast, but it was never quite enough that Alfie felt he could say anything.

He could tell Fen was pushing his luck and doing it deliberately. Yet there was nothing Alfie could do to stop it, except be a total arsehole and insist Fen get out of his car. And the problem with that strategy was that Alfie didn’t want to be a total arsehole. Not to Fen. Not ever again.

If this had been comfort driving, Alfie would have understood. He’d done a lot of that himself, when he needed to feel in control or have some space. Not quite travelling anywhere. More like movement where your decisions were simple—left, right, straight on—and yours, and none of them mattered at all. The problem was, though, this wasn’t that. This was something else. Something reckless and a little bit hopeless, like trying to run away from a monster that had already got you. It would have made him sad, if it wasn’t his car, and he wasn’t stuck there in the passenger seat, worried and unable to help.

That was when he realised Fen had been talking to him. “Sorry, what?”

Fen gave an impatient little sigh. “I said, did you ever run Lizard Lane?”

“God, yeah, all the time. Who didn’t?”

“I didn’t.”

Suddenly Alfie knew that he’d been keeping an eye on the wrong thing. He should have been paying attention to where they were going, not what Fen was doing. He recognised the rough, rolling fields on either side of them and the little stone walls edging the road. A road which, incidentally, was rather narrow and had SLOW painted over it in big, white letters. It was rising slowly to a tight turn and a downward swoop. Alfie knew because he had swooped that swoop on many breathless occasions. Once, just once, the hourly bus had come rumbling the other way, and he’d nearly swooped straight through a fence into the ditch beyond. The shock of that moment had been a bright, white flash, transformed almost instantly into hilarity. Because funny was way easier than scary.

“Uh, Fen.”

Nothing.

“Fen, can you slow down?”

The Sagaris growled as they tore over the SLOW sign. Around them, the fields were fuzzing into the sky, choppy somehow like waves.

“Seriously. Slow the fuck down.” He had to shout over the engine.

He’d taken her up to about a hundred and eighty on the track—a loud, hot thrill—and this was nowhere near that. But it was still too fast for this time of night and this road. It was dangerous. Pointlessly, miserably dangerous. As meaningless as a guilty wank over the sort of porn he hated to admit got him hot sometimes.

He wanted to reach over and grab the wheel, but that would be the worst thing he could do right now because it would probably end up flipping them.

So he just had to sit there. Wait for sanity. Or, well, a wall in the face. He kept telling himself it was going to be okay. That they weren’t going that fast. And it was late, so the chance of traffic coming the other way was negligible. And, even if they did spin off the road or hit something, as long as it was a stationary something, they probably wouldn’t die. Minor injuries, maybe whiplash, concussion, or some broken bones at worst. It would total his car though.

Oh, fuck the car.

They crested the hill. Alfie braced himself in his seat.

He was scared. He was actually fucking scared. Which got him really angry. And then came the adrenaline, in a crazy burst like the popping of about ten thousand balloons, making everything louder and brighter and softer and slower and…more, just more.

It was a wrestle round the curve, but they made it, in a stomach-flipping whoosh of speed, about as well as Alfie would have managed it, on this road, in this car, in these conditions. Fen’s hands were pale on the wheel, his touch light, almost careless.

Alfie wanted to shake him until all his teeth fell out.

Then they were gliding along the straight—totally safe—and Alfie was kind of gliding too, bodiless, cold and empty to his fingertips.

“Stop the car. Stop the car right now.” Wow. Was that his voice? It filled up the whole space.

Unfortunately, there was nowhere to stop the car that wasn’t the middle of the road.

So Fen had to keep driving, a faint tremor creeping up his arms.

At last, they came to a sort of lay-by where the side of the road met a gate leading into the fields. Distantly, Alfie remembered this had been a hookup spot. He’d parked here and fumbled with girls, waiting for it to get good, always slightly relieved when his cluelessly groping hands had transgressed some invisible up-or-down boundary and been slapped away.

Kev had told him it didn’t mean anything. That it was basically like the Somme. You gave a little ground, and then took it back again, and then took a little bit more. They’d been studying war poetry that year for their GCSEs, and it had gone to Kev’s head. But Alfie hadn’t particularly felt like waging a war over a couple of inches of some girl’s skin.

It had got easier, later, at university and then after, but it had never really felt right, not until Greg had grabbed his hand at Fire and moved it straight to his dick. No shame, no uncertainty. No fucking Somme. Just sex, pure and simple, and so bloody good.

Fen was sitting there, still as a mouse in the den of a cobra, staring out of the windscreen as if he didn’t dare look at Alfie.

“Get out.”

A twitch. A flutter of hands.

“I said, get out my fucking car.”

“I can’t… Okay… Please don’t… I can’t find the door release.”

Alfie leaned over and pressed the button for him, and Fen undid his seat belt and scrambled out. The grinding of gravel beneath his shoes echoed endlessly in Alfie’s ears.

He got out and slammed the door. Took in a deep, deep breath of very cold air.

Came slowly round the car to where Fen was waiting.

Calm, Alfie, be calm. Don’t yell. Don’t be that bloke.

“What the fuck was that?” And Fen…flinched. He didn’t move or pull away, but he flinched. Which made Alfie even less calm. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

“N-nothing.” Fen was still leaning away from him, his head bowed very slightly, like he was Jesus fucking Christ turning the other cheek. “But, look, can you just back off a bit? You’re really tall when you’re angry.”2

Suddenly, Alfie felt enormous and crass and sort of lumpen, as if he were going to tear through his own shirt like the Hulk. He blundered backwards, trying to be less, well, big. Looming. Everything. “Fuck, I’m not… I’ve never… I’ve never lifted my hand to anyone. Don’t be scared of me, Fen.” His voice cracked, embarrassing even here in the darkness with only one other man to hear it. “Please don’t be scared of me.”

Fen’s chin came up again. “I’m not.”

“I’m sorry I lost my rag, but I don’t understand why you did that.”

“Honestly, neither do I really.”

“So you hijacked my car for no reason?”

“I wanted to feel something that wasn’t grief.” Pushing past Alfie, Fen climbed onto the gate and sat down on top of it, his feet resting on the lower bar.

Alfie watched him, bemused. “What are you doing now?”

“I’m sitting on this gate?”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Well…” He shifted awkwardly. “I thought you wanted me out of your car so you could drive off and leave me.”

“I’m angry, not a total prick.” Alfie stepped after him. Leaned his elbows on top of the gate and stared at the empty field, lightly speckled here and there by starlight, long grass waving restlessly in the faint breeze. He could feel Fen, just the shape of him, by the heat of his body, the angle of leg and arm and hip.

Fen shrugged. “I wouldn’t have blamed you. I deserved it.”

“Don’t be daft, man.”

“I could have damaged your car.”

Alfie pushed off the gate and wheeled round. Either out of instinct, or because he had no choice, Fen parted his knees, and Alfie stepped between them, his hands sliding up Fen’s tight, denim-rough thighs. “I don’t give a fuck about the fucking car. I care about you. She’s got no air bags, you know.”

“You… It… What?”

“She’s got a kerb weight of like a thousand kilograms. No room for air bags.”

“Or traction control.”

“Or anti-lock brakes. If you crash a TVR, you fucking crash.”

“Oh my God”—Fen put a hand to his mouth—“you’re driving a death trap.”

“There’s a simple answer to that.”

Fen’s legs, which had just been resting warmly against his sides, actually squeezed. “You’re going to say, ‘Don’t crash,’ aren’t you?”

Alfie grinned. Nodded.

“Don’t smile at me, Alfie Bell. I nearly killed us.”

The slightest of tugs, and Fen was sliding against him, almost into his arms. “Just don’t do it again. You scared the crap out of me, Fen.”

God, he’d actually said that aloud. Admitted it. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have dared. A few years before that he wouldn’t have cared. But now he did. Not just for the familiar stranger he held, but for Greg, and Kitty, his mam and dad and Billy. For himself, damn it. For himself. Everyone he would love and be loved by in return. And, for the briefest of moments, Alfie felt he had been placed in his universe as carefully as a piece of Lego.

Maybe he really had changed since the last time he’d flown over this hill. Grown up, at least a little bit. Enough to understand what it meant to have something to lose. The last of his anger faded. And whatever it was he felt for Fen—that hopeful wanting, sort of familiar and sort of not—swept over him afresh. Infinitely gentle because of everything he had and everything Fen seemed to have forgotten.

Fen’s head drooped against Alfie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Alfie. I’m so sorry. Now you know why my boyfriend dumped me.”

“Because you crashed his car?”

“No. Because I’m awful.”

“You’re not. Not even a little bit.” Alfie petted at Fen’s hair, which was spilling down his arm, all soft and silky and prickly. “So what was the real reason? Was he some kind of mental case? Taken over by aliens?”

Fen gave a shaky-sounding laugh. “He said I wasn’t who he fell in love with anymore.”

“Wow, that’s harsh. You were just going through some bad shit.”

“Yes, but bad shit changes you. There’s no helping that.”

“You wanna tell me about it? About your mum?”

“Not right now.” Fen reached out a hand, bleached so pale in the moonlight, and ran his thumb over Alfie’s cheekbone. “But…um…I’ll tell you about musicals, if you still want to hear it?”

Alfie’s world had become nothing but this: the dark-drenched hill, the pressure of Fen’s legs around him, the faint smell of flowers. “Course. I wanna hear everything.”

“Well, when people burst into song in musicals, it’s because they’re feeling something so deep and bold and unbearable that words just aren’t good enough anymore. They have to sing. To express that moment and show who they are, even if just to themselves, on an otherwise empty stage. Do you see?”

Alfie didn’t want to disappoint Fen, but he’d never had to think about musicals before, so he didn’t have much context for ideas like this. Even what he’d said earlier—about them being unrealistic—had been something he’d picked up from other people. Most likely he’d been trying to sound clever. And look how well that had gone.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, in a moment of despair. “I’m failing the Pretty Woman test.”3

Fen gave a whoop of pure, bright laughter, catching them both by surprise.

And while Alfie wasn’t mad keen, in general, on being laughed at, this time he almost welcomed it. “What’s so funny?”

“Mainly the idea of you watching Pretty Woman.”

“Yeah, well—” He shrugged, trying not to get self-conscious. “I was a teenage boy. Of course I’ve seen Pretty Woman.”

“I almost hate to ask, but what’s the Pretty Woman test? And does it involve oral sex on a piano?”

“I wish. Uh, you remember that bit where Richard Gere takes her to the opera?”

“I think so…”

“She’s wearing that amazing dress with the”—Alfie indicated swooshy fabric—“and the…” He mimed a V in front of his chest.

“Oh, you mean the red Marilyn Vance? And that’s what you remember about that scene? Dear me, you really were gay, weren’t you?”

“It looked nice, okay?” Alfie squirmed, definitely not blushing. “Anyway, Richard Gere gives her this speech about how some people are the people who get opera and it becomes part of their soul and stuff. And then there are some other people who don’t and that’s it for them. They’re doomed to never have opera in their souls.”4

Fen was laughing again, softly in the darkness, his fingers skating lightly over the tips of Alfie’s hair.

“Now what’s funny?”

“Just you. Talking to me like this. You’re nothing like I thought you’d ever be.”

“How did you think I was going to be?”

“I don’t know. I…I suppose, in a way, you were as unreal to me as I was to you.”

Another thought Alfie didn’t know what to do with, but he was saved from having to come up with an answer because Fen went on, “I’m pretty sure most people find the opera scene pretty romantic.”

“But don’t you think it’s a shitty thing to say to someone when you’re taking them on a date? I mean, what if she hadn’t liked the opera? What was she supposed to say? ‘Oh sorry, dear, it’s just not part of my soul. Wanna bang?’”

“I…I’ve never thought about it. But you’re right.” Fen smiled, his legs still around Alfie and as tight as a hug. “Okay, I promise I won’t think less of you if you don’t like musicals. As long as you promise to stop dismissing them on principle.”

Alfie nodded. “Deal.”

And for a moment, they were silent. Fen tucked his head under Alfie’s chin and seemed relatively content there, his palm warm against Alfie’s chest. “I sometimes wish I was in a musical,” he whispered at last, his voice almost lost in the idle rustlings of the breeze in the grass. “So I could sing things instead of feel them. Everything done with in one epic crescendo. Then dim the lights. New scene.”5

“You’re only saying that because you’re sad.”

That made Fen laugh—a short, sharp, bitten-off sound. “Yes, Alfie, I’m saying it because I’m sad.”

“Yeah, but that’s because you loved her. And that’s…good, right?”

No reply. Just Fen, still and silver in the starlight, staring past Alfie into the darkness. And then, “Mum really got me, you know? When I was growing up, it felt like she was the only person who did.” He raked a hand through his hair. “God, I’m thirty fucking years old. I should be okay.”

“You’ll get there.” Alfie was starting to feel nebulously guilty. He loved his mam and dad, and he knew he’d grieve if—when—they died. But he also knew it wouldn’t be like this, and he couldn’t decide if it made him a bad son. Or them bad parents.

“I know.” Fen sighed. “But it feels lonely without someone in the world who knows who I am. Not just everything I pretend to be.”

Alfie gazed at him helplessly. Their bodies were so close. Yet suddenly Fen was miles away. Like they were both blundering around in the dark, catching only accidentally at each other’s flailing hands. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had that kind of understanding. There were people who cared about him, of course, and people who were close to him, but it was always in pieces—this but not that. He’d never particularly thought of himself as complicated, and he wasn’t. It was just hard to get everything to line up in a way that made sense to other people. Where he came from and where he was, what he had and what he wanted. Like this game of whack-a-mole with his sense of self.

Gay. Northern. Banker.

Partner. Brother. Son.

Why could he always be only some of those things?

“I’m sort of flimsy without her,” Fen was saying. “Tatters to blow away in the breeze.”

Alfie pressed his brow to Fen’s. Stayed there for a moment. “You’re right here, Fen.”

“Am I?” Again, the tightening of small touches, drawing their bodies together. “My dad got my mum, you know, in that same sort of way. Sometimes I think that’s all love is. Understanding, smoothing away your strangeness. Making you part of the world, not separate from it.”

“Yeah.” If Fen noticed the roughness in Alfie’s voice, he fortunately didn’t comment. But it was all Alfie could do not to blurt out the truth, the blunt, ugly, pathetic truth, that he wanted this stuff so much it made his heart hurt. “If you were in a musical right now,” he asked quickly, a bit desperately, “what would you be singing?”

“I…” Fen faltered a moment. “I’d be Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. Played by Julie, of course, not Audrey.”

“Why?”

“Well, Audrey’s gorgeous, but she can’t sing for shit, and Julie Andrews is my big goddamn hero.”6

“No, dork-face. Why whoever it was in whatever it was.”

“Dork-face?” Fen laughed aloud this time. More of a giggle really. Sweet and shameless. “The song I’m thinking of is called ‘Show Me,’ and if I could sing it to you, I wouldn’t have to sit on this gate and make a fool of myself.”

“Make a fool of yourself, how?”

“Well, not counting all the twenty million ways I already have, at least I wouldn’t have to ask you to kiss me.”

“You don’t,” said Alfie, and kissed him. He’d meant to be gentle, gentle with the gorgeous mouth that had yielded so many of its secrets, but the instant they touched it wasn’t like that at all. It was full of teeth and sharp edges and the scrape of Fen’s stubble, and need was a red roar in Alfie’s skin, obliterating everything that wasn’t Fen.

He swung him round, and Fen didn’t even seem to notice, just clung and kept kissing, greedy and a little feral, until Alfie lowered him onto the bonnet of the Sagaris. For a second or two, they were stilled like that, Fen sitting, Alfie standing, their bodies pressed together like their mouths, and even though he was half-mad for more—Fen naked underneath him, clawing, writhing, crying out—he didn’t want this to end either, this quiet moment of nothing more than holding.

He felt like he was on the brink of everything. It made him sort of messy inside, turned on and safe, and strong and weak, and just completely there, the gay-straight, north-south, rich-poor, right-wrong man-boy he was.

Already he was on the verge of begging: Don’t let me go.

Maybe Alfie pushed him, or maybe he didn’t, maybe it was just Fen, but the next thing he knew the kiss was broken. And Fen was lying back against the bonnet between the closed vents, his body arched into explicit invitation by the curve of the car, one arm thrown carelessly behind him, the other still locked about Alfie’s shoulders. Alfie had meant to lean down and kiss him again. But, for a few seconds, all he could do was look.7

Fen in the moonlight, spread beneath him, suspended between giving and taking.

Remembering what he’d said in the hotel, Alfie reached for that outstretched hand, with its straining fingers and its vulnerable, exposed palm, and covered it with his own. Fen’s response was instant: a rough, tight clasp and a moan, equally harsh, flung to the sky. Alfie kissed his shuddering throat, smooth skin and nascent hair, the sharp-tender jut of his Adam’s apple.

And, again, remembering the hotel room, he found some words he could give, so Fen didn’t have to ask for them this time. “Fuck, you’re so gorgeous. I want you so much.”

Something that might have been a whimper. A roll of hips that made Alfie groan.

“More than anything.” He ran kisses to the unfastened top button of Fen’s shirt and slipped beneath to fresh new skin which shivered beneath his mouth. “And since you’re on my car, that’s a big fucking deal.”

Fen’s spare hand was suddenly covering his face. “Oh God, what are we doing?”

“Erm, making out?” He licked the tender dip between Fen’s collarbones. He tasted like starlight: cool and bright and impossible.

Fen made a frantic sound, this tangle of pleasure and reluctance, surrender and resistance. “Alfie, stop, please stop.”

He froze.

It was just like it used to be with the girls he’d brought here. Except Fen’s body wasn’t the Somme—a few miles of dirt he wanted to briefly occupy—it was some sort of…magical island he never wanted to leave.

But he stopped. Of course he fucking stopped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Fen didn’t move. Just lay where Alfie had left him, hiding behind his own arm. “I can’t do this.”

“You mean,” Alfie asked, with what he already knew to be the misplaced optimism of the incredibly horny,8 “on the bonnet of my car?”

“Any of this.”

Turned out, it was way easier to be decent when you didn’t actually care. “So you’ll sleep with me when I don’t know who you are, but not when I do?”

At last, Fen sat up. His hair was a spill of brightness. “It wasn’t about you, then. It was for me.”

“What changed?”

“Everything, Alfie Bell. You must have known this would happen.”

Alfie hunkered down on the road, between Fen’s knees, looking up at him, trying to catch a glimpse of him through a tangle of fingers and hair. “I don’t understand.”

“All your We’ll talk, get to know each other. You must have known I’d end up liking you. You already knew how much I wanted you.”

“I didn’t know. I just hoped. I don’t see what’s so bad about that.”

“Because I’m not in any fit state to deal with it.” At last, Fen lifted his head and pushed his glasses out of the way so Alfie could see his eyes. Hard to read them in the dark, but it was a point of connection, a sort of touch. “I’m…I’m miserable, Alfie. My life’s a mess. And you’ve shown up like something I might have daydreamed when I was fourteen, all interested in making amends, suddenly caring about who I am.”

“So?”

“So where do you think this is going? We head back to mine, or yours, and tenderly make love, while staring deeply into each other’s eyes and feeling naked to our very souls. Then you think, well, isn’t closure nice, and go back to investment banking. And I… What do I do?” Fen’s voice rose, clotted with anger and pain. “What the fuck do I do? The years wasting away, while I’m still here in South Shields, where everyone has left me.”

“Oh Fen.” Alfie reached out to take his hand. There was a brief brush of skin, and then Fen was in his arms, almost knocking him over. They probably looked ridiculous, entangled on the muddy ground, but Alfie didn’t care. Just hugged him tight. And Fen hid his face against Alfie’s shoulders and smothered a noise so full of sadness that Alfie wanted to cry for him.

Even though he never cried. Because a man didn’t, and that was that.

He would have, though. For Fen.

Just then, he would have done anything for him. Risked any hurt, borne any shame.

“We can figure it out,” he whispered into the silk-soft fall of Fen’s hair. “I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of bad stuff. But we like each other. That’s summin.”

“It’s not enough.”

Alfie’s stomach had become this yawning pit of awfulness. “What would make it enough? London isn’t that far—not the way I drive, anyhow—and I don’t have to go back straight away. I could take more holiday and stay with you, and I could… We could… I mean, I know this is just the start. But it’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s good.” That should have been a victory, but it sounded like defeat. “The thing is, I’m just not ready to lose something else.”

“Haven’t you missed a bunch of steps? In the middle, where we…”

“Where we what?” Fen drew back. Gave him one of those bitter little smiles. “You going to fall in love with me, Alfie Bell?”

“I dunno. But keep me around long enough, come to dinner with me, sleep with me, laugh with me, and cry on my shoulder when you need to, and I don’t see why not.”9

Now a stuttering laugh, that might too easily have become a sob. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“What doesn’t?”

“L-love.”

“Well, I’ll admit I’m not exactly an expert, but it seems simple enough to me.”

“Um, didn’t you say that about my shower rail?”

“That”—Alfie gave him a wounded look—“was proper low, man.”

Fen pushed him gently aside and stood. “Will you take me home now, Alfie?”

It was rejection, soft as dandelion seeds, but rejection all the same. And somehow indisputable. After all, what could he say in response except “Yeah”?

The drive back was swift and silent. Fen kept his hands folded in his lap and stared at them the whole way. Alfie did his best to act normal. Which was borderline impossible because he didn’t feel normal. He felt dizzy and confused and raw. Like he’d lost something just when he’d begun to understand how desperately he might need it.

Fen, huddled beside him, seemed so fucking crushed. Which Alfie knew was partly his fault for being pushy and too much and wanting everything at once. Wanting to take care of Fen, to be good for him and to him. Wanting to matter. And instead he’d trampled him and hurt him all over again. They should both probably have been used to that by now. Except the past was blurred—seemed almost to belong to another man, well, a boy, a blind and stupid boy. But this was real, and so was Fen. Fen, and his grief, and his pain, and the twist of his smile, and the deep green places in his eyes where his joy was waiting.

He wished he knew how to change Fen’s mind. To give him just enough hope to take a chance on something Alfie could barely articulate. A second dinner, a third…more than that? Except what right did he have to any of it—even this strange evening, full of kisses and sadness?

He pulled up outside Pansies. Turned off the engine. The click of Fen’s seat belt echoed in the car with some sort of terrible finality. He heard his own indrawn breath.

“I’m sorry, Alfie.”

“’S’okay.”

“I know I was the worst date in the world but—”

“You weren’t.”

“I ran out of the restaurant in tears,” said Fen, deadpan, “and then nearly killed us.”

Alfie grinned. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“Oh stop it. I’m trying to tell you that, in spite of everything, I actually had a really nice time tonight.”

“Me too.”

He waited for Fen to leave but…he didn’t. He was playing with the green band around his finger again, looking anywhere but Alfie. “There’s part of me that wants to say, Fuck it, and invite you up.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m not that selfish. We’ve already established I’m a mess, and, honestly, you’re terrible at casual sex.”

Alfie tried not to panic. He’d always had rave reviews before, but half a year with Greg probably couldn’t compensate for every experience he hadn’t had. First crush, first love, first mutually hesitant fumbles. Probably he’d missed his prime gay years, and now he was doomed. “I didn’t think I was that bad.”

“I didn’t mean the sex. You were…well…it was the first time I’ve felt anything that wasn’t grief for what seems like forever. But when you look at me, I can see you wanting things.”

“Well, yeah, I want to do you.”

“It’s more than that. You know it is.”

“I don’t get it. Ten minutes ago you were freaking out because you didn’t want to lose me, and now you’re telling me I want too much from you.” He huffed out an impatient breath. “I’m a grown-up, y’know. You don’t have to protect me from stuff. If you wanna go to your room, fuck my brains out, and send me on my way, I’m good with that. If you wanna sit down and figure out summin else, I’m good with that too.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Alfie was pretty sure this was a trap, but he had no idea how to avoid it. “Well, yeah, I would. And, honestly, I think you would too. I know I’m not big on musicals and I really like eating meat, but we get each other, Fen. We’re made the same.”10

“Because we’re queer?”

“Because we’re from the same place.”

“Please.” Fen’s lip curled dismissively. “I’m not some boy-next-door fantasy you can escape to at the weekend.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. If you were, you’d have been way nicer to me and your house would always smell of freshly baked bread.”

For a moment, he thought Fen might laugh, but instead, he made a frustrated noise, his hand clenching convulsively against his knee. “But this isn’t my life. This isn’t who I am. I shouldn’t be here, working in a flower shop in the town that’s always hated me.”

“But you are here.”

Fen’s head drooped. “I know. But I…don’t know how to do anything else anymore. How to leave. How to stay. How to go back. How to move forward.”

“And I can’t…” Alfie was going to say help, but he managed to catch himself in time. He knew, he already knew, Fen would hate that. “Hang around while you figure it out?”

“With you here, I might not want to. I might just…” But Fen didn’t say what he might just. Instead, he turned away, offering Alfie only the shadowed outline of his profile. “That was how my mum and dad fell in love, you know. He used to come and visit the shop. Every week on a Tuesday. Except she told me it wasn’t really him she was waiting for. She was waiting for me.”

Alfie was glad for the darkness in the car. It made them a sort of bubble, him and Fen, Fen’s love and grief.

While on some rational level, Alfie recognised that he, too, had probably been planned, decided upon, tried for, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been waited for. Well, except in the most literal sense. His mam had once told him it had been like carrying a fidgety whale around inside her. Billy, typically, had been no problem at all. Slipping into the world like a seal.

Until he’d had to tell them he was gay, he’d always pretty much taken for granted that his parents loved him. But it was family that held them. A pattern of days spent together. The inevitably of ancestry. It was good, though. Important. A lot more than most people had.

But it wasn’t like this. The sort of love that gave you yourself and changed you with its loss. The sort of love you’d cling to, however you could. Even if it meant coming back to somewhere you’d left long ago. To the place it had lived.

“It would be too easy,” Fen was saying, “to end up waiting for you.”

Alfie was quiet then, thinking, the moments squeezing awkwardly past.

“You really think,” he asked finally, “if you make yourself miserable enough here, deny yourself anything—or anyone—that could make you feel good, it’ll be enough to drive you out of South Shields?”

Fen gave a brittle laugh. “Well, it worked before.”

“It won’t work this time.”

“Oh really.” He couldn’t see, but he imagined Fen doing the sneery thing with his eyebrows. “What makes you so sure, Alfie Bell?”

“Because you came back for your mam. And you can’t beat love with pain.”

“Tell that to Winston Smith.”

“That was a very specific case of rats in the face.” A slight pause. “And don’t stare at me. I’m not completely ignorant, y’know. I might not have heard of mineesis, but I’ve read a book.”

A gleam of light caught at the corner of Fen’s eye, and Alfie wondered if he was crying again. Then he reached up and pulled his glasses down. “I have to go.”

“Look.” The words tumbled out of Alfie like he’d dropped them. “Just think about it, okay?”

Fen wouldn’t look at him. Just pushed open the passenger door.

“I’m going to stick around for the weekend. Just in case like.” Arching his hips awkwardly, and nearly doing himself an intimate injury on the steering column, Alfie navigated his wallet out of his back pocket. Dragged out his business card. “Call me if you change your mind. Or whenever. I mean, even if I’m back down south, you can still call me. Next week, next month, next year. Call me and I’ll come. I’ll come wherever you are.”

He flapped his hand hopefully at Fen, who was neither getting out of the car nor reaching for the card. So Alfie leaned over and slid it into the breast pocket of Fen’s waistcoat. Felt the familiar responsive tremor in his body.

That seemed to jar Fen into action. He gave the slightest of nods and slid onto the pavement. Closed the door behind him with a neat click.

And that was that.

Fen was gone: a sleek, slightly dandified figure, lost in the shadows of his mother’s shop.

12

Dear Mum,

I can’t tell if I’ve been very sensible or very stupid. Story of my life.

I keep remembering this time when Alfie Bell got suspended from school. Which should have been the happiest week of my life. Except it wasn’t.

It was Thursday, summer term, one of those wet-hot days—muggy, you’d say—when the sun couldn’t get through the cloud. Everything hazy yellow, the air so heavy with salt it was like breathing sweat. We were in Assembly in the sports hall, which was where we always had Assembly because it was the only room big enough to hold us all.

I hated that room, with its grey walls and its high windows which were tinted grey as well. It was always too hot or too cold. And it smelled of sport and cruelty and old cabbage, though why it would smell of cabbage, old or otherwise, I never understood because you weren’t allowed to take food in.

We sat on plastic orange chairs we had to put out and put away again every morning. That day, there was a butterfly throwing itself against one of those high grey windows. I remember its wings were red and black. And in the silences you could hear it, this slapping sound that shouldn’t have been so loud, but was. I don’t think anybody was listening to anything else. I’ll never forget the smell of the sports hall, and I’ll never forget that sound either. The sound of a butterfly relentlessly dying.1

And, suddenly, Alfie Bell stood up. And then he began blundering his way between the rows. He was going through his ungainly stage, all size and no grace, hands like footballs, knuckles practically dragging along the ground, the biggest boy in school. He’s grown into himself now, so much so that I almost forget how tall he is until I have to stretch up to kiss him. Maybe I shouldn’t like that, maybe it should make me feel small or weak or threatened, but it doesn’t. It’s like I’m reaching for something and he’s giving it to me, and some part of me finds it all so ridiculously romantic, it’s a wonder I’m not flicking a foot back like the heroine in a rom-com. All we need are pastel skies and a field of daisies, and a soaring orchestra to bring us to the credits and happy ever after.

In some other story.

Anyway. Alfie Bell and the butterfly. It seems such a trivial thing, looking back: just a kid, standing up in Assembly. But at that age, school, with its rules and routines and savage hierarchies, is your whole world.

So that kid had changed the world.

Silence followed him, down the rows, down the aisles, across the floor. Though by the time he reached the monkey bars, the headmaster was demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing.

“Nowt,” said Alfie Bell calmly, and began to climb.

When he reached the top, he swung himself out over nothingness, one hand slung casually between the bars, the other reaching towards that grey window.

I still remember the tightness in my heart. I hated him and I loved him and I was so very afraid he’d fall.

Everyone was yelling at him by now, but he still wouldn’t come down. Not until he’d coaxed the butterfly onto his palm and trapped it tenderly beneath his huge, blunt fingers. As soon as he was safely on the ground again, they marched him out of there, so I don’t know what happened next. I just know he got suspended for a week. But I imagine him outside, his hand uncurling to release that red-winged creature safely into the sticky, summer air.

I think Alfie Bell has decided I’m his butterfly. And some part of me desperately wants to be. I would love to be held in his hands, sheltered and made precious, especially now, when I feel so very alone.

The first time I went with him, I used him like a knife or a bottle of whisky. But, truthfully, it was easy, far too easy, to get past the anger and the shame. And that’s what scares me most of all.

I think I’ve half forgotten what it’s like to feel good, so it creeps over me like a spilled secret or a broken promise, this deep, sweet relief that’s as wrong as wrong can be. And how weak must I be to turn in to it so readily? A space of joy as wide as Alfie Bell’s outstretched arms. Is that all my love is worth? After everything you gave me, I can’t even give you a little grief.

I know you wouldn’t want this. You’d want me to be happy and comforted. You’d want me to live my life. But I can’t just carry on, unchanged. There are a thousand places I could hide. But I won’t let you be nothing. You made your choice. And this is mine.

Except Alfie Bell would make it so easy to make different ones. I want so badly the way he looks at me, the way he touches me. I want all of it. The person I remember how to be—just a little bit—when I’m with him. He’s pursuing me, actually pursuing me (or, at least, he was before I turned him down), in this old-fashioned, troublesome, silly, slightly overwhelming way. And I’m supposed to be more sophisticated than this, but I love it. He’s always been like this, this axis pulling the world into shape around him. But now it’s all for me, and it feels exactly the way I used to daydream it would.

How can I let him give me this now?

I keep trying to convince myself it’s about me, not about him. That if things were different, he’d be nothing more than a relic of my adolescence, stripped of all power. Or perhaps it’s not that simple. Perhaps he’ll always be some part of my loneliest self. The boy who hurt me so much I had to make him a fantasy. Except he’s so much more than my memories of hurt. So much more than my silly imaginings. And now that I’m lonely again, and full of hurt, he’s here, and he’s offering me…well, I don’t know exactly. I’m not sure he does either. Except the hope of it is rich as pollen between us.

But the truth is, I’m not Alfie Bell’s butterfly. He can’t save me. I’m lost and wingless, wanting only the shelter of his hands.

Love always,

Fen

13

Eventually Alfie ran out of circles he could drive in, so he went back to the B&B. His room smelled a bit like cabbage, which was probably the fault of that damn flower Fen had given him. He thought about throwing it away, but he didn’t…couldn’t. Just left it sitting there stupidly in the plastic cup he’d nicked from the bathroom.

It was late enough to count as early, but he didn’t really want to get into bed and lie there sleepless in the dark. God knew what he’d start thinking.

He paced about his room in the greyish-orange non-dawn. At least in London, he was always too knackered for this kind of emo shit. Work, play, home, not necessarily in that order, cycling endlessly. Reliably. Comfortably. Maybe it was where he belonged.

He tried to imagine Fen there but couldn’t. Couldn’t see Fen in his gleaming, overdesigned apartment. It would be like putting some bright, wild bloom in a hothouse. But then he remembered that Fen was as much a creature of the south as Alfie was. He probably lived in a bohemian warehouse conversion in Shoreditch—one of those places with exposed brickwork and no dividing walls. Hell, he’d probably shared it with his boyfriend, who Alfie immediately pictured as one of those lacquered London gays who drawled all the time and wore pointy shoes.1

If he kissed Fen in London, would he still taste of the sea?

And why was he even thinking about that? He’d probably never get to kiss Fen again. A realisation that felt like getting his heart ripped out. Alfie slumped into the chintzy chair by the window and, in pure desperation, phoned Greg. Who actually picked up. Because he always did.

“Tell me this is a booty call, Alfredo.”

“Uh, hi. Uh. Not really. Why would you think that?”

“Because why else would you phone your ex-boyfriend at four in the morning?”

“To talk?” Actually, it did seem pretty outlandish. “Shit. Sorry. Did I wake you?”

Greg made a soft, languorous sound like he was stretching. “I haven’t gone to bed yet. I entertained a couple of gentleman callers, courtesy of Grindr, and now I’m watching Diagnosis: Murder.”

Alfie dragged the curtain out of the way and stared at Ocean Road. There was a choppy lightness at the edge of the distant sky, like someone was pulling open an envelope, but without the glow from the kebab shops and curry houses, it was proper dark down there. And quiet too: no traffic, no birds, just the shush-shush of the sea. It was like he was the last man in the North East. You never felt like that in London. There was always somebody else awake. Something else going on. “You should get a job.”

“Why on earth would I want one of those?”

“Because then you’d lead a normal life, so you wouldn’t be up at four in the morning watching crappy TV.”

“It’s a cult classic, darling. Why don’t you come round? The intrepid Dr. Sloan is helping a reporter whose dancer partner has been stabbed at a disco.”

Alfie would have loved to. He would have taken a bottle of wine. Maybe more than one. And Greg would have fallen asleep in his lap. “I’m in South Shields.”

“What? Again?”

“Yeah, people can leave London more than once.”

“I know that. Sometimes I go to Bath to stay in my parents’ house. I just meant…why?”

“I wanted to apologise to Fen.”

Greg made a sceptical noise. “And how did that go?”

“Okay, actually. I mean, he didn’t throw plant water at me this time.” Best not mention the toilet thing.

“So now you’re cleansed and redeemed and can move on with your life?”

“I guess I kind of have to.”

“You don’t sound very happy for a man who has achieved catharsis.”

“Well.” Alfie opened his mouth to explain. Failed utterly. And Greg didn’t press him. Just sat with him for a while, in silence, the soft rhythm of his breath down the line providing a faint sense of connection across the miles between them. At last he found some words. But they turned out to be pretty basic. “I asked him out.”

“Seriously?”

“It wasn’t straight off or anything. Took him to dinner first.”

Greg laughed. “You’re such a romantic.”

“Don’t take the mick, man. I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m not. I’ve always liked the way you just…do stuff sometimes, instead of second-guessing yourself or worrying about what people will think of you.” He was slurring a little, and Alfie wondered if he’d been drinking.

“So you’re saying you admire my commitment to looking like an idiot?”

“I’m pretty sure looking like an idiot is the very definition of romance.”

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

“Put it this way,” said Greg after a moment. “I can’t think of many people I’d be willing to look like an idiot for.”

Alfie found himself staring at his cabbage—the exterior petals had spread, revealing a roselike swirl of dark pink. “He still said no.”

“Because you… Because of your past?”

“Not exactly.”

“What was it, then? Didn’t you click?”

“I wouldn’t have asked him out if we hadn’t clicked. There’s clicking. There’s…lots of clicking. We clicked all over the bonnet of my car.”

“Gosh, you didn’t click me on your car.”

“Greg.”

“Sorry. Sorry. So what happened after you, err, clicked?”

Alfie let out a long breath that sounded more like a groan. “His mam died.”

“Right then?”

“No, no, like over a year ago.”

“Oh phew. I mean, not phew. That’s awful. But less awful than her dying while you were trying to put your dick in her son.”

“That’s not funny, mate. Have some fucking respect.”

He couldn’t see Greg’s face, but somehow he felt him flinch down the line. “I’m sorry. But I don’t see what his mother dying ages ago has to do with you?”

“He’s confused and messed up about it and doesn’t want to take a chance on me on top of everything else. I get it.”

“Awww, sweetheart. Your big romantic gesture came to nothing.”

Well. Yes and no. “It wasn’t really like that,” Alfie admitted. “I kind of wrecked his bathroom and then took him for a curry. That’s not exactly ‘tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’”

Greg gave a lovelorn sigh. “You never quoted Yeats for me either.”

“It was in that Sean Bean movie you made me watch.”

“I bet he’d have wanted you if he knew you were into Yeats.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t help.”

There was a pause. Alfie watched the wavering shadows from the street moving across the sky like an upside-down reflection. There was a little piece of fading moon tucked between the clouds like it was falling out of someone’s pocket.2

He’d almost forgotten he was still on the phone when Greg spoke again. “I’m sorry, Alfie. I really am. I don’t know what to say. I mean, if you were half as into me as you are into this random South Shields guy, I’d never have let you go. Not in a gazillion years.”

A gazillion years sounded like a long time. And Greg sounded like he meant it. But there were lots of things you meant at four in the morning. “What about all the gay firemen?”

“Oh. Them.”

“We have to think of the firemen.”

There was another long silence. This time, it wasn’t quite as comfortable.

“I’m such a fucking idiot,” muttered Alfie at last. “Still making the same fucking mistakes.”

“But you tried. Most people wouldn’t.”

“It’s not that. It’s not about Fen.” There was a needly draught spilling from the place the window met the sill. Alfie’s dad would probably have known how to fix it. Alfie made a half-arsed attempt to push the frame into place with one hand and then gave up. “All my life I’ve been telling myself if I only found the right person, it would all make sense somehow.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Maybe, but it’s bollocks. Finding the right girl was never going to fix the fact I’m as gay as a chaise longue. And finding the right bloke isn’t going to fix the fact that…I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life.”

Greg drew in a sharp breath. “Aren’t you overreacting a bit?”

“Probably.”

“Oh, Alfie, please come home. I’ll wrap you up in my fluffiest blanket, and we can watch the worst movies I can think of and eat ice cream straight out the tub and generally be abject stereotypes. I’ll even give you the best comfort fuck of your life.”

“Uh, ice cream’s good.”

“Okay. I’ve got pralines and cream, dulce de leche, white chocolate raspberry truffle, rocky road, and rum raisin.”

Alfie did his best to smile, because he had read somewhere that you could hear that sort of thing in someone’s voice. “That’s a lot of ice cream to keep on standby.”

“I like ice cream. And sometimes I need comforting. When will you be back?”

What had he told Fen? “Probably Sunday.”

“You’re not going to do anything stupid in the meantime, are you?”

“What sort of stupid?”

“I don’t know. Hiring a mariachi band and standing under his window singing ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’?”

Out of nowhere, Alfie laughed and felt a little bit closer to human again. “I’ll see you on Sunday, okay?”

“Okay.”

He hung up and sat by the window a while longer, his thoughts circling around nothing in particular. Bits of memory, old and new, and Fen, still a little magical, with his rough hands and restlessness. Fragility and fierce eyes.

Dawn had sort of happened somehow, in that invisible way it did sometimes up north, just ever-increasing shades of light until you were getting up and calling it daytime. Everything was still and silver, but he could hear the gulls and the deeper rush of the tide going out. He thought about going down to the beach, just because he could, but he was tired and…and small-feeling and sad.

Stripping down to T-shirt and boxers, he crawled into bed and pulled the covers over him and round him as tightly as he could. And there, in that secret, private darkness, where nobody could see, and nobody would ever know, he absolutely didn’t cry.

Waking up to brightness, he knew instinctively he’d slept past noon. He’d left his phone on the window ledge after talking to Greg, and he went scrambling to get it. Just in case. Just on the off chance.

Nothing.

No messages. No missed calls. Exactly what he’d expected, so why the hell was he disappointed? What a stupid way to start the day.

The day. God. A whole one.

He thought about giving up and going back to London early. But there was no way Greg would want to stay in on a Saturday night, which would mean Alfie would either have to sit around on his own on his sofa of doom, or let Greg take him to Fire or Heaven or Freedom, or somewhere else he wanted to party. And then what? Drink too much, dance like a twat, say no to drugs, and shag some bloke at the end of the night because it was what you did. It wasn’t even as if there was anything wrong with that. It had been pretty exciting at first when Greg had told him he needed to sow his oats, or spread his wings, or whatever. But it wasn’t what he wanted now.3 The taste of a stranger in his mouth. Not after Fen.

It crossed his mind that he could (should) go and see his family. Thank his dad properly for sorting out the bathroom after he’d made such a mess. Except that would involve actually talking to him—looking him in the eye—and yesterday had been bad enough. A hot, nasty feeling churned in Alfie’s stomach, just remembering. Better to be in London, in a careless crowd, where there was neither rejection nor belonging. But that was more than enough moping for one day. He texted Kev to see if he and his missus wanted to go out that night.

Raj? Kev sent back in a minute or two.

Somewhere else? suggested Alfie. And they went back and forth for a bit until Kev came up with another place near the Laygate Roundabout, and they agreed to meet there at seven.

Alfie had expected to be basically miserable, confused and unwanted, and waiting twitchily for the call that wasn’t coming. But, actually, neither his day nor his evening were as bad as he’d thought they might be. He wandered up the road to the Minchella’s, which was the local ice cream parlour and had a bunch of branches scattered about South Shields.4 His dad, who was weirdly into local history, had told Alfie this massive long story5 about how the family had emigrated to the North East at the end of the nineteenth century. There’d been bandits in it, but that was about all Alfie could remember.

The place hadn’t changed since he’d been brought here on summer Sundays for a treat. Well, maybe it was kind of smaller. Alfie could remember sharing one of these grey-leather booths with Billy, and it being infinitely capacious. Now he could barely squeeze into it. But the glitter of the Formica tables was just as bright, just as magical as it had ever been. He ordered a cheese toastie which was a cheese toastie in the most essential sense: very yellow cheese and very strong onion smooshed between two slices of very white bread, and it tasted amazing. If he’d asked for this anywhere in London, it would have been Gruyere and shallots in artisan bread.

Then he had a Coke float with vanilla ice cream, and that was perfect too. Right down to the way the froth bubbled up the sides of the glass. He drank it slowly, faffing about on his phone, trying to ignore the fact he was getting some odd looks. He’d forgotten there wasn’t much of a hanging-out-in-cafés culture in South Shields. If you wanted to sit around in public, you went to the pub like a normal person. If you wanted to look at the internet, that was what your house was for. The people around him were people with purpose: families and their children usually. An old man came in by himself at one point, but he left again once he’d finished his cup of tea. All the same, time slipped away pleasantly enough.

Later he met Kev and his new wife, Lisa, at The Place That Wasn’t The Raj. It was a bit awkward at first, especially since Kev thought it would be funny to start the conversation with “So, are ye still a poofter like?” But, as it turned out, it wasn’t the worst thing he could have said, because it meant Alfie and Lisa bonded over a mutual desire to smack him one. And then it was just like normal: old jokes and old affection, a friendship as familiar and comforting and slightly shabby as a favourite coat.

“So,” announced Kev over mains, “we’ve got some news, haven’t we, pet?”

“Oh aye, you tell him.”

Alfie glanced between them, slightly anxiously. “Tell me what?”

A pause, as if Kev was hoping for a drumroll, and then, “We’re expecting.”

“Expecting what?”

“A bairn, ye doylem.”

“Seriously?” Alfie nearly choked on his naan. “Already?”

Kev looked very slightly sheepish at that. “Well, te be completely honest wi’ ye, we did gerra a bit of a head start. But we was ganna do it anyway.”

Lisa—who Alfie was starting to realise was very pretty indeed, in a dark-eyed, expertly spray-tanned, Newcastle way—glanced anxiously at him. “Promise ye won’t say nowt? I divvent want people te think I’m a slapper.”

“They better not,” said Kev. “Cos it took the two of us.”6

They were kissing now—not making out, just tender, contented kisses. Far more intimate than all the groping and grinding and tashing that Alfie had witnessed over the years.

He took a fortifying swig from his pint. “They’d be able to figure it out, though.”

“Who?”

“Well, anyone able to do basic maths?”

Kev laughed. “This is Shields, man. I’m not worried.”

“Well, congratulations.” Alfie lifted his glass in an awkward toast. “I’m really happy for you. Um, have you thought about names yet?” That was the sort of thing you were supposed to ask, right?

Lisa nodded. “If it’s a lass, I’m thinking either Kate, after Kate Middleton, or Daenerys after Daenerys Targaryen.”

“I like Kate,” said Alfie quickly.

“Fer a lad”—Kev smirked—“I was thinking Kevin had a nice ring to it.”

Lisa punched him in the arm. “Howay, man. I’m not naming wor kid after you. He’s gorra be his own person like.”

“Anyway,” Kev went on, “we were wondering if ye wanted te be the godfather or summin.”

The fork dropped out of Alfie’s hand. “What, me?”

“No, some other bugger. Yeah, you.”

“Well…wow… I don’t know what to say. I mean, yes. Yes, of course. I’d be honoured.”

Once they were done with eating, Kev insisted they go on to the Gutter Ball, to properly round off a Saturday night on the town. The place was actually called the Glitter Ball, and back when Alfie and Kev had been mainstays of the South Shields party scene (such as it was), it had been Venue. The floors, however, were as sticky as ever, the room just as crowded, and the corners equally as grim. And it was still full of fifteen-year-olds pretending to be eighteen and thirty-year-olds pretending to be twenty. Even worse, they were having a Nineties Night, which made Alfie feel far too old.7 Right now they were playing a slightly half-arsed remix of “Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit.” And if Alfie hadn’t been thirty, gay, and living a completely different life, he might have believed he’d gone back in time.

To top it all off, he thought he could probably remember the Eurovision dance, which was not something a man of any age should attempt in a public place. He’d long ago perfected what Greg called the straight-boy shuffle, a low-key, if slightly suggestive, swaying that—when he was younger—had encouraged girls to use him like a prop. And, as much as Greg might deride the technique, it seemed to translate pretty well across orientations. After all, it hadn’t taken long for Greg to start plastering himself over Alfie that night at Fire.

When “Better Off Alone” came on, Alfie threw caution to the winds and danced the way he felt like dancing. He probably looked like an emotionally overwrought buffalo, but he didn’t care. And, while he was vigorously being better off alone, a slinky-hipped boy slipped free from his friends and slinked in Alfie’s vicinity, trying to catch his eye. Wariness, at first. Then curiosity and recognition. He was too young, but he already knew more about himself than Alfie at his age would have had a hope of unravelling. There was a boldness in him that maybe came with that sort of knowing. At last, he circled in close, and Alfie put his fingers in his belt loops and pulled him closer still.

He felt the contact ripple outwards somehow, but they were sheltered by the darkness and the disco lights, and nobody around them seemed to care, least of all the boy, whose breath was hot and eager against Alfie’s throat. He smelled of hair gel and alcopops, and his hip bones ground against Alfie’s as they moved. Awkward fragments of touch, pushing together and pulling apart, never losing that edge of strangeness, which might once have been enticing. But it felt good in other ways too. Nothing Alfie could really have articulated, not with his ears full of Alice Deejay and his arms full of teenager, but some sense of possibility, like a window opened in a too-hot car.8

The boy went up on tiptoes, pressing his skinny body to the length of Alfie’s, and yell-whispered in his ear that he was lush.

Which was flattering.

“Like a porn star.”

Or not so much.

The boy grinned up at him, lip ring flicking pieces of multicoloured light in all directions. “You gay?”

Alfie sucked in a breath of sticky, fetid air. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m gay.”

By the time the song was done, the boy was all over him, wriggly and slick with dance sweat, gazing up at Alfie with glazed and hopeful eyes. “D’ye wanna…?”

Unpeeling him gently, Alfie dropped a kiss on his brow. “Not tonight, pet.”

A flash of disappointment before the lad’s friends swept him away. It didn’t take him long to find someone else to dance against, and there was something oddly pleasing about that—the ease of it. Alfie couldn’t have imagined anything like it when he was growing up.

He left before midnight, alone, and he didn’t mind. The electric gleam of the curry houses and the kebab shops on Ocean Road led him back to his B&B down pavements streaked gold and silver by streetlight and starlight.

The next morning, there was still no message from Fen, so he packed up his stuff in a leisurely kind of way, checked out, and then found himself seized by a weird impulse to visit the South Marine Park before he left. He knew he was stalling, but he decided to let himself get away with it. Took a circuit of the duck pond, which his memories insisted was a vast, shimmering lagoon. But really wasn’t.

And, anyway, it wasn’t just about Fen. After all, it would probably be a while before he was back here. He’d been gone for years before Kev’s wedding—so why was the thought unsettling now? It wasn’t like life in London was terrible. It had its limitations, sure, but so did life in South Shields. In fact, South Shields probably had more. And he could hardly keep avoiding his dad if he lived here.

Eventually, he left the pond behind and wended his way up the terraces, past the empty bandstand to the artificial waterfall right at the top, which a little plaque told him had been recently restored. It was quite a Victorian waterfall: a spill of white silk water falling between stones as neatly stacked as Jenga bricks. Alfie thought he could remember coming here on Fireworks Night, when the water had been lit from underneath with bulbs as bright as jewels, amethyst and emerald and gold, matching the sky.9

But there was only so long he could stare at a waterfall.

It was time to go. Time to get on with the life he was supposed to be living, instead of trying to magic a different one out of sea-foam and salt air.

14

As he was heading back up Ocean Road, his phone rang. Unrecognised number. Probably just a client, right? Fumble. Fumble. Panic. “Hello?” Silence. “Hello?” Silence. “Fen?”

“I…I’m sorry… This is… Alfie, did you really mean it when you said you’d stay?”

“Course. Where are you?”

“Marsden. At the Grotto.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Alfie ran to his car. Like literally ran. Like a maniac. Marsden was only ten minutes down Coast Road, but it seemed like forever with Fen alone and waiting for him. He floored it along Ocean Road, past the park where he’d just been walking, past the lifeboat memorial and the funfair, and the Rattler, where they’d kissed. Between caravan parks and sand dunes and promenades. Another branch of Minchella’s. Another bandstand. And then over the roundabout, up to the flat-topped cliffs, sandwiched between flat green grass and flat grey sky, where the ocean was just a ribbon of blue tied round the edge of the world. Another roundabout, taking him past the bottom of Lizard Lane, yet another branch of Minchella’s, and he was pulling into the car park outside the Marsden Grotto pub. It didn’t look like it was open yet, so he couldn’t use the lift shaft, which meant he had to take the hundred and thirty-two (or was it a hundred and thirty-six?) steps to the beach.

The tide was coming in, but slowly. There was still an expanse of dark, wet sand glistening beyond the shingle, and Marsden Rock itself was standing at the edge of the sea like an elephant going paddling, silver-ridged waves swirling through its caves and crevices.1 Fen was standing on the whitewashed terrace of the Grotto, his elbows braced on the top of the wall.

What was it with this man and his provocative leaning?

Only a little bit out of breath, Alfie hurried over, and Fen turned, his calm lost with his stillness. He was wearing shabby jeans, a washed-out T-shirt with lol written on it, and slim, rimless glasses that simply exposed his eyes in all their stark, bright beauty.

Alfie, in a mess of hope and joy and fear and yearning, stared helplessly at the T-shirt.

Fen looked down at himself. “I’m quirky,” he explained, “and adorable.”

Things to say. There were too many and none at all. And the sea-sharpened chill had left goose bumps all over Fen’s arms.

“You’re cold.” Alfie took off his leather jacket and flung it over Fen’s shoulders.

A blink. The instinctive clutch of hands, to hold the coat in place. “But what about you?”

“I’m a big lad who’s just run down a hundred stairs. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh God—” Fen’s voice cracked with yearning. “Oh, Alfie.”

Alfie stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. There wasn’t even a moment of resistance, just Fen falling against him, soft as the sea, with a small, breathless oh. And fuck, the man was freezing, like a prince in a fairy tale, held captive in a winter prison. Warmth gathered gradually between them. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

“I…I don’t know what I’m doing.” Fen tucked his head beneath Alfie’s chin and hid there. “I just know that I’m tired…tired of fighting and being sad. And I want to be with you.”

The words enfolded him as warmly and tightly as his arms held Fen. They were so simple, yet so shining. He could wear them like wings. And then a sort of panic seized him. Because Fen had sat in some private darkness in a flower shop he didn’t want and waded through grief and fear and uncountable memories of cruelty…for him. For Alfie Bell. Who at that moment felt like the most ordinary man in England. But there they were. With Fen saying I want you. And Alfie’s heart a lump of wet tissue.

“Uh, wow.” Okay, that was crap. Try again. “I mean…thank you. For taking a chance like. I won’t let you down.”

Fen’s lashes glittered in the weak winter sunlight as he looked up. “You’d better not, Alfie Bell.”

It was so Fen—vulnerable and defiant, with laughter lurking deep in his eyes—that Alfie grinned. Put a hand beneath his chin to keep him there, just like that, and tugged him into a kiss. It was a swift, soft thing, just the press of closed mouths and all the promises Alfie hadn’t dared to say.

Afterwards, Fen gave a shaky laugh. “I’m not much of a catch, you know.”

“Well, given that I’m the kid who bullied you at school, neither am I.”

“You’re so much more than that.”

“And you’re so much more than what you’ve got going on now.”

“When you say it”—colour broke out across Fen’s cheekbones—“I almost believe you.”

“You should.” Alfie kissed him again, deeper this time, enough to make himself dizzy on heat and salt and Fen.

“God,” Fen whispered, “I’d forgotten what it was like to feel this way.”

Alfie nudged his nose. “Kissed?”

“Alive, arsehole.” But Fen was laughing. “Normal.”

Once again stripped wordless, Alfie mumbled something that was probably just Fen’s name and held him a little tighter. Earned the reciprocal pressure of grasping fingers against his forearms. A sweet, needy pain.

“And you’re sure we can do this?” Fen asked. “I mean, whatever it is we’re doing? What about…your life? Your job?”

“Do you know the last time I took a holiday?”

“Well, no?”

“Neither do I.” Alfie shrugged. “I’ll have to go back at some point, probably in a week or two. But that gives us time to figure stuff out.”

Fen’s lips curled into a not-entirely-happy smile. “You do realise I’ve been trying to do that for over a year?”

“Yeah but”—Alfie reached for Fen’s hand and fit their palms together, Fen’s rough and dry, and Alfie’s all soft and southern—“you were doing it on your own.”

“Don’t you try to fix me, Alfie. Stay because you want me.”

“Yeah, I’ve learned my lesson about DIY, thank you very much. Wanting to help isn’t the same as wanting to fix.” Alfie tried to steady himself by breathing, but his throat was tight. “And, anyway, I’m hardly one to talk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that… Shit, I dunno. I think about my life, and it should be a great life, cos I’ve got everything I’m supposed to have, except I’m pretty sure I’m not happy.”

“Oh, Alfie. How can you know something like that?”

“Because of how I feel when I’m with you.”

Fen stared at him. “You’re…ridiculous and impossible and I—” He seemed to run out of steam, pressing his body against Alfie instead, as if he wanted to leave the imprint of himself all over him. As if he hadn’t already. And they stayed like that, solid as the cliffs that rose over them, until Fen pulled back again, just a little. “Can we walk a bit?”

“Course.”

The beach was theirs but for the archless rock, the cormorants, and the kittiwakes, so they held hands as they crunched over the sea-smoothed pebbles.

“This was my mother’s favourite place,” said Fen finally.

“Yeah?”

“Yep. She said it was her rock. When I was little, I thought that meant we literally owned it, you know, like our house. I told some of the kids at school, and they were all like, ‘Prove it.’”

“And what did your mam say?”

“That loving something wasn’t the same as owning it.”

They stopped for a moment to look up at Marsden Rock, which was greenish-brownish against the greyish sky, rough and unlovely.

Fen shook his head. “I don’t get it. It’s just a rock.”

“It’s not just a rock, it’s a sea stack.”

“Oh well, in that case…”

“They’re pretty rare, you know, and kind of weird when you stop to think about it. I mean that’s centuries of a particular sort of coastal erosion just standing there like.”

“I’ve never really looked too closely at it. Just in case the tide comes in and I get stuck and drown.” Alfie gave his hand a squeeze, and Fen went on. “I’m a little bit scared of the sea sometimes. It seems so powerful and alien. I mean, look what it did to the rock.”

“Yeah. I remember when the arch collapsed.”

“I liked it more before, when it had a proper shape. Now it just looks like something left behind.”

Somehow, Alfie knew it had to be here and it had to be now. That there could no right time for some questions, but that leaving them unspoken was its own cruelty. He sucked in a breath of air so pure it hurt a little. “Fen? Can I ask…your mam, how’d she die?”

For a while, Fen said nothing. Only watched the waves churning ceaselessly at the foot of the rock. “Well, technically it was because she took sodium pentobarbital.”

Alfie had been expecting something more like cancer. “She wha?”

Fen turned slowly to face him, still holding his hand. The sea and the sky and the shingle and the rough limestone cliffs had bleached the whole world to shades of grey and gold, except for Fen’s eyes, which were the greenest green Alfie had ever seen. “She took sodium pentobarbital in a grey-blue prefab in Pfäffikon while I held her hand, and Dad sat beside her. Apparently it tastes very bitter.” He said it without inflection, his voice a low murmur half lost to the tide. “They sent her ashes to us a few days later, and we came up here and gave her to the sky and the sea.”

Before Alfie could say anything, Fen jerked his hand away, turned, and strode off back up the beach, pebbles and sea-wrack scattering under his feet. Alfie caught him easily enough in a couple of long strides. “You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. I watched my mum die, Alfie. I helped her.”

This was all far beyond Alfie’s experience. He knew assisted suicide was a thing, of course. His grandma, who was living resentfully in a very nice nursing home for which Alfie footed the bill, kept insisting that they might as well just “euthenate her” and have done with it. But this was the first he’d heard of anyone actually going through with it, and he wasn’t sure how you were supposed to react.

At last, he said, “That sounds really hard.”

Fen shrugged. “It’s not quite as peaceful as they tell you. She was coughing in her sleep before she died, trying to reject the barbiturate. Isn’t it strange? The way the body will fight and cling to life, whatever the mind believes.”

“But it must’ve been what she wanted. There’s checks and stuff.”

“Oh, there’s a hundred million million checks. The whole business is a logistical fucking nightmare.” Fen gave a strange, harsh laugh, half-angry, half-sad. “Makes it so easy to forget what you’re actually doing. There’s never a moment when you think, I’m killing my mother. It’s always, I’m trying to locate a notary to sign this affidavit of domicile.”

Alfie grabbed Fen’s elbow and dragged him back, hard enough to make him stumble. “You didn’t kill your mother.”2

“I helped her die. What’s the difference, really?”

Slowly, Alfie relaxed his grip, took up Fen’s cold hands instead. “What are you doing, pet?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing? Being manhandled on the beach, I think.”

“I meant, why are you saying this stuff to me? Do you want me to be all, ‘Oh my God, he’s a terrible person’?”

Fen was shivering, even with Alfie’s coat. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“Hell no.”

“Oh?” There was a challenging glitter in Fen’s eyes now. “Then what?”

“I think…” Shit, what was he thinking? “I think this stuff is really complicated. And I think you must have really loved your mam and that what you did was really brave.”

“I wasn’t the one who died.”

“No, but it’s harder, sometimes, to live with choices that aren’t yours.” Alfie wished he had more than a few ragged images of Fen’s mother. But it was impossible to find her now because his mind kept filtering her through Fen. He thought her hair was a deeper gold, her eyes bluer, her smile less sharp and fragile, but he still saw Fen in her face, and hers in Fen. “How,” he began, “I mean, why did she, y’know, want to? She was pretty young, wasn’t she?”

“Fifty-six.” Fen tugged his hands free, folded his arms, and hugged his elbows. “Early-onset Alzheimer’s.”3

They climbed higher up the beach, back to where the sand was soft and dry beneath the ragged cliffs. Fen found a piece of fallen limestone, salt-pitted almost to the texture of coral and draped with a velvety covering of deep-green seaweed. After he’d touched it to make sure it was dry, he perched on the edge, bringing his knees up to his chin and wrapping his arms around them.

He looked very small. Practically pocket-sized. Like Alfie could pick him up and carry him off.

But he didn’t say that. Just sat down next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and for a while they were quiet, watching the waves until Fen was ready to speak again.

“She hated it, Alfie.” His fingers twisted restlessly, seeking the edges of the piece of wire he wore. “It’s such…such violation. We think we’re so safe and sacrosanct. That who we are is ours. But it isn’t. Alzheimer’s takes it all away.”

“And that was when she decided?”

“Mm-hmm. She said she’d lost enough.”

Alfie reached out, wanting to offer comfort the best way he knew how. But Fen flinched away, drew in a ragged breath, and kept talking. “So I came home, started helping with the shop again and with the…with Dignitas. There’s things you can do, medications that are supposed to slow the progression. There were times when you wouldn’t have known there was anything wrong with her at all. I don’t think we really believed she’d go through with it.” Something like a smile touched Fen’s lips, his voice soft with affection and unshed tears. “Stupid of us. She was always so fucking stubborn.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alfie helplessly. “I just can’t imagine like.”

“It’s okay. There’s nothing to say about stuff like this. Just don’t hate me.”

Enough was enough. Alfie flung his arm across Fen’s shoulders and pulled him in, and after a moment, Fen surrendered to Alfie’s insistent strength. Let himself be held. “How about you don’t be daft? Why would I hate you?”

“Because it’s so painful and messy, and it was the beginning of the end for me and David.”

“Well,” said Alfie, a little too adamantly, “I’m not him.”

Fen turned slightly, untangling wind-stirred hair from the arms of his glasses. His eyes were wild. “Do you really think I did the right thing?”

“If it was what your mam wanted, then yeah.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

“You don’t anymore?”

“No, I do…or I…I don’t know. It’s…” Fen sounded tearful, his words drowned in the wind and the waves. “There’s what you believe, and then there’s how it feels when it actually happens.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

Fen drew in a shuddering breath just on this side of a sob. “But what if I was wrong?4 Maybe I should have said, ‘No, don’t do this’ or ‘I won’t help you.’ Maybe she took it as encouragement that I didn’t fight her. Maybe I made her feel we’d be better off…better off without her.”

If Alfie’d been able to get a word in edgewise, he’d have protested. But he also didn’t want to interrupt. Knew he shouldn’t. Sometimes speaking was like throwing up at the end of a rough night on the tiles: better out than in, even if it was grim in the moment.

“And when I think about it rationally,” Fen went on, “I remember that we all have a fundamental right to choose how and when to die, that we get to choose what happens to our bodies. I believe that. I believe it to my very soul. But she was my mum, Alfie.” His voice broke on Alfie’s name. “She was my mum.”

Then he turned his face into Alfie’s shoulder and sort of cried. Almost tearlessly, breathlessly and silently, his body shaking a little. Alfie held him as best he could and made what he hoped were soothing noises and felt helpless and tender and impossibly moved that Fen would trust him with all this pain.

Eventually, Fen grew quiet again, and Alfie put him back together, tucking his hair out of his way and brushing a few traces of moisture from his cheeks with his thumbs.

It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Fen blinked at him. He looked battered, like a small ship in the wake of a huge storm. And Alfie burst desperately into speech. “I know you said there’s nowt to say about summin like this, but…she wouldn’t have asked for help if she didn’t know how much you loved her. And she wouldn’t have left you if she hadn’t known you’d do alreet.”

“She might think differently now.”

“No, she wouldn’t. She’d see exactly what I do.”

“A complete wreck?”

“Someone strong and true and sad, but whole and real and basically okay.”

There was a pause. And suddenly, Fen made an odd hiccoughing noise perilously close to a giggle. “‘Basically okay’? You’ll turn a boy’s head with sweet talk like that.”

“Oi,” protested Alfie. “I also said other stuff.”

“I know.” Fen managed a smile—weak, but real. “Thank you. For that and for listening. And, oh, everything. I have no idea how you do it.”

“Uh, do what?”

“Make me feel this hopeful.”

For some reason, this made Alfie get all flustered, and they sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the waves wash in and out over the dully gleaming sand.

“Do you want a Murray Mint?” asked Fen, eventually.

“Uh?”

“A Murray Mint. I’ve got a couple in my pocket. Do you want one?”

After everything they’d just shared, the sheer ordinariness of the question was bewildering. And also sort of a relief. Like the world wasn’t broken or spinning out of control, just knocked about a bit before resuming its usual course. “Yeah. All right.”

Fen uncurled and arched his hips off the rock, wriggling a finger into the pocket of his jeans. Now, Alfie told himself, was really not an appropriate time to notice all the lovely ways Fen’s body moved. Eventually, he sat back down and dropped a cellophane-covered sweet into Alfie’s hand.

“God, it’s been years since I’ve had one of these.” He took both ends of the plastic and pulled them taut, untwisting the wrapper and making it crackle.

“My dad somehow gets them. He’s got boxes and boxes. I think he might be some kind of international mint smuggler.”

The taste of the sweet was instantly familiar. Like nothing but itself.

“Oh, Alfie.” Suddenly Fen’s hands were on his face, and they were kissing, Fen’s tongue pressing between his lips, sliding deep inside him until their mouths were full of mint and butter and each other. Fen hadn’t kissed him like that before, as though Alfie was his to claim and savour. It left him breathless, a little shipwrecked, more than a little goofy.

“You know,” said Fen, afterwards. “This is technically our third date.” And when Alfie gave a startled splutter of laughter, he held up his hand and began ticking them off on his fingers. “On our first date, I had messed-up self-harm sex with you. On our second date, I nearly killed us. So I’m continuing the trend by crying all over you and deluging you in ethical quandaries about my dead mother.”

“Hey, there were Murray Mints too.”

“Well, thank God for that. Otherwise you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a complete bust.”

Alfie grinned, stood, and held out a hand. “How about…how about what we did on our third date was go for a long walk on the beach?”

For a moment, Fen just sat there, looking up at him, clear-eyed. “How romantic of us.”

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a yes.”

He came lightly to his feet and slipped his hand into Alfie’s. And they strolled like that awhile, under the shadow of the cliffs and past the rock.

Fen slanted a smile at him. “You look good here, Alfie Bell.”

“I like to think I look good most places.”

“Particularly good here, then. All you need is a flat cap and a wet Labrador.”

“Way to turn a compliment”—he gave it a pause—“into an insult.”

The wind whisked the laughter from Fen’s lips. “It wasn’t meant to be an insult.”

“Hardly sexy, though, is it?”

“I don’t know.” The chilly air had brought colour to Fen’s cheeks. Or some private thought had made him blush. “I’d find it pretty charming.”

They followed a strip of sand between the cliff face and a much smaller sea stack known as Lot’s Wife. The beach was narrower here, mainly sand and clusters of rocks, furry with black seaweed and stippled with barnacles. A much younger Alfie had played among the little pools, occasionally falling into them in his quest for starfish, cockle shells, and mermaids’ purses.

Fen slipped his hand free, stuck his arms into Alfie’s coat—which was far too big for him—and darted off over the rocks, as fearless as a mountain goat. His hair streamed behind him, pink and silver and Rumpelstiltskin gold.

“Fen, if you end up in the water…”

“Then you have my permission to point and laugh.”

Muttering, Alfie scrambled after him. It was, frankly, slippy as fuck, but he managed to avoid falling on his arse, finally catching up to Fen where the pools flowed into the sea and the seaweed was particularly treacherous. A hand reached for him before he skidded right over, and he crashed into Fen instead. He’d forgotten, somehow, the strength in the man, but he felt it now in the shifting muscles of the body that steadied him.

Still holding on, Alfie turned slowly to look out over the North Sea. It was one shade darker than the sky, a cold black mirror, tarnished with spreading streaks of silver. The waves rushed white-tipped to the edges of their rock and swirled past to mingle with the pools, strewing a haphazard treasure path of coral pieces, broken shell, and sea-wrack.

Fen pointed to the damp seaweed at their feet. The strands were spread out like a muted rainbow, black and green, brown and blue. “Sea horse manes.”

“You joke, but I used to think sea horses were actually like horses.”

“So did I.” Fen leaned his head against Alfie’s shoulder. “I was really disappointed when I learned they weren’t. But then my mum bought me this book full of these colour photographs of sea horses, and I fell back in love with them. They’re so ridiculously beautiful. Strange little rainbow creatures.”

“I thought they were sort of yellowy grey?”

“No, no, they come in all sorts of colours. And there are sea dragons, which have these long, floaty tendrils. And when they mate, which they do for life, they dance and hold tails.”

“If I had a tail, you could hold it.”

Fen took his hand again. “I’ll pretend it’s your tail.”

“I’m not much of a dancer though.”

“But the dancing is lovely. They sort of twist about each other…” Fen twisted. “And move their bodies together…” Fen moved. “And then they ki—”

Alfie kissed him. And was so distracted that he didn’t notice the wave breaking over their rock until his feet were doused in seawater, astonishingly cold in contrast to the heat of Fen’s mouth. He leapt back with an undignified yelp, pursued by the tide and Fen’s sweet, sudden laughter.

He beckoned. “C’mere, you.”

Fen came, still laughing, the spray shining on the edges of his hair, sleek as a selkie about to shed its man-skin and disappear into the ocean.

“I thought you said you were scared of the sea.”

“Haven’t you noticed? I’m quite interested in things that scare me a little.”

They left the rock pools and made their way back to the cliffs, where a series of dark, rough-edged openings led the way into a shallow network of caves.

“When I said I like things that scare me a little,” said Fen, as they got closer, “I didn’t realise you were going to take me into a dark cave.”

“Uhh—it’s a very nice dark cave?”

“I bet you say that to all the boys.”

They ducked beneath the archway into the first of the caves. The sea had hollowed out an intricate cavern of pillars and passageways, where the light glistened green and gold on the damp, wave-smoothed walls. The floor was small pebbles, larger chunks of limestone, and the occasional shining, saltwater pool. Spotting a flash of colour amongst the grey, Alfie stooped and picked up a piece of sea-glass, as green as Fen’s eyes. He dried it off and then winced. What was he doing? Collecting shit on the beach like a twelve-year-old.

But Fen was smiling at him. “I love sea-glass. I have jars and jars of it at my parents’ house. I keep thinking I’d like to make jewellery out of it, but that takes, you know, actual skill.”

“I bet you could learn.”

“It’s finding the time. Or, rather finding the right time. I was always too busy before. And if I started now, it would be the beginning of the end. I’d be basket-weaving in the local community centre by Saturday.”

Alfie grinned at him. “Well, here. For your collection.” He held out the sea-glass, and Fen took it, tucking it into the pocket of his jeans. And then Alfie felt like an idiot. Because he’d just given him a bit of broken glass. As a present. “Uh…yeah…anyway, what do you think of the cave?”

“It’s a cave, Alfie.”

“Yeah, but you know about Jack the Blaster, right?”

“Some eighteenth-century weirdo who blew open the caves near the Grotto so he could live in them with his family? Yeah, I’ve heard that story.”5

“Well, this is one of his caves. Isn’t that cool?”

Fen twitched an eyebrow. “I’ll give you slightly interesting. Cool is pushing it.”

“You really don’t care?”

“About the history of a place I spent most of my life being abjectly miserable in? Not really, no.”

“Shit.” Alfie’d ruined everything already. With his stupid big mouth. And his stupid big feet, which were in his stupid big mouth. “I’m really sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

He must have looked as bad as he felt because Fen relented. “It’s fine. How do you know about this, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s my dad. He really loves this stuff. Shields pride and all that.”6 Alfie tried to ignore the scratchy, anxious, picking-at-a-scab feeling that came with remembering his father boring him with these very stories. “Just count yourself lucky I’m not trying to tell you the history of the lifeboat.”

Fen stepped past him, moving deeper into the cave, the crunch of his footsteps over the pebbles echoing around them. “I’ll let you into a secret.” He cast a look over his shoulder that made Alfie’s heart flip like a starfish. “If it was you doing the telling, I might even like the history of the lifeboat.”

“Oh yeah?”

Following him round the edge of a smooth limestone pillar, Alfie caught him by the shoulder and turned him gently into his arms.

“Yes.” Fen sounded a little breathless suddenly. “Why don’t you try it?”

Alfie pushed him back, one step, then another, until he had him trapped against the pillar. “Are you sure you’re ready? It’s actually pretty controversial, you know.”

Fen tilted his head back to meet Alfie’s gaze. The shadows swallowed the green from his eyes, leaving them dark and wide and slightly hazy. “I think I could handle it.”

“Give me your hands, then.”

And he did. No hesitation at all, crossed at the wrists, waiting for Alfie to lift them. Which he did. Over Fen’s head, cradled against the palm of his hand so the rough edges of the stone wouldn’t hurt him.

Fen’s shuddery sigh echoed in the cave until it seemed to be everywhere around them. All his pleasure and trust and wanting.

“So the first lifeboat,” Alfie whispered, “was actually designed by some bloke called Lionel Lukin in 1780-something, but nobody gave a fuck.” He got in close, bringing their bodies together, and kissed his way along the curve of Fen’s jaw.

Fen turned his head to give him better access, writhed a little, and moaned.

“But there was this massive shipwreck in like 1789, I think? This ship—the Adventure it was called—was stranded off the coast of South Shields really close to shore, but nobody dared go out in the storm to rescue the crew.” He followed the tendon down Fen’s neck to the soft, sleek places below, licking salt and the taste of Fen from the hollows above his collarbones.

Fen’s cock was pressing hard and hot against Alfie’s leg even through two layers of clothing. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this to me while you’re talking about shipwrecks.”

“It’s educational.”

“I…I probably won’t remember any of it.”

“You’d better. There’s going to be a test later.” Alfie took a leisurely journey back up to Fen’s lips and lingered there awhile, kissing the edges of his smile, learning the texture of the crevices, the tender corners of his mouth. “So after the shipwreck…”

“You’re really doing this, aren’t you?” Fen fell back against the pillar with a groan that was half torment, half laughter, his body all surrender.

Which didn’t do much to help Alfie retain his grasp on local history. “Shit,” he muttered. “You’re so gorgeous.”

Gorgeous, and somehow, miraculously, his. And suddenly, there was a knee gliding purposefully up the inside of his thigh. He gave an undignified yelp, every nerve in his body jumping to attention, his cock at the head of the parade.

Fen smiled at him sweetly. “What was that about a shipwreck?”

“Fuck the shipwreck.”

Alfie tried to kiss him, but Fen jerked away, hiding his face against his arm. “No, no, Alfie Bell.” He sounded pretty muffled and also like he was laughing. Cheeky little bastard. “Do tell me all about lifeboats.”

“Had competition,” Alfie growled. “Wouldhave won. Or maybe Greathead. Nobody sure. The end.” Since it was all he could reach, he nuzzled into Fen’s cheek.7

“Wait.” Fen turned so fast their mouths nearly collided. “You’re seriously telling me the lifeboat was built by two guys called Wouldhave and Greathead?”

“Yeah.”

“They should have fought crime.”

Whatever dodgy sex and local history–based game he’d accidentally started, Alfie was pretty sure he was losing. Fen seemed remarkably comfortable for a man standing on one leg in the middle of a cave with his wrists trapped above his head, and any second now, Alfie was going to rub off against him like a teenager, and probably come like one too.

It had never been like this with girls—he’d always been so gentlemanly and considerate. Which probably said a lot about being gentlemanly and considerate, now he thought about it. Except it hadn’t been like this with Greg either. He was fun and sexy and liberated to the point that Alfie sometimes wondered if maybe he could do with being a bit less comfortable, but Fen was…Fen had this magic. It wasn’t just that he was pretty—because while he would definitely have launched a few rowboats, a thousand ships would probably have been pushing it—it was just sort of everything. How his sharp eyes got all soft and sultry in pleasure. The scent of his hair and the taste of his skin, the salt and the sweetness of him. The way he offered his mouth and throat and hands to Alfie. The trust of it.

Right. Control. Alfie had that. Somewhere. He gently nudged the trespassing knee out of the way, and shoved his own between Fen’s legs, spreading them wide. Some of Fen’s mischief fled, and he made a soft, helpless sound. Just like at the hotel room, only this time there were no secrets, and the past was less important than now.

Fen’s hips stuttered, pleading and demanding at the same time, and Alfie reached down to caress the length of his cock where it pressed against his jeans. That made Fen gasp and squirm, and Alfie didn’t know if he was trying to pull back or get closer.

Probably Fen didn’t either.

“Alfie…someone could…someone could come.”

“That’s the plan.”

A strange noise, caught between a laugh and a moan. “I can’t believe you went there.”

“Look, there’s a pillar in the way and nobody for miles. I won’t let anyone see you.”

“They’d probably call the police… Oh.”

Flicking open the button of Fen’s jeans, Alfie carefully tugged the zipper down.

The sound ricocheted wildly, more than slightly suggestive and far too loud.

“And”—Fen added, thrusting himself clumsily against Alfie’s waiting hand—“at this point, I probably wouldn’t care.”

Alfie fumbled his way past denim and under boxers until he found skin. God. Somewhere Fen was warm. So fucking warm. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen.”

“Y-you’re jerking me off in a cave. Something bad is already happening.”

His hand stilled. “Good bad, right?”

“Yes. God yes.” Fen wriggled impatiently, his trapped wrists grinding the back of Alfie’s hand against the pillar. It hurt a bit, but that was okay. Better than okay. It was perfect. Rough and right and perfect, just like Fen. “Really good bad.” His hips twisted, shoving his cock against Alfie’s palm like he was trying to fuck it.

From there things got frantic. Hopeless. Wonderful. Alfie’s hand. Fen’s cock. Their mouths. A tangle of kisses and gasps and muffled moans, and the sound of skin moving against skin. Fen’s head thrown back against the pillar. A drop of sweat gliding down his throat, pristine in the half-light. And Alfie, desperate, a little bit dizzy, a little bit shocked. Because he loved Fen like this, so hot and straining, and lost and found, and his. He still smelled a little bit of flowers and tasted a little bit like salt. And the words scattering at their feet with the shells and sea-glass were yes, and oh, and God, and yes, and please, and that last one was maybe Alfie not Fen, because he wanted it so badly, Fen’s pleasure, not taken but given, and nothing between them but this, and the things they chose to build together.

A shudder and a cry, and it was over, a flood of fresh warmth against Alfie’s palm and a white splash across the pebbles. And Fen, flushed and breathless and shaking. And beautiful. So ridiculously fucking beautiful. Alfie hastily let go of his hands. Fen winced a little as he lowered his arms, but before Alfie had time to feel bad, they were thrown around his neck, and he was being pulled close for another kiss. Tender this time. Endless. A world spun from a moment. Like one of those snow globes Billy used to collect. Blackpool. Edinburgh. Windermere. Alnwick. Though he couldn’t imagine there was much of a market for this: two men lost in a kiss.

At last, they parted, Fen pressing his cheek to Alfie’s for a moment. Then, “Oh God, I’m a mess.”

“I told you, I don’t think you are. We’re not doing anything bad here.”

Except now Fen was laughing. “No, I didn’t mean… I meant…literally. I’m covered in…well…”

“Oh right. Whoops.” A pause. “I think there’s a Kleenex in my jacket pocket.”

“You’re a classy man, Alfie Bell.”

They found, with a little difficulty, a scrunched-up, sorry-looking tissue. Fen cleaned himself up and zipped up his jeans. Alfie crouched down by one of the small pools and washed his hands. Then was suddenly awkward. Didn’t quite know where to look. He’d basically just attacked Fen in a cave. Unable to keep his hands off him. That was the sort of thing teenagers did. Not grown men who had access to cars and homes and beds.

Fen was waiting by the entrance, smoothing slightly shaking hands over his thighs. He had a dazed, just-shagged look, all ruffled hair and swollen lips, and Alfie felt right again. Filled with a kind of possessive warmth. Because he’d done that. To Fen. For him. With him.8 Like a story they were telling in touching.

“You okay?” he asked.

Fen glanced up, half smiling. “Very much so.”

His shoulder nudged Alfie’s upper arm, and they leaned against each other a little. The sky was whitish now to match the tops of the waves and backlit by the sun to a smooth gleam like somebody had been polishing it.

Alfie stared out into the distance, Fen warm at his side, and felt so strange that it took him a moment to realise he was happy.

Which made him remember he had a job and a life that was supposed to be happening somewhere else. And Fen didn’t belong here any more than Alfie did. His heart flinched with the anticipation of pain, and he ignored it. Ignored it.

“Tide’s coming in,” he said. Which wasn’t what he meant at all.

Fen nodded.

“Sure you’re okay?”

“Just a little tired.”

Alfie couldn’t help himself. “Did I wear you out?”

“Hah, no. I’m just not sleeping very well.”

There was a secret to sleeping, and it was working a fourteen-hour day. Alfie tended to fall into unconsciousness like he’d been hit with a hammer. But he suspected there were better strategies. “Want me to run you back?”

Tuck you in? Maybe not.

“Would you?”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.”

“Thank you.” Fen smiled up at him. “I’d like that.”

And Alfie felt all weird again. A little bit breathless. Like he couldn’t stop grinning.

15

They didn’t talk much on the drive back, but it was an okay kind of silence. Alfie pulled up outside Pansies, and Fen pushed open the door. Hesitated.

“Um…thank you. I mean for everything. For staying and listening and…wanking me off in a cave.”

Alfie grinned. “Anytime. When can I see you again? Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be working.”

“Can I help out?”

“No.” There it was—that stubborn pride, still burning in those tired eyes. “And please don’t threaten me with any more DIY.”

“Can I see you after, then? I could take you out again?”

Fen glanced away, pink shading the crest of his cheekbones. “Or we could stay in?”

“Works for me.”

“Or”—Fen had one foot on the pavement, but still seemed reluctant to get out of the car—“you could just come up now. I mean, it won’t be much fun.”

“Sounds tempting.”

Fen drooped. “Oh God, I just don’t want to lure you up under false pretences.”

“I’m teasing, man. I’m not expecting a six-course dinner and an orgy.”

“I know. Honestly, I just want to fall asleep in your arms. Which is simultaneously selfish and pathetic.”

“I would love for you to fall asleep in my arms. Now stop dithering and get your arse out the car.”

Fen got his arse out of the car, and Alfie locked up. Followed him through the side door and up yet another set of rickety, dusty stairs. As soon as they reached the flat, Fen made a strange yelping noise and dashed into the living room. It sounded like he was fighting somebody in there, but it turned out he was only trying to tidy it up. When he realised Alfie had come in behind him, he whirled round, a saucer of cigarette ends in one hand and an LP of A Little Night Music (London cast recording) in the other.

“I’m sorry,” he said helplessly. “My house is a mess as well.”

Alfie took the saucer and the LP, put the LP back on the nearest pile, and dumped the saucer in the already-overflowing kitchen bin. “It’s okay.”

“I hadn’t really noticed how bad it had got. And I’m not really a smoker. I just…I don’t know.” Fen’s voice had that sharp, brittle quality it got when he was upset, and trying to pretend—or convince himself—he wasn’t. “It’s weird, suddenly seeing through someone else’s eyes what your life has become.”

“I get it. You should see my place.”

“Is it a mess too?”

“Uh, no, sorry. But it kind of looks like a science lab. I have this haute couture sofa that’s too uncomfortable to sit on. And a stunning view of a city I don’t really like.”

Fen smiled one of his odd, thin little smiles. “Oh, this is a fun game. At least you have a place. I’m in storage above a flower shop because the only alternative would be to move in with my dad. A thirty-year-old man living with his father. It’s sexy stuff, Alfie Bell.”

“It’s not a competition.”

“I guess not.” Fen hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, looking up at Alfie from under his lashes. He’d only ever seen girls do that before. But this wasn’t girlish. Not even a little bit. “Take me to bed?”

“This way, right?”

Fen nodded and followed him down the corridor and into the bedroom. It was just like it had been when Alfie had accidentally blundered into it before: crumpled sheets, stacks of books, and piles of clothing. The curtains were closed, but thin enough to admit a wash of pale yellow-grey daylight.

“Well,” said Alfie, “here we are.”

Fen’s eyes danced over him. “Are you intending to stay fully clothed?”

“Not if you aren’t.”

A slightly clumsy shrug and Alfie’s jacket slid off Fen’s shoulders, flumping onto the floor. It wasn’t a striptease by any stretch of the imagination, but the sudden revelation of Fen’s bare, gilded arms was the most erotic thing Alfie thought he’d ever seen. He wanted to stretch him out and lick him. All the way down, from wrists to ankles, and back again.

But Fen was scowling. “You don’t look very naked to me.”

Five seconds later, that problem was solved.

“Oh,” whispered Fen, staring at him. “Oh.”

It felt as real as a touch, as any other sort of claiming, warmth sweeping across Alfie’s skin in answer. And then Fen did touch him, following the thick black swirls of Alfie’s tattoo with unsteady fingers. “You are fucking unreal, you know that? By rights, you should be sprawled on a rock in nothing but a pair of”—Fen’s eyelashes flickered—“straining CK boxer briefs.”

“Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

Fen glanced down, then hastily not-down, then off to the side, blushing a little. “Maybe.”

Alfie was sort of into the way Fen looked at him. But it made him unexpectedly shy at the same time, like it stripped him a bit more, a bit deeper. “It’s just, y’know, bones and muscles and stuff.”

“And a hot-fudge sundae is just ice cream and chocolate sauce and stuff.”

Alfie gripped the inch or so of flesh at the top of his hips. “Yeah, but look at this.”

“So?” Fen’s hand slid over Alfie’s, then over his skin, his thumbs brushing the ridges of his abdominal muscles.

“I want one of those…” Alfie shaped a V with his hands.1

“You’ve kind of got one.” Fen’s fingers were almost but not quite ticklish, and a little bit cold, as they traced down the groove of Alfie’s obliques.

“It’s meant to be more defined. But I think I’d have to stop eating food. And I like eating food,” he added plaintively.

“Please don’t stop eating food.” Fen looked up, smiling a little, but gently. “I heard somewhere you need it.”

Suddenly Alfie noticed something important. “Hey, why am I the only one with my clothes off?”

“Because you distracted me with your hotness.”

He coughed to conceal his stupid, giddy pleasure.

“And if you have a problem with it, there’s a very simple solution.”

One of Fen’s wicked glances was invitation enough, and Alfie was on him like some kind of wild animal, pulling him out of his clothes. And Fen let him, smiling and shivering a little, sometimes trying to help, so that their hands got all tangled together between buttons and fabric and skin.

At last, Fen was naked except for a single sock that had somehow been overlooked in the chaos. He glanced down at himself and back up at Alfie, shrugged, and…twirled? It was the most ridiculous thing Alfie had ever seen. Also maybe the most beautiful. A one-socked man pirouetting and laughing in a spill of dirty golden light. Fen finished with a flourish, head thrown back, arms extended, gleaming everywhere, from the tips of his fingers, all the way down.

Alfie gazed at him, entranced, bewildered. Was this something else he’d missed in his years of not-gayness? “What are you doing?”

“Well…you know. Naked in socks is just about the least sexy thing in the universe. I was trying to distract you so you wouldn’t notice.”

Like Alfie would have cared about a sock when there was so much else to be looking at. He’d seen Fen before, at the hotel, but back then he’d just been a hot angry guy Alfie had sort of accidentally pulled. He hadn’t been Fen. And now he was so much Fen it was almost too much. Leaving Alfie dazzled, and worshipful, and dizzy with lust. Trying not to make too big a deal out of it, in case Fen thought he was weird.

But, fuck, he looked so good. Effortless in his nakedness. Carelessly gorgeous. Lean and strong and glinting gold. All the mysteries of him laid bare to Alfie’s gaze.2 The long muscles of the legs that had enwrapped him. The tough sinew of the forearms that had strained beneath his touch. The knots of his knees and ankles, the bouquet of small bones that met at his wrists. The edges of his clavicles, his pelvis, the vulnerable places—throat and flanks and inner thighs—where his skin seemed impossibly tender.

Alfie wanted to touch, to taste, to be with him and inside him. To know him completely.

Their secrets spilled together, shared, in a moment of skin.

“You daft bugger.” He put a hand on Fen’s chest and shoved him down onto the futon. “I’d find you sexy if you were covered in socks.”

“What if I was wearing one massive sock?”

“Like a onesie?”

“Yes. A socksie.”

He reached out and tugged the sock from Fen’s upraised foot. Brandished it for a moment—ta-da—then tossed it over his shoulder. “You’ll have to work a lot harder than that to turn me off.”

Fen smiled, a little shyly, and held out his arms, and Alfie fell into them, like he’d been waiting for it all his life. It was such a simple thing, the closeness of two bodies, but right then, it was everything, everything he’d ever wanted. And having it—even if it was just a taste, a memory in the making of a thing that was probably far too complicated—made him feel awkward. As though he might break if it wasn’t for Fen wrapped around him like a scarf in winter, his legs pressed hard to Alfie’s hips, holding him tight.

“You’re sure this is okay?” Fen asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I can’t really see what you’re getting out of it.”

“I’m getting to be with you.”

“While I’m unconscious.”

“Well”—Alfie smirked into Fen’s neck—“you’re a lot nicer that way.” Teeth nipped sharply at his earlobe. “Not helping your case here.”

Fen wriggled an arm free and pulled off his glasses, tucking them by the side of the mattress. Then he unbunched the duvet and dragged it over them. In small, instinctive movements, they untangled and retangled, finding ways to fit together. There was a bossiness, somehow, to Fen’s cuddling. He burrowed right in. Got a knee between Alfie’s legs. Curled his hand possessively over a hip. And Alfie simply let himself be arranged. Lost himself to heat and skin and the intimacy of a heart beating next to his own.

“God, you give good hug, Alfie Bell.”3

He cupped a hand round the back of Fen’s neck and slowly slid down his spine, feeling the muscles yield beneath the pressure of his palm. “Shhh.”

The first warm flush of sleep crept over Fen like sunrise. His body grew lax, then restless, and then quiet again beneath the slow, steady sweep of Alfie’s hands. His face, without glasses or grief or some other animation, looked almost unlike him. Too empty, too open. Profoundly naked and fairy-tale pretty, the tips of his eyelashes glinting against his cheeks, and his mouth a waiting kiss. And Alfie was staring. Like some kind of creepy bastard. He snugged himself into the covers and closed his eyes. Listened to the rhythm of Fen breathing. Breathed in the scent of his skin…

And must have dozed off in that pool of shared heat and bodily closeness because when he opened his eyes again, the light had thickened like honey and Fen was a boneless sprawl, half on top of him. But Alfie’s waking seemed to rouse Fen somehow, and he jerked up, cracking Alfie soundly under the chin with the top of his head.4

“Oh God, oh fuck, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” Fen pulled back, blinking, and batting not too soothingly at Alfie’s jaw.

“Yeah but”—Alfie caught his hand—“I might change my mind if you punch me in the face.”

“Sorry.” Fen shook a tangle of hair out of his eyes. He looked mussed and sleepy and confused and, frankly, adorable. Then suddenly he was staring at Alfie’s hand, still wrapped around his wrist, and something hot and shuddery ran through his whole body, so strong that Alfie felt it too, like their skin was water and where they touched made ripples. Fen’s lips parted, but all he said was, “Oh.” A little bit shocked, a little bit…not.

Alfie let go as soon as Fen tugged. Let him wriggle away and flump into the space beside him.

For a moment, neither of them said anything, Alfie staring at the cracks on the ceiling, Fen idly running his own thumb over the place where Alfie’s hand had been.

“Fen?” he asked.

“Mmm?”

“Why do you like it when I…you know…when I hold you?”

“Because you’re like a big, muscular, partially erect teddy bear.”

Alfie laughed. “No, I meant pinning your hands and stuff.”

“Oh. That. Um.”

“I mean,” Alfie added hastily, “it’s totally okay that you’re into that.”

There was another long silence.

“Just with you, Alfie.”

Was that a good thing? He wasn’t sure.

“I mean,” Fen went on slowly, “that first time, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, so it didn’t matter what I did. But I think I sort of knew even then that you wouldn’t hurt me, so it felt…safe. Yes, that’s it—it felt safe to be a little bit powerless with you.”

It was maybe the bravest thing Alfie had ever heard. And he felt entirely unworthy of it. Too aware of all the ways he was cowardly.

Next thing he knew, Fen had tucked himself in tightly against Alfie’s side, face pressed against his shoulder. A few strands of hair were stuck to Alfie’s neck. A little bit irritating. But he didn’t mind. They made it real. The closeness of Fen. “I’m so sorry I was a dick to you after.”

“I deserved it. I sort of wish you hadn’t run off, but—”

“Not that after. Before.” Little more than a whisper, the words half-hidden in Alfie’s skin. “You know, making you beg and all that nonsense.”

As it happened, Alfie had almost forgotten. He had a vague memory of something like that, maybe, but mainly what he remembered was the hot, rough clasp of Fen’s hand around his cock. How amazingly good it had felt. “I guess I was too turned on to care.”

“Honestly, at that point, I just wanted to make you feel good. But I was supposed to be using you.” Fen gave a mortified little squirm. “So I think I tried to embarrass you. I don’t know. It was awful.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He slid his palm soothingly down Fen’s flank. It was too sleek and angular to be much of a curve, but it was a shape, a shape he could follow and learn, a shape that felt good under his hand. The skin there was eggshell smooth, pulled taut over an intricate web of bone and muscle, human and real and perfect.

Fen pressed into his touch, like a cat in a sunbeam, making a noise that sounded about as close to a purr as a human could manage. But then he rolled away, turning Alfie fully onto his back and settling over him. He wasn’t heavy, but it was still a surprise somehow: all that supple strength pressing him down. The heat of it. “I still want to make you feel good though.”

Alfie drew in a sharp breath. This was weird. Not bad weird exactly. But he was startled. And he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “Um, okay.”

Wow, that sounded unenthusiastic. He would have tried again except Fen sort of leaned over him, into him almost, and did something with his hips that was even weirder for Alfie than it had been before. He was hot and cold, and a little bit fearful, and a little bit wanting. But while he was worrying about it, his thighs slid open under Fen’s, like his body was okay with stuff his mind really wasn’t ready for.

“You know,” murmured Fen, moving sleekly between Alfie’s legs, “you ask a lot of questions.”

“In general?”

“About sex.”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to. There’s like podcasts and stuff.”

There was a pause. Alfie got the feeling Fen was trying not to laugh. “Alfie Bell, are you trying to learn how to be gay from podcasts?”

“Well. Yeah. How else am I supposed to figure this stuff out?”

“God, you’re so fucking adorable, I can’t even. But you know there’s no such thing as the Queer Pope, right?”

“The what?”

“I mean nobody—not even people with podcasts—get to decide what queer men are like or how they fuck. You can do that for yourself.”

Alfie hadn’t actually thought about it in those terms. He’d always assumed he was behind the gayness curve. Held back a year in gay school. “I guess. But honestly it was kind of a major fucking revelation to me that you could just have a straightforward conversation about sex and everybody goes home happy.”

“That’s not a gay thing, Alfie, that’s a human-being thing. Men can be just as confused and cagey as women.”

“Maybe, but I hadn’t realised you could just ask. I was too busy trying to figure out what I should be doing to pay attention to, y’know, the actual person I was doing it with.”

Fen went down onto an elbow, his free hand stroking lightly over Alfie’s cheek. “God, you’re sweet.”

“I am not,” protested Alfie, appalled.

Which made Fen kiss him, his mouth full of laughter. “The fact remains,” he said, pulling back, breathless, “you took good care of me, even when I was being awful to you. So that means it’s my turn.”

“Er. Does it? Is it?”

“Mm-hmm. I’m going to blow your goddamn mind.”

Fen pressed his mouth to a strangely sensitive spot beneath Alfie’s jaw and did that thing with his hips again, his cock sliding against Alfie’s, then sort of beneath it, to all manner of tender places. And Alfie must have responded, or not responded in some sort of odd way, because Fen paused, looking down at him. That alone was unsettling. Usually it was the other way round—Alfie looking down—and it seemed very different right now. And he couldn’t tell if that was because it was different or because he had the sort of issues an enlightened twenty-first-century homosexual shouldn’t have.

“You don’t?” Fen sounded almost embarrassingly gentle right then.

“It’s not that I don’t,” Alfie muttered. “It’s just I don’t in practice.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, I have.”

“Did you like it?”

It was complicated. “It was all right.”

“It’s okay to have preferences.” Fen ran kisses like a string of beads down Alfie’s chest, and he shuddered under those soft touches. Almost thought he felt them shining. “I don’t mind if you’d rather top.”

That was the way he’d always imagined it going: Fen wrapped around him, all around him, hot and wild and heedless. But if Fen wanted otherwise? Was he really going to say no? Uncertainty and resistance and longing and shame twisted up inside him. And stronger than any of it, wanting to be with Fen, to please him, and not hold anything back.

Fingers swept lightly across his eyelids. He hadn’t even realised he’d closed his eyes. So he made himself open them again. Made himself look at Fen. Look up at him. His face was all shadows and angles and focus. A hint of roughness beneath his jaw. The gold-framed glitter of his eyes.

It was sexy as hell. But also intimidating. That was a man there. A man he was letting press him down. A man he was trusting with his body.5

“No, it’s…it’s okay.” He swallowed. “This is okay.”

Fen stretched himself out over Alfie. All of him, his full weight. And Alfie felt everything. From the stipple of hair across Fen’s chest and stomach to the sharp places of his pelvis, from the long, long muscles of his thighs to his slightly ragged toenails. It was lavish, somehow, all that closeness, all that skin. It made his heart beat like it was flying.

Or like he was running too fast.

“It’s going to be more than okay, Alfie Bell.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” Fen’s voice, soft as the evening light, had become its own caress. “And now I get to have my wicked way with every glorious inch of you.”

Alfie’s stomach was flipping like a goldfish out of its bowl. He couldn’t tell if it was terror or something else entirely. And it turned out Fen hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d indicated an intention to get as familiar with Alfie as possible. He wasn’t methodical exactly, but, God, he was thorough. Alfie didn’t think he had ever been quite so…so touched. It was far too intense for what it was, the brush of Fen’s lips, the quest of his fingers against places—the crook of his elbow and the groove of his hips—that shouldn’t have been even remotely sexy. But somehow lit him up inside and out. Made him kind of…sparkly, his body tight and bright beneath Fen’s touches, like a spider’s web strung with dew.

Fen tattooed him afresh, his mouth moving softly over ink, and Alfie made the sort of sounds no needle in the world could have drawn from him, gasps and half-swallowed groans, and raw, rough-edged whimpers. He should probably have been embarrassed, but he was finding it hard to hold on to anything that wasn’t the pleasure uncurling inside him like a flower opening, sticky-bright and bold.

At least until he became vaguely aware of Fen groping around by the side of the bed. And then much less vaguely aware of him sitting up, tossing hair coltishly away from his face, and holding a bottle of luxury German lube. A really large bottle.

Alfie tried not to look at it.

But the squelch of liquid seemed fart-in-a-cathedral loud. And it was impossible for Alfie to ignore just how…how spread out and undignified and vulnerable he was. And how much he wasn’t entirely okay with it.

Finally came that inquisitive, possessive touch. Cool, lube-slippery fingers pressing against him. Into him. He forced himself to relax. Hissed a bit.

Fen leaned over him, coming down onto an elbow, closing the distance between them, and bringing their bodies together once more. His other hand was jammed awkwardly between them, but Alfie infinitely preferred that to being spread-eagled and exposed like the virgin sacrifice in a Hammer horror. The tips of Fen’s hair brushed a little sharply over his chest.

“This isn’t,” he heard himself say, “revenge, right?”

“Um.” Fen’s eyes widened, his fingers sort of freezing half in and half out of Alfie.

“You think I want to have sex with you out of revenge?”

Okay. That sounded bad. “No, I mean. You know. Me like…and you like…”

Fen’s eyes got even wider. “Jesus, Alfie, it’s not a punishment. As a general rule, I want to put my dick in people because I like them.”

“Right. Sorry.”

A pause.

“Did someone hurt you?” Fen had gone all gentle again, which made Alfie feel pretty much the opposite of everything he wanted to be.

“What? No.” He took a deep breath. Forced his body to release its stranglehold on Fen’s fingers. “It’s fine. Carry on.”

“‘It’s fine, carry on’?” Fen repeated, in incredulous tones.

“What’re you expecting? ‘Oh God, fuck me harder.’ This isn’t porn, man.” Except, ironically, that was exactly what Alfie himself expected (and very much appreciated) when it was the other way round. He had no idea why it was so impossible to say it back. Why even thinking about it made him feel slightly sick.

“We really don’t have to—”

Fen would have pulled away, but Alfie caught his wrist. “No,” he said, urgency and anxiety combining to turn his voice hoarse and raspy. “I want it.” Because he did. He really did. “Please?” he tried. “I loved it when you were touching me and stuff. I’m just nervous like.”

A shifting of the mattress and a kiss to the side of his knee signified Fen getting back into position. Except now he was between Alfie’s legs and watching his own fingers as they got all up close and personal with Alfie’s arse, which was probably supposed to be sexy. And maybe would have been sexy if Alfie didn’t feel so wet and stared at.

Except then Fen was staring at his face instead, a worried line between his brows. “You’ve got nothing to prove here. You do know that, don’t you?”

“It’s not that.” Alfie wished his heart would stop thundering. He could barely hear himself think. Which might have been why he blurted out the scariest truth of all. “It’s just…I dunno…will you see me differently after?”

“Differently how?”

“Less…y’know…less.”

“Oh, Alfie.” Fen fell upon him, covering him and kissing him hard. “Nothing could make you less.”

“Uh, okay.” It was the best Alfie could manage. But he thought it contained multitudes. Gratitude and relief, embarrassment that he’d needed to hear it, and a touch of longing for Fen’s assurance. Maybe Fen wouldn’t think less of him, but sometimes Alfie wasn’t so forgiving of himself.

Fen moved his mouth to Alfie’s ear. “My strong, gorgeous man. Let me fuck you.”6

Alfie shuddered, at the praise and possession both. And, just then, it didn’t feel weak to say…“Yeah.”

The sound Fen made at that was somewhere between a purr and a growl, his tongue pushing eagerly between Alfie’s lips, his cock hardening against Alfie’s thigh. Kind of amazing, the power of one little word, unravelling Fen just as sweetly as Alfie’s hands on his wrists. And, honestly, Fen didn’t seem too interested in control, or the lack of it. The more Alfie surrendered, opening his mouth to Fen’s kisses, his body to Fen’s hands, the wilder Fen got, moans falling against his skin like rain.

So Alfie gave himself permission to stop worrying about how he was supposed to be, or what this meant, or if it was okay, and let Fen…have him, take him, make him feel good. And it wasn’t so scary. It was just being with someone. He spread his legs, canting up his hips to let Fen settle there, cradled, pressed up against him as intimate as could be.

“Oh, Alfie, Alfie.” Fen moved against him, breathless, sweat-damp and utterly lovely. “You put every fantasy I’ve ever had about you to shame.”

“I’m all yours.”

Alfie actually felt the shiver reach Fen’s cock. He gave another one of his little moans, all helpless and undone and desperate, sliding slickly, and then somewhat stickily, between and against Alfie’s thighs. “God, I really need to—What the fuck did I do with the condom?”

“Uh. Over there, I think?” Alfie flailed usefully.

“Fuck.” Fen groped across the sheet and then began fumbling about on the floor. “It was right here.”

Staring at the ceiling, as Fen wriggled against his knees, Alfie wondered what was the polite thing to do. Was he supposed to pretend this wasn’t happening? Keep up a friendly flow of small—or worse—dirty talk? When he was rubbish at both. He sat up, rolled over, and tried to help.

Somewhere in the mess of books and clothes, their hands got tangled, and suddenly Fen was laughing, his face flushed, his hair falling crazily forward into his eyes. And he looked so beautiful, so ridiculous, this gold and silver man, that Alfie just had to kiss him, all his laughing, and they slithered slowly off the futon into a pile of Fen’s socks and underwear, knotted up together, mouths and legs and hands.

“Please don’t say I have to go to Asda and buy more,” said Alfie, when he was able to speak.

“No, it’s okay. I’ve got a box. Somewhere.”

Alfie’s fingers closed around something cool and smooth and curved. “Uh.” A button at the base made it buzz. “Is this a vibrator?”

“It’s a gentleman’s massager.”

It was kind of weirdly classy-looking, dark blue and ergonomic, almost like it could be some kind of executive toy.

“Can you stop staring at it, please? It’s not a grenade.”

“Sorry…it’s just…”

Fen slanted him a prim sideways look. “If I’m on my own, I like the option of having something inside me.”

Alfie’s mouth fell open and his brain exploded. Fen. With that. Between his legs. Disappearing inside him. His other hand on his cock, all shiny with pre-come and flushed with excitement. His head thrown back, hair wild, the straining arch of his body as he fucked himself and lost himself. “Fuck, that’s hot.”

“Yes. Well.” Fen looked flustered, actually flustered. But then he recovered. “If you’re very good, I might let you watch someday.”

Holy shit. “I’m not sure I’d survive.”

Fen lifted his brows wickedly. “But wouldn’t it be a wonderful way to go? Now, get your magnificent arse back on that bed.”

He must have been getting used to having Fen looming over him, because it was a lot less loomy this time round. He didn’t even mind the businesslike brush of his fingers, checking Alfie was still slick and ready for him. Which he was pretty sure he was. There was no resistance, no anxious pull, just that achy, needy feeling.

“You know,” Fen murmured. “Next time it’s just me and my toys, this is what I’ll be thinking of.”

Alfie blinked goofily.

“You with me, giving me this, giving me you.”

Alfie’s head tipped back against the pillow, his throat bare to Fen’s kisses, and all he said was “Yes.” “Yes,” as he heard the crackle of a condom wrapper. “Yes,” as Fen covered him, and breached him, and came into him.

Stared down at him in a fierce kind of wonder.

And it felt good, it felt so good. A warm stretch, and something wordless, neither pleasure nor pain, but simply, purely joining.

“Alfie. My Alfie.”

Braced as he was, the tendons were standing out on Fen’s forearms, just like they did when Alfie held him down. Except this time he could touch them. And he did, running his palms up and down those lean, strong muscles, over the taut skin and silky curls, dizzied on the everyday miracle of a human body, two human bodies, and all the ways they could come together. The things they could make each other feel. Fen’s hips nudged forward, and the angle was suddenly right—very right—and Alfie…sort of yelped, and jerked, and maybe had a bit of a heart attack. The nice kind. Hands and legs death-clenched around Fen.

Who grinned down at him, all bright eyes and gleaming skin, pulled back a bit, and did it again. So that Alfie just fell apart. Shattered into joy. Because he’d somehow forgotten it was amazing being touched this deeply, like there was a splinter of light inside him and Fen was making him shine. And his cock, which had sort of flagged a bit, was suddenly right back there, painfully hard and dripping onto his stomach.

“Oh God. Fuck me.” He grabbed the sleek, perfect curve of Fen’s arse, wanting more, more of everything, the sweet, smooth glide, the way their bodies met, the stretch in his thighs and ache in his hips, the sharpness of Fen’s pelvis and the hard length of his cock, the crazy electric bliss it sparked as it thrust into him. “Fuck me harder.”

Fen grinned—he was probably allowed to be a little impish—and gave Alfie exactly what he’d asked for. Reducing himself to gasps, raw moans, and sweat, straining against Alfie, fucking him as wild and rough as he needed, his whole body given over to it, to Alfie and to pleasure. Alfie couldn’t keep his eyes open, so he had to have him in pieces: the jut and roll of his shoulder blades, the thrust of his hips, the tormented crease between his brows, the way his mouth looked so helpless, so naked, occasionally forming the shape of Alfie’s name.

Fen reared back onto his knees, gleaming in the half-light, pushed Alfie’s legs even further apart, and drove in so hard and deep it made Alfie cry out, a shattered, shameless sound. And he didn’t care. Let Fen have that too. All his rapture. Another bit of sea-glass, for Fen to keep and look at sometimes.

A rough hand, tight on his cock, and a few strokes was all it took. His back arched. Hands clawed into Fen’s hips. And Alfie came all over himself.7 It seemed to last forever, tumbling him into the sort of ecstasy that felt either like drowning, or flying, or maybe both, and he was half-sobbing at the sheer, beautiful release of it. Some lost part of himself dragged into the light, where it neither flinched nor faded.

Fen threw back his head, his neck a glistening line of tension and anticipation, drops of sweat caught on his pale stubble. His lips curled into a snarl, and he looked gloriously fierce for a moment, a creature on the brink of bliss.

Weirdly, it filled Alfie with tenderness. “Come in me. I wanna see you.”

“Oh God…Alfie…yes…” A series of violent shudders ripped through Fen’s body. A few ragged, rocking thrusts, and he was done, shaking and babbling, and safe within the circle of Alfie’s arms. And Alfie had a moment to really hate the condom because he wanted that too, Fen’s pleasure inside him.

“Unnh,” muttered Fen, a few minutes later. He was still collapsed, draped over Alfie like seaweed. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that… That was good for you, right?”

Now that his brain was sort of working and the happy madness of sex was fading, it took everything Alfie had not to flinch. “Yeah. It was.” He cleared his throat. “Just not all the time, maybe?”

Fen made a soft, drowsy noise that was probably a laugh. “Only when you want.”

Well, that would never happen. Nope.

It wasn’t so much that Alfie wouldn’t want Fen to fuck him again. It was more that he couldn’t imagine initiating it. Except once he’d got over himself, it had been… It had been bloody incredible. He’d loved seeing Fen all lust-feral. And wouldn’t it be kind of cool to be that comfortable? As comfortable as Fen. His desires nothing but open doors.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal.”

Silence fell gently over them. After a moment or two, Fen pushed gingerly away and got rid of the condom, before flopping at Alfie’s side, nuzzling into the crook of his arm. Alfie stared down at him and thought stupid things about how beautiful he was, how funny and sweet and sharp, and how much he just wanted to be with him. Have this be their life.

Which was selfish and awful because Fen was only here because of his mum. All his hopes and dreams belonged somewhere else. To someone else. Probably the main reason he was with Alfie now was because he felt alone and Alfie was a link to the lost. As soon as Fen found his feet again, he’d be off. And that…that was a good thing, right? He deserved to be happy.

As did Alfie, although there was no point worrying about that now. Not when—given the past and the fact their lives had taken them in completely different directions—it was pretty fucking remarkable that they’d wound up together at all. Whatever what was between them now had to be accepted for what it was. Something fragile and unlikely and special: a moment of stillness in the middle of two turning worlds. Only difference was, when it was over, Fen would go back to being wherever he was supposed to be and doing whatever he was supposed to do, and Alfie would go back to equity capital markets, his shitty sofa, and a sea-less city he was pretty sure he hated.

But at least he’d have this to take with him. A few days being gay in South Shields with his gorgeous flower shop boy. Maybe it was his gratitude for that, or because of the intimacy of what they’d just done, or perhaps it was because of Fen, the softness of his eyes just then, and the easy pliancy of his body fitted against Alfie’s, but words were welling up inside him and he wasn’t sure he could keep them back. Or if he even wanted to. He opened his mouth—

“God,” said Fen fervently. “I’m starving.”

And so Alfie was saved from making a complete fool of himself.

It turned out Fen didn’t actually have any food, except for a loaf of bread that had gone mouldy round the crusts and a squishy tube of Primula cheese spread8 that had fallen down the back of the fridge. They weren’t in any state to put in an appearance at a restaurant, so Alfie drove them out to the McDonald’s at Towers Place. He could still remember when it first opened: South Shields’s first and probably still only drive-through, like a little piece of another world.

He whooshed down John Reid Road, enjoying the emptiness of the cloudy dark. The tall ghosts of electricity pylons gathered on the horizon. “I feel like I’ve gone back in time.”

Fen stared at his knees. “Oh God, you have no idea how much I wanted this: a hot boy with a car, a post-coital trip to the drive-through.” He looked up again, and his smile was a little sad. “And it was you, Alfie, it was always you.”

Alfie winced. But it wasn’t guilt anymore. It was just a clean, bright pain for Fen’s loneliness and the stupid boy Alfie had been. So stupid. So lost.

“But you know something?” Fen went on.

“What?”

“I like this so much more.”

If Alfie hadn’t been legally required to keep his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road, he’d have grabbed Fen. Kissed him. Kissed him and kissed him.

At McDonald’s, they ordered everything, bags and bags of it, laughing and arguing and braving the You’ve just had sex, haven’t you? look from the woman behind the window. Then Alfie took them up Lizard Lane—carefully, this time—and parked in the make-out spot. A fat, yellowy moon had slipped from beneath the cloud bank and hung there carelessly, like the disc of an unravelled yo-yo. They sat under it, in the Sagaris, and for a while there was nothing but the squeak of polystyrene and the rustle of paper, the clink of ice cubes and the bubble of liquid, and Fen licking the grease and salt crystals from his fingertips.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a vegetarian?” Alfie asked.9

“I’m in remission.”

At last, they were left with wrappings and a few weirdly coloured, deformed fries neither of them wanted to eat. Alfie had wound down the windows, but the car still reeked of cheap food, gherkins, and the faintest suggestion of sex.

Fen looked half-asleep. Sated. In all the ways. “That was amazing. Disgusting. But also amazing.”

“Yeah.”

“Almost but not quite entirely unlike food.”

Alfie laughed. “Was that a Hitchhiker’s reference?”

Fen nodded, blushing a little. “Think I’ve still got the whole of Hitchhiker’s on tape somewhere.”

“Oh me too. It was thirty quid. A fortune. Also six cassettes, six whole cassettes.”

“Man, Lord of the Rings was twelve or fourteen.”

“Alfie”—Fen grinned at him—“are you secretly a geek?”

“Maybe I just have a wide variety of interests.”

“God, Alfie, you’re so much more than you pretended to be.”

“Well. Aren’t we all?”

Alfie usually liked being in cars with people, but right now it made him feel oddly distant. The high-mounted gearbox probably didn’t help. Just touching Fen’s hand would have been like reaching over a wall. He half wished for his crappy old Nova, Fen stretched out, hot and eager, on the backseat, not some semi-reluctant girl Alfie was doggedly trying to please. Fucking TVRs. No air bags, no anti-lock brakes, nowhere to grind and grope each other.

So he babbled instead. “Lord of the Rings is my brother’s favourite book, so my dad recorded the whole thing off the radio and put it on tapes, and Billy played them so much they went all crackly and wrecked, so he got them for Christmas one year.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Are you kidding me? I hated it. I was fucking terrified. There’s some seriously fucked-up shit in that book. Not like horror-movie scary, but in this deep inside, lingering kind of way, you know?”

Fen twisted in his seat, tucking a knee under him so he could see Alfie better. “It’s meant to be a myth cycle, so it makes sense that it would inspire quite primal reactions.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Sorry.”

“Gollum really used to freak me out.” Alfie stared through the windscreen at the wooden gate and the furrowed field that lay beyond, hazy in the buttery moonlight. “And Billy used to put his hand under the cold tap and sneak into my room and grab my feet, and go, ‘Preciousss.’ Bloody hilarious. Dad gave him what for in the end.”

That was when Alfie suddenly remembered his dad was barely his dad anymore, that they were as good as strangers because of the ways neither of them could change, so there were just these memories. He rested his head on the steering wheel. Breathed in and out, in and out. He could do that. Keep breathing.

Fen’s hand came softly down on his back, so warm. Stroked him up and down to the rhythm of his breathing. “What is it?”

Alfie sat up. Put himself back together. “Nothing.”

He was afraid Fen would push and it would all come spooling out of him: this pointless tangle of hurt and loss and bewilderment. This grief for someone he never was and something he never had. And somehow that would be worse, because he didn’t know how he was supposed to deal with it. But Fen only said, “Tell me when you’re ready,” unclipped his seat belt, and next thing Alfie knew, he had flung a leg over the gearbox and was making an impressive attempt to wriggle over to Alfie’s side of the car. He was pretty flexible for a man who had just eaten two Big Macs in a row and soon landed, inelegantly but otherwise successfully, in Alfie’s lap.

That was better.

Fen let out a careful breath. “I think I just nearly surrendered my virtue to your gearstick.”

“What virtue?” Alfie tried to get his arms round him, but it really was almost impossible to move.

“Don’t get sassy with me, Alfie Bell.”

Which made him smile a bit, just as Fen kissed him. Light at first, just the drag of his mouth over Alfie’s, but then Alfie arched up and took him deeper, and it quickly got all messy, a damp tangle of tongues and breath, full of Fen’s frantic little moans.

It shouldn’t have been this exciting: two grown men who’d already fucked going at it like teenagers in the driver’s seat of a car, unreachable, fully covered erections knocking roughly against each other, the back of Alfie’s hand catching on the indicator light, and Fen arching into the horn every time Alfie did something he liked. Which, apparently, was most things.

Except it was. It was exciting in all the ways it had never been before, like he was finally getting something, or understanding something, that a bunch of other people had already found, maybe in this exact same spot.

He’d had no idea there was this much kissing in the world. That you could kiss, and kiss, and kiss, and not run out of ways to kiss. Like a Fibonacci sequence of touching, increasing always in complexity, but never breaking the boundary of their two joined mouths.

Somewhere, out there in the dark, was the echo of himself. If only he could go back in time. You’ll find it, he’d say, you’ll get it.

But the years behind him felt like a desert. So perhaps it was better the boy he used to be didn’t know what Alfie knew now. That chance and random circumstance would bring him here, and to a gift, infinitely precious, from a man who had no reason to give him anything.

A glare of orange light as a car raced past, tooting at them—Get a room, perhaps, or even Good on you, mate.

He managed to yank open Fen’s jeans. Shove a hand inside, find his cock. Fen moaned into his mouth and flailed, hitting the horn again, and the windscreen wipers too. And Alfie crushed him against the steering wheel, kissing him, working him, until he cried out helplessly and came in an uncontrolled rush. Kind of everywhere.

Breathless, practically boneless, Fen fell against Alfie’s shoulder, and Alfie sort of nuzzled him clumsily with his chin and jaw because it was the only way he could get to touch him.

“God. Alfie. That nearly went in my eye.”

“Then that’s probably the only place it didn’t go.” Alfie kissed the edge of Fen’s ear and, when he turned his head, his kiss-swollen mouth again. “I think you’ve got some in your hair.”

“I’m too shagged to care.”

“And maybe in your eyebrow.”

It took them a while to untangle, and when they were ready to try, it proved logistically challenging. In the end, Alfie managed to hit the door release with his knee, and Fen slithered out onto the road, urgently fastening his jeans and making a generally unconvincing attempt to look respectable as he limped back round to the passenger side. He was practically asleep by the time they pulled up outside Pansies again. He looked so peaceful and, at the same time, so debauched. A well-fucked angel. And Alfie wanted to keep him.

But, instead, he nudged him. “We’re home.”

“Oh.” Fen stirred, then started. Smiled toothily at Alfie, hopelessly goofy. “Thank you. I had the best day.”

“Me too.”

A pause. “Are you sleeping over?”

Alfie’s heart gave a happy bounce. “Can I? You’re not sick of me like?”

“It’ll be fine.” Fen smirked. “We’ll both be unconscious.”

“Wow, you really know how to take the sting out of a compliment.”

“I didn’t mean it. Please stay. If you want to.”

“Of course I do.”

“Just don’t judge the state of my house, okay?”

Alfie leaned over, nearly gutting himself with his seat belt, and brushed his lips against Fen’s cheek. “I really don’t care about that.”

“Yes. Well.” Fen’s hands shifted idly, fingers seeking the green band he always wore. “I’m starting to think…I might, actually.”10

Alfie dropped him off outside Pansies, intending to find a parking space where he could leave the Sagaris and then get back as quickly as possible. But he still ended up watching Fen as he headed for the side door. He seemed different somehow—lighter, maybe. There’d always been a bit of the dancer about him, but Alfie was more familiar with his restlessness than his grace, the way he’d sometimes hold himself like he wanted to disappear. This was a little glimpse of who Fen truly was—who he was supposed to be, when he wasn’t grieving and stuck in South Shields—and, of course, he was walking away.

Alfie shook it off. Found a quiet side street. And took a minute to compose an email to HR, explaining that something personal had come up, and he was taking annual leave. Since J.D. Jarndyce was old-school hardcore and fired twenty percent of his workforce on an annual basis just to keep people on their toes, he knew he was basically placing himself right at the top of the culling list. But a quick inventory of available fucks confirmed that Alfie Bell was fresh out. He’d been nothing but his job for way too long, and the possibility of losing it didn’t feel so much like a sacrifice as release.

His head was a little spinny after, not exactly in a bad way, but it was disorientating. Like he’d lost track of the edges of his world. Or maybe they hadn’t changed at all, so he was just going to run smack bang into them anyway.

Normally this would be when he called Greg. But something stopped him, phone in hand. Even if he knew how to explain, he wasn’t sure Greg would get it. As far as Greg was concerned, a romantic gesture was bringing fancy condoms. Or maybe he was being unfair. It was sometimes hard to tell with Greg what was bravado and what wasn’t.

Phoning Kitty would have been equally pointless—not because she wouldn’t want to talk to him, but because she was probably in some far-flung posh place like Bora Bora or Monaco. So he messaged her instead: I think I might be doing something really stupid. A few seconds later, she replied: What sort of thing? It was hard enough to get it straight in his head, let alone in a text message. Eventually, he tried Falling for someone and accidentally hit Send before he’d finished typing.

The best and noblest of stupid, Kitty returned.

He’d meant to say, Falling for someone in the middle of a really complicated life situation thing, but he liked the answer he’d been given too much to risk clarifying his problem.

On the way back to the shop, his phone buzzed again. PS have met terribly charming fellow with a nonidentifiable job. Think he must be a shpy.

Ill-advisedly grinning, walking, and texting, he sent, Or maybe he just does something really boring. And got back a selfie of Kitty’s sad pout.

16

Fen’s alarm went off at four, which was painful even though Alfie was used to banker hours. The other thing that was painful was his back because Fen’s futon mattress was, frankly, fucking awful. He rolled over, found Fen, who was deliciously warm and soft and only beginning to stir, and snuffled a protest into the nape of his neck.

“I have to get up.”

Alfie draped an arm over him and groped in a downwards kind of way. “You already are.”

“I mean I have to work.”

“Or”—Alfie gave Fen a languorous stroke—“you could stay here with me.”

That earned him a sweet, drowsy sound of mingled pleasure and reluctance. “Oh, Alfie, I need to get the shop ready or the stock will spoil and we’ll lose even more money.”

“Can I help out?”

Fen shook his head. “I can manage.”

“I wasn’t saying you couldn’t. Just asking to be involved.”

“I don’t want you to be involved.” He was going to insist, but Fen went on. “I’d rather think of the hot man in my bed than drag you out of it before dawn to unload deliveries.”

As arguments went, it was pretty irresistible. “Well, at least let me give you something to take with you.”

“I really have to—”

“Won’t take long.”

Alfie rolled Fen onto his back, pinned him down by the hips, and went down on him with gusto.1 He was still all warm and sleep-lax, except for his cock, which was hard enough to challenge Alfie’s gag reflex. Not that he minded—he liked it when Fen was a little out of control. Which he soon was, the air full of his hoarse moans and the scrabble of his fingers against the wall above his head and his body writhing under Alfie’s hands. He came in a scant handful of minutes, babbling out an incoherent stream of yes and oh and Alfie Alfie Alfie.

“Now that,” said Alfie, sitting back on his heels and wiping his mouth, “is a proper wake up.”

Fen was strewn, noticeably wobbly-legged and pink-flushed, across the sheets. “I think you might be insatiable, Alfie Bell.”

Greg had made a similar observation, even though Alfie was firmly under the impression he had average appetites for a healthy northern lad in his prime. And, besides, he was starting to discover his enthusiasm for Greg, while it had been pretty major at the time, was nothing compared to his desire for Fen. Who he could barely keep his hands off. Who, in fact, some bestial part of his brain—well, probably not his brain exactly—wanted to keep naked and fuck-ready forever.

Shit. He was a pervert. A gay pervert.

“Well.” He shrugged. “I’ve got years of catching up to do.”

Fen stretched, muscles pulling tight under the smooth wave of his skin. “And there I thought I was special.”

“No, no, you are. It’s never been like this before. Never felt like—”

He was mercifully interrupted by Fen’s laughter. And then by his mouth. It wasn’t exactly the sexiest or the most romantic kiss Alfie had ever received, given they were both barely awake and Fen tasted sleepy and he probably tasted of Fen, but it was still…exactly right.

“You’re so sweet,” Fen whispered, fingers grazing the stubble at Alfie’s jaw.

Alfie didn’t think he was—not with the sort of stuff he’d been thinking a minute ago—but Fen looked so happy right then, his mouth soft and smiling, his eyes full of light, that he wasn’t about to correct him. He just wished he could make Fen look like that all the time.

Except then he was rolling away. Standing, gleamy and intriguing in the half-light. And gone. Presumably into the shower, from the groaning and clattering of the pipes. Alfie stuck his head under the pillow and did actually manage to drop off again, though without someone to cuddle, the bed had lost its only possible advantage. Waking a couple of hours later, he reflected ruefully that between his mattress and Fen’s sofa, they probably had something approaching one decent home between them.

There was definitely no point hanging around getting backache, so he got up and dressed, and headed downstairs to the shop. Fen was, once again, pulling buckets around, all bare forearms and perky arse. Not that Alfie had ever really thought about it before, but he would have assumed floristry was a prissy, arty kind of job. Not the sort of manual labour that left Fen with such rough, strong hands.

As soon as Fen saw him, he straightened and put his hands on his hips. Clearly an ill-fated attempt to look stern when a smile was bursting out at the edges of his compressed lips. “What do you want now, Alfie?”

“I really can’t do anything to help?”

“Well, I don’t know. Can you make up some bouquets?”

Alfie sensed a trap. Also, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to sissy about with flowers in case his dad found out. But he had offered…and a day with Fen was better than a day without him. “Dunno. Is it hard?”

“Why, no, Alfie Bell. Anyone can do it. That’s why there isn’t an entire industry built around the expertise of trained florists.”

“Howay, man. Don’t be like that. Can’t I mop the floor or summin?”

There was a tense little pause. Then Fen relented. Came into his arms, leaned into him, stretched up to be kissed. “I’m sorry.”

“’S’okay.”

Fen was kind of off when it came to Pansies, but Alfie couldn’t really blame him. It must have been hard to come back, even harder to stay. Though he got that, too—Fen had already lost his mum, so letting go of the shop would probably have felt like losing her all over again. Even though, really, they weren’t the same in the slightest. And the only thing he was really keeping was the loss of her.

Alfie didn’t know how to say any of that, though. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have. It was the last thing Fen needed to hear from someone else.

So, instead he simply tried to soothe him, pressing the tension from his back in long, shiver-inspiring strokes. It was weird, or perhaps not weird at all, how easy it was to touch like this, its own little language, which included sex but was somehow more than sex.

“Gorra be tough,” he tried, “running a shop through a double-dip recession. I don’t know much about flowers, but I’m good with numbers. Want me to take a look at your books? I could get a head start on your tax return or think about cost cut—”

Fen jerked back sharply. “No. Just… God, Alfie, stop trying to help me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need it and…and…” There was something a bit frantic in Fen’s eyes and his voice, but then he drew in a deep, unsteady breath. Seemed to calm a little. “Because when I’m with you, I don’t want it to be about any of this.”

It was the most romantic fuck off Alfie had ever received. But it made him sad as well because he wanted to be part of Fen’s life, not separate from it. Involved in the things he cared about. Had given up pretty much everything for. “Can I at least chisel the concrete off your bathroom floor?”

“No.”

“But—”

A finger to his lips silenced him. Lightly traced the upper arch and bottom curve, a bit like a kiss, but not. They stared at each other, deadlocked, caught between Alfie’s domineering tendencies and Fen’s stubbornness. He could have pushed—would probably have got his way, in the end, because he was Alfie Bell and Fen was right that he always did. But it would’ve been wrong. He wanted Fen to come to him out of trust. And to feel stronger for it, not weakened by it.

Alfie shrugged. “I guess I’ll get out your way, then.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you.” Fen’s eyes seemed to beg his understanding.

No, he thought with a muddle of exasperation and tenderness, you’re just too damn proud. But all he said was, “I’m coming back at four, mind. To help you close up.”

“Okay.”

They kissed again, lingeringly this time, until Fen’s mouth was as yielding as ripe fruit and he was pressed breathlessly against Alfie. Afterwards, he glanced up coyly, through the golden haze of his lashes. “I’m letting the social justice side down terribly, but I kind of like when you get all bossy.”

“Oh aye?” Alfie couldn’t help swaggering at that. He knew he could be a bit of a bulldozer—a chauvinist bulldozer, to use Kitty’s exact phrase—but he was pleased and relieved to learn Fen found something sexy in his aggressive brand of over-caring.

Fen nodded. “Mm-hmm. Makes me think about fucking you.”

“Uh.”

“Don’t worry, Alfie.” Fen patted his cheek. “You’re still bossy when you’re being fucked.”

“Uh,” he said again. It was about all he could manage. He was drowning in heat. A blush that started in his cock.

Fen sidled even closer and went up on tiptoes so he could whisper, in a pretty decent approximation of Alfie’s rough northern lilt, “Fuck me, Fen, fuck me harder.”

“Oi.” He was caught between laughing and dying and leaving the country forever. Somehow, laughing won. And it felt a lot better than the other two would have. “You shouldn’t take the piss out of the stuff a lad says when there’s a dick in him.”

“I’m not. It was really hot.” Fen’s hand snaked around and squeezed Alfie’s arse, a little bit playful, a little bit possessive.

And Alfie made a funny little hiccoughing noise, desire and embarrassment. “Look, do you want me to leave? Or are we doing it over the counter instead?”

Fen glanced longingly over his shoulder towards the back room. Then cleared his throat. “You…you’d better go.”

Neither of them moved.

“Alreet,” Alfie sighed. “I’m going.”

It was way more difficult than it should have been, especially when Fen’s hands were inclined to cling and linger, even as he stood there insisting Alfie get out of his face. Eventually, though, he was sitting in his car—which still smelled of sex and McDonald’s—wondering what to do with himself.

That was when his phone bleeped. An email from J.D. Jarndyce himself. It just said: Meeting, 7:00 a.m., next Monday.

Well, that wasn’t good. Alfie waited for the reality of it to sink in, but apparently it was already sunk, because he felt fine. There were tonnes of guys in the city who kept swearing they were going to get out of it. Just five years, they’d say at first. Then, just until I’m thirty…forty…fifty. It was the money, of course. Not so much for its own sake, because you never got the time to spend it, but there was something reassuring—addictively reassuring—in watching those numbers tick up. And up. How were you supposed to know when enough was enough? Always easier to wait for the next bonus.

At least Alfie had access to a…whatchamacallit…a halfway house, between investment banking and the rest of the world. He wouldn’t be cast adrift on too much money and too little anything else. He could drive to London next Monday, get fired, come straight back. Figure out the rest of his life after. South Shields wouldn’t have much use for someone with a master’s in econometrics and mathematical economics, but Fen did. At least for a little while. Assuming he ever let him do anything.

Alfie very nearly slapped his steering wheel in frustration. Except no amount of bad feeling could have made him touch his Sagaris with anything other than loving hands. He didn’t want to get in Fen’s way or trample over him. He just wanted to help. Was Fen ever going to see that? Or was Alfie just going to have to watch supportively and space-givingly while Fen ran himself, and the shop, into the ground?

Well, fuck that. He was willing to do that therapy bollocks to a point. But only to a point.

He snuck a look at Pansies through the rearview mirror. Fen had put the kibosh on pretty much anything he could do in the shop—he hadn’t said anything about outside, though. Which made Alfie remember that bloody awful word, splashed so gleefully across the grille, and gave him his plan for the day.

He drove back to B&Q, which turned out not to stock what he wanted, so they sent him to the Halfords near Washington instead. And, honestly, that was fine—wasn’t like he was short of time.

He invested in safety goggles and gloves, solvent and wire wool. It was a bit less exciting than his last shopping trip, but at least he knew he wasn’t going to fuck anything up this time. He might not have been able to hang a shower rail or mix plaster, but he could clean a fucking wall. That took no skill at all, just the will to do it, and Alfie had never lacked for will.

Washington had always seemed pretty exotic to Alfie when he was growing up. His dad used to drive them up every once in a while so they could go to the big shopping centre. He was pretty shocked to discover that, compared to the gleaming glass temples of London, the Galleries was actually kind of small. To say nothing of concretey, and even a little bit run down. Yet somehow Billy had managed to get lost in it once. They’d found him, several nervous breakdowns later, in the ice cream shop, staring dreamily into the freezer with its magical rainbow of flavours.

That place was long gone. Alfie couldn’t even remember what it had been called or where it had been. But he remembered the ice cream: one scoop of your favourite flavour in a wafer cornet that tasted faintly of dust and paper, eaten while they were all perched in a row on the rim of the fountain and busier shoppers hustled by. The blue-green water had smelled of chlorine, and you were meant to throw pennies in for a wish.

His dad had this weird habit of biting the bottom off his cone and sucking the ice cream through. Billy had tried to copy it once, and ended up with most of his ice cream on his shirt. Then there’d been tears, and recriminations, and finally bitter protests. He’d got another cornet, though. At the time, Alfie had suspected a ploy to get more ice cream, but he’d probably been jealous. They’d both wanted to be like their dad. It was just Billy was braver in his trying.

He got underway again at about two, after a hasty pub lunch, suddenly realising that the epic journey from South Shields to Washington, which had required the Lord of the Rings cassettes and promises of ice cream before Alfie and Billy could be coaxed into the car, actually only took about twenty-five minutes. It was a bit scary how much smaller the world got when you grew up.

He passed through Cleadon on his way to Pansies. Which sort of somehow led him to pulling into the driveway of his parents’ house. Though not before checking to see if there was any sign of his dad’s car, which there wasn’t.

He stood for a minute or two on the doorstep, feeling like a lemon, before finally ringing the bell. He probably still had a key somewhere, but just walking straight in would have felt wrong.

After a bit, the door opened and his mam peered out. She looked surprised, but not entirely in a bad way.

“Alfie, pet? Is summin wrong?”

“No, Mam. Nowt’s wrong. I was just around like.”

They hugged, a bit awkwardly because Alfie’s mam seemed to be one of those women who got smaller with age and he was afraid he’d squash her.

“Eee, well come in, then. I’ll put the kettle on.”

He followed her into the hall, with its flock wallpaper and all the family pictures going up the stairs.2

“Why don’t ye go and have a sit-down?” His mam nudged open a door for him.

“Wha?” His exclamation brought them both up short. And Alfie suddenly felt completely lost in the house where he’d grown up. “Mam, it’s me. You know I don’t go in the good room.”3

“But I don’t see you very often, love.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a guest.” He was silent a moment. “Besides, what if I spilled tea on something?”

“Well, then I’d have to kill ye.”

Now that sounded more like it. Alfie grinned, and they went into the kitchen together. Alfie’s dad had done it up properly when Alfie had been quite little. He’d been too confused by the chaos to really understand what was going on or why, and then it had simply been the kitchen. But he looked at it now with eyes that had lost their familiarity, and what he saw was so much love. Which was a fucking weird thing to notice about your parents. Except there it was, in the mellowed light that painted golden streaks upon the floor, and the pale halos left on the kitchen table from uncountable cups of tea.

Shit. Alfie swallowed.

“Have you seen me decking?”4

“What? Oh.” He dutifully went to the window and peered out at the back garden. “Looks good, Ma.”

“Doesn’t it, though? I saw Wendy from next door eyeing it up from ower the fence just the other day.”

“Did Dad do it?”

“Aye. Took his time aboot it, mind.”

Alfie thought about pointing out his dad had turned sixty-five that year but had the feeling it wouldn’t make any difference. To his mam, he was just the man she’d married. So Alfie didn’t say anything at all. Just stared at the envy-inducing decking, with its hand-carved balustrade.

Behind him, he heard the whoosh and the bubble of the kettle. The clatter of mugs.

“He’s doing well, ye know. Your dad.”

“Yeah?”

He turned back. Picked up his cuppa. It was exactly how he liked it: too much milk and too much sugar—not that he usually took it that way. Out of nowhere, he remembered Greg the morning after, sprawled across Alfie’s bed, demanding tea. I like it like I like my men, Alfredo: hot, strong, and very, very sweet. Alfie cradled the mug between his hands, letting the warmth creep into his palms, and thought, Me too.

“Ye should talk to him, Alfie. He misses ye.”

“You saw the way he looked when I told him.”

“Aye, but ye gave him a geet big shock, love.”

Alfie’s heart was overspilling, hot and liquid, like he was scalding himself on the inside. “You had two kids. There was a nineteen percent chance one of us was going to be gay. That’s not a thing that should shock you. It’s just a thing about one of your children.”

He’d been shouting a bit at the end there. And now his mam was looking upset. Shit. Shit. Shit. He shouldn’t have come.

“Ye didn’t give him a chance.”

He didn’t give me a chance, Alfie wanted to tell her. He just wrote me off. Like I wasn’t his son anymore. But there was no point. She wouldn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain. How bad it felt to be a shock. To be an idea people had to get used to. To be a moment of hesitation. A flinch when someone touched you. A wariness in their eyes. How much it fucking hurt.

“Sorry.” He pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. “How are you doing?”

She seemed a bit startled. He guessed it wasn’t the sort of question he usually asked. But she answered readily enough, sharing the small pieces of her life with him. Alfie drank his tea, and listened, and let the cadences of his mother’s voice comfort him a little.

“And what aboot ye, love?”

“What? Me? Oh, I’m fine.” That sounded unconvincing, even to Alfie. And his mam gave him a look that confirmed it. “I’m just on holiday, that’s all.”

“But ye never tek holiday.”

“I decided I was owed some.”

“And ye came te Shields?”

He laughed. She had a point. “I…sort of met someone.”

There was a delicate kind of silence.

“A lad?” she asked.

“Aye. A lad.” A man.

There was a blank sort of silence this time, and Alfie didn’t know how to help. He knew what he wanted to hear, but he wasn’t sure it would count if he asked for it. At last, he got an uncertain-sounding “I’m happy for ye.”

“Mam, you went for my girlfriends like the blummin’ Spanish Inquisition.”

“Well, I had te know they were good enough for ye.”

“Right, and because I’m gay, anything with a knob will do?”

“Alfred Junior!”

“Sorry, I’m sorry. Just”—he couldn’t quite keep the pleading from his voice—“don’t you want to know what he’s like?”

After a moment, she nodded.

Alfie opened his mouth, and all the words came pouring out. “He’s beautiful, Ma. And I really want to be with him and make him happy, except I dunno how because we’re stuck in the wrong places and—What’s the matter?”

His mam was staring.

“Wha?”

“Ye never talked about your girlfriends like that.”

“Like how?”

“Dead romantic.”

He blushed. “That’s cos I don’t feel romantic about girls.”

“Well,” she said finally, “alreet.”

Maybe he should have been grateful. A year ago, maybe even a week ago, he probably would have been. He’d just have been so relieved that she wasn’t screaming or weeping or recoiling in disgust. But something had changed—he’d changed—and he needed more from her than passive acceptance. He needed understanding. “It was really confusing at first. Not the—” Shit, he couldn’t talk to his mam about sex. “I mean, the idea of being with a lad, same as you would a lass.”

“But, Alfie, it’s not the same, is it?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re both men.”

He didn’t dare look at her right then, so he took a massive mouthful of tea, and it was slightly too hot, so it burned all the way down. “So?”

“Look, I might not’ve had an artsy-clartsy university education like you, pet, but I’ve been married for gan on forty years. Which means I do know a bit about men and a bit about women, and you need both te make a proper family.”

“I thought all you needed to make a proper family was love.”

She sighed gently. “I’m not saying men aren’t loving, I’m saying they’re different, and they show it different. It’s women who are the caretakers.”

“Don’t you think,” Alfie snapped, “that mebbe when you’re with someone, you should maybe take care of each other?”

“You’re twisting me words.” She sounded genuinely upset, which made him feel like an absolute monster. “That’s not what I meant. Men bring some things to a relationship, and women bring others, and they’re both important in their own ways, and that’s…that’s just how it is.”

Oh God, he’d made her cry. He’d made his mam cry with his gay.

She pulled a tissue out of her sleeve and wiped her eyes. “And ye can be angry with me and say I’m…a…a basher…but it won’t change what I know and how I feel. I’m sorry, Alfie. I want you to be happy, I really do, but this is never going to be summin I can understand.”

“Alreet.” He gulped down the rest of his tea and took the mug to the sink to wash it out.

“Ye don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Alfie overdid the Fairy Liquid and ended up with a massive pile of bubbles. Tiny iridescent spheres drifted up from between his fingers. Then popped, one by one by one, leaving nothing behind at all.

“What if you want bairns?” his mam asked suddenly.

“I do want bairns.” There was no point arguing though—she wasn’t going to get it. Probably never would. He shook off the excess water and put the mug neatly on the drying rack. “Anyway, I’d better be off.”

“Y’know I love ye, don’t ye?”5

“Course I do.” He crossed back and kissed her lightly. “I love you too.”

She reached out and caught his hand. “Who does the cooking?”

Instinctively, he sensed it probably wouldn’t be Fen. “Suppose I’ll have to learn.”

“Eee, wor Alfie, don’t tell Da.”

“Bye, mam. Thanks for the cuppa.”

17

It was a little bit after five by the time Alfie made it back to Pansies, bursting through the door with his arms full of graffiti-removal supplies. Fen was closing up, tugging the unsold flowers into the cold room at the back. He looked tired, tousled, and a little bit sweaty, and greeted Alfie without even looking up.

“I’ve still got some stuff to do down here, so you might as well head on up. Make yourself comfy. Um, if that’s even possible in my flat.”

“Got something to take care of first.” Alfie sourced a bucket from the pile and tugged on his safety gloves.

That got Fen’s attention. “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m going to scrub that crap off the safety grille.”

He wasn’t sure what reaction he was expecting or hoping for. Vague interest would have been nice. But all he got was, “Don’t waste your time.”

“Doesn’t feel like a waste of time to me.”

Fen shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Doesn’t it bug you?” Alfie was scrutinising the instructions on his graffiti-removal solvent. It seemed pretty straightforward, but then so had the plaster mix, and he wasn’t taking any chances. “Having it there?”

A rough, exasperated sigh. “Yes, if I think about it. But I don’t think about it. I only have so much space in my heart, so I have to prioritise what upsets me. Nonsense like that wouldn’t make the top twenty.”1

“Well, I’m still going to do something about it.”

“As I said: suit yourself.”

Alfie grabbed his bucket—which he hoped was full of correctly made-up graffiti remover—and headed outside. The words were stubborn, but so was Alfie. It took him a good hour or so of furious scrubbing with the wire wool, and most of the bottle of solvent, but he did manage to get the grille clean. It didn’t exactly look good—it looked like somebody had scoured the surface off the metal—but faggot was gone. Then he ditched his gloves and sluiced out the bucket, and headed upstairs after Fen.

He was sprawled on the sofa, a bottle of wine on the floor beside him, a cigarette smouldering between his fingers. At least, until he started guiltily and crushed it out on a nearby saucer.

“If that’s for me, there’s no need.”

There was a telltale flush, bright across Fen’s cheeks. “But isn’t kissing a boy who smokes like licking an ashtray?”

“Dunno.”

Alfie leaned over him, fit his palms to Fen’s jaw, and turned his face up. Held him there for a moment, his stubble-flecked throat pulled taut, and then kissed him. Fen quivered, a sound somewhere between protest and surrender catching against Alfie’s lips. And then there was nothing but surrender, Alfie’s tongue sliding deep, deep, and deeper, into the clinging warmth of Fen’s mouth.

“Seems alreet to me,” he said, finally drawing back. “Not sure there’s much could put me off kissing you.”

“All the same.” Fen swung his feet off the sofa and took the saucer into the boxy kitchen. “I shouldn’t be smoking.”

“I have to say, I’m not massively keen on you dying of lung cancer.”

“It’s more not knowing if I’m choosing anymore.”

“It’s the lung cancer,” repeated Alfie firmly, not wanting to get dragged into a philosophical discussion about addictive, bad-for-you substances. “You got plans for dinner?”

Fen came back into the room. “That bottle of ‘crisp and fruity’ Blossom Hill?”

Flinching, Alfie picked it up, unscrewed the cap, and took a sniff. “Wow, you should’ve said you had this. I wouldn’t have needed to buy that solvent.”

“Alfie Bell: wine snob?”

“I’m not,” he lied. “It’s just…if I’m gan te put summin in my mouth, I’d like it to be nice.”2

A flicker of gold as Fen blinked. “I don’t drink for a sensual experience. I drink to get drunk.”

“Then”—Alfie put the bottle aside, well out of Fen’s reach—“you’re definitely doing it wrong.”

They sat down together on the sofa again, side by side, like actors in the sort of play Alfie hated. “You’ve got to eat, y’know,” he muttered. “No wonder you’re so skinny.”

“Just because my mum’s dead doesn’t mean the position’s open.”

Something a bit fretful, a bit shamed, stirred in Alfie’s gut. But he ignored it. “Howay. I’m not trying to mother you, I’m trying to date you. And, anyway, I’m hungry, even if you’re not.”

“I’m sorry.” Fen covered his eyes with his hand. “I just wasn’t prepared to have someone in my life. I’ve forgotten how to do it. What it feels like.”

“We can figure it out. What do you do when I’m not here?”

“Sit around like Fantine, mostly, wondering where it all went wrong.”

“You wha?”

“Drink, smoke, listen to music, miss my mum and my boyfriend and my life. Feel sorry for myself. Go to the Rattler and wait to be rescued by demons from my childhood. That kind of thing.”

Alfie really didn’t want to hear about the boyfriend Fen apparently still missed. But it looked like he was going to have to. “What about when you were, y’know, with wossname?”

“With David?” Fen’s face softened, opened like a night-blooming flower. “Well, mine isn’t…I mean wasn’t…exactly a nine-to-five job, so I worked pretty intense hours. And travelled a lot. And, on top of that, David… Have you heard of Pure-O? He gets pretty intense sometimes.”

“Sounds like you weren’t all that suited,” said Alfie hopefully.

“Oh no, we were really happy. Just in a stay-at-home way that probably makes us sound incredibly boring.”

Bugger. So much for David being easy to live up to. “Sounds nice actually. My ex is kind of a party monster.”

“Is that what you’re into?”

“It’s okay sometimes, but not all the time. And, basically, the thing I’m up for in a pretty major way right now is spending time with you. So I say we do that.”

That earned him one of Fen’s sultry glances. “Look at you, taking charge.”

“Any objections?”

“On this occasion, none.” Fen shifted into a corner of the sofa and tucked his feet under him, curling up snail-shell tight. “Honestly, by the end of an average day, making even the smallest decision sometimes feels impossible.”

Alfie patted his knee. “So how about I nip down the road and get us something to eat while you find a movie?”

“I think,” Fen said slowly, “that would be completely wonderful.”

“Try not to get lung cancer or become an alcoholic while I’m gone.”

Fen smiled his widest, most crooked smile. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

It should have been some kind of world record for fastest-ever takeaway trip. A few minutes later, Alfie was sitting in the window of the Ocean Pearl, waiting for his order and urgently googling “vegetarian meals for two.” Followed by “easy vegetarian meals for two,” because, bloody hell, cooking seemed at least as tricky as plastering, and what if he was shite at both?

And not long after that, he was galloping back to Fen, who was pretty much exactly where Alfie had left him. He had, however, partially cleared the coffee table and got his laptop set up.

“Please tell me you picked up chopsticks,” he said, “because if not, you’re eating with your hands.”

“You don’t own any forks?”

“Of course I own forks.” Fen looked faintly offended. “I just can’t remember the last time I washed one.”

Alfie laughed, plopped himself down on the sofa, and began emptying the bags, making a takeaway pyramid that he topped triumphantly with two sets of disposable chopsticks.

Fen gazed at him, all the green of his eyes lost to the shadows in the room. “You’re perfect, Alfie Bell.”

“So what we watching?” Alfie was so flustered, it was all he could manage: the incongruity of his response hanging in the air like an off-key note.

“Are you blushing?”

“No way.”

“Oh my God, you are. That’s…actually rather adorable.”

“I’m just confused cos you hardly ever say anything nice to me.”

“Well, you’ve never given me such incentive before.” Fen leaned in and closed his teeth gently over Alfie’s earlobe. Gave it a wicked little tug that sent rainbow sprinkles of pleasure cascading all the way down his spine. “I like making you blush.”

Great. Alfie was more than halfway to a hard-on. Like a teenager with his first kiss. Except Alfie’s first kiss had been a girl—a very nice girl called Lauren—and it had done absolutely nothing for him.

“You’ve perked up a bit,” he said.

“Smell of food. And having you here with me.”

He was really starting to see why David had been so into staying at home. “Did you find a movie?”

“I found several, actually.” Fen pointed proudly at a haphazard stack of DVDs, most of which were emblazoned with red sale stickers. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“The bad news?”

“They’re all musicals.”

“What’s the good news?”

Fen cringed. “Um, there isn’t any. I just wanted to try and make the bad news seem less bad.”

“I’m not sure it works that way.” Alfie sorted through the pile in dismay. “You don’t have Netflix or summin?”

“You’ve seen where I live. What I drink. You know I can’t have nice things.”

Alfie didn’t have a subscription himself—he didn’t have time to actually use it—but he seriously thought about getting one now. Except Fen would probably get all proud and stubborn and pissy about it. And he much preferred Fen like this, believing he was perfect.

“How about this?” Alfie waved Les Misérables. It looked the newest of them.

Fen pulled a face. “Well, okay, but if you hate it really deeply, we have to stop. And if you make one comment about how implausible it is that they’re singing, I get to punch you in the head.”

“Deal.”

They put it on, and Alfie squidged into the sofa, with a box of vegetables and sauce.

“Hey,” he said, “that’s Wolverine.”

Fen flashed him a little smile. “I know. All that, and he can sing.”

“And that’s Maximus Thingius. He’s…not so happy.”

“Must be his hat. It’s awful.”

There really was a lot of singing. Singing and scenery. And Fen didn’t eat as much as Alfie would have hoped.

On the other hand, as soon as he was done, he put his food aside and stretched right out, his feet falling very naturally into Alfie’s lap. For a moment or two, Alfie just left them there, enjoying the heat and the pressure, and the sense of closeness that came from having a bit of Fen right there on top of him. Then, experimentally, he encircled his ankles. Fen yipped and jerked.

“You ticklish?”

“Nooo.”

Alfie traced the underside of Fen’s foot with the pad of his thumb, making his toes curl protectively. “You sure?”

“Well…maybe. But I sort of like it. Sometimes. I can’t explain.”

It was weirdly hot having Fen wriggling about, his foot trembling in Alfie’s hand, but not being pulled away. Just resting there, vulnerable and sensitive and kind of trusting. He obviously knew the film pretty well and seemed more interested in watching Alfie watch.

Which, y’know, was okay. Even though it made him a bit self-conscious. Especially when Catwoman had to become a prostitute and he got teary.

He liked it best, though, when Fen sang along. Which he didn’t seem to notice he was doing until he would catch Alfie looking at him, and then give this sheepish little half smile and stop. Though only for about a minute; then he’d start humming again.

All in all, Alfie was pretty sure Les Misérables hadn’t become part of his soul. But he didn’t completely hate it. Still a bit of a relief, though, when everybody was dead, which meant they’d got to the end.

“You okay?” Fen asked. “Still into me?”

Alfie stretched, his back clicking. “Course I am.”

“It’s better on stage.”

Oh fucking hell. “Um, no, seriously. This was fine. I’m good.”

For some reason, his fervour made Fen laugh. So Alfie assaulted the particularly ticklish bits of his feet until he was yelping and breathless and begging for mercy.

“What’s wrong with movie musicals anyway?” he asked, relenting at last.

Fen shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess…I think when things are on-screen, we expect them to be realistic. Even if its CGI dinosaurs. But musicals aren’t like that. They’re not…a sugar cube dissolving in a cup of coffee. They’re someone in a silly hat, standing in the middle of a stage, singing their heart out. I’ll never not feel that.”3

“C’mere.” Alfie’s voice had gone growly as he pulled at Fen’s wrist.

Fen swallowed visibly and swung himself into Alfie’s lap, straddling him just like he had that time he’d brought Alfie a flower.

“Y’know, you’re perfect too.” Alfie smoothed Fen’s hair out of the way, cupped his face, and brought him in for a deep, hot kiss. “I’m never going to be that into musicals, but I love hearing you talk about them. Love hearing you talk all the time.”

“I”—a shaky laugh—“I can talk a lot.”

“I know. I also love it when you can’t.”

Fen blinked, pretty and startled, the wavery light from the still-rolling credits playing across his glasses.

“Like when you’re all breathless and helpless and at my mercy.”

“Oh…I…Oh.”

“Just like that.”

Fen laughed, flushing, and then leaned in and kiss-bit him. It hurt a little, but it was a sweet, bright pain that went straight to his cock like the touch of those too-rough hands. “If you want me at your mercy, you have to earn it.”

“Do I now?”

A nod. Fen’s breath was harsh, his eyes very bright, the colour high on his cheeks. He’d looked like that driving Alfie’s car too fast up Lizard Lane. But it felt different. And Alfie didn’t think it was solely about the fact they probably weren’t going to spin off the road and die.

He yanked and fumbled Fen’s shirt open. Pulled it partway down his arms, leaving him trapped. Chased another kiss, catching the sulky-succulent curve of Fen’s bottom lip between his teeth, sucking it into his mouth. Fen went still, and then pressed into him with a muffled whimper, his body as supple and maddening as mercury, making Alfie kiss him harder. A hot, slick muddle of teeth and tongues, not quite moving together.

Until Fen pulled back. Wriggling away when Alfie caught for him, his mouth all smirky and kiss-swollen. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

“No…” said Alfie, a little doubtfully.

Fen’s eyes glittered at him. “I’m not scared of you, Alfie Bell.”4

“Good.” He grabbed Fen’s wrists, rough this time, like he meant it. Like he was really trying to overpower him. And Fen struggled. Like he was really trying to stop him.

And maybe Alfie’s wires were crossed, but it was…kind of fun, rolling about, half on and half off the sofa, with Fen, not really fighting at all. It made him very aware of everything he really liked about Fen’s body: his strength, his resilience, the tendons on his forearms, the muscles in his long thighs, the silky triangle of hair on his chest and the rougher line of it down his belly, the hard cock trapped between them. Basically, the fact he was absolutely, undeniably, gorgeously a man. Sharp and tender and fearless and vulnerable.

He finally got Fen pinned. Began peeling him out of his jeans and boxers.

“Going to behave?”

Fen laughed up at him, from beneath a tangle of hair. “Give me a reason to.”

Simple enough. He closed his free hand round Fen’s cock, gliding with that hot, fragile skin until Fen was pushing into his touch, gasping, all playfulness abandoned for something raw and true and real.

“Get up here.” Alfie’s voice came out all hoarse.

A bit like the sound he made when Fen obeyed, straddling his lap again, hands resting lightly on his shoulders. He’d seen Fen naked at least twice, he should have been used to it by now…but somehow he wasn’t. Fen in nothing but his skin was fresh magic every time. Like seeing his Sagaris waiting for him at the kerb, knowing all that beauty and power was his.

“Are you all right?” Fen’s fingertips brushed the side of his face.

“Yeah…I mean. It’s not weird, is it? When I’m still fully dressed.”

“Ohhh.” Fen smiled—more than a touch of smug in it. “You like having me like this?”

“I’d like you any way I could get you. But yeah.”

“Because you like being in control?”

“A bit. But also”—he stroked his hands all the way up Fen’s spine to the wings of his shoulder blades—“cos there’s no distraction from you.”

Fen tossed his hair clear of his shoulders and arched into Alfie’s touch, so the light spilled down his body like water, making him shine. “I like being naked for you. I love the way you look at me.” His eyes closed, the lashes falling softly gold against his cheeks, and his fingers traced an idle path to his own throat. “It makes me feel like…me again. Like I’m still here.”

“You are here. You’re here with me.”

Fen opened his eyes again. “And at your mercy.”

Yeah, right. At the mercy of Alfie’s beauty-struck stare. His wonder-struck fingers. Trembling along the sharp edge of Fen’s collarbones, into the deep hollows behind, where everything was tight and soft.

“Put your hands on the sofa back,” he whispered.

And Fen did, stretched out over Alfie, open to him, and the curve of his spine broke Alfie wide as an oyster shell. He pressed his mouth helplessly to Fen’s throat. It tasted so familiar: sweat, salt, Fen. Felt familiar too, the rough and the smooth, the ripple of Fen’s Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

“Oh Fen.” The words escaped before he could stop them. “You’re the bonniest lad I’ve ever seen.”5

A shaky near-laugh. “I’d say you’re exaggerating…but don’t stop.”

Alfie swept his hands down Fen’s hips, over his arse, and up to the dip of his lower back. Then again. Again and again, learning those sleek lines like calligraphy, and the letter he shaped was Fen.

Fen’s head fell forward, his breath hot and shallow against Alfie’s cheek. Chanting Alfie’s name. Pressing himself into Alfie’s hands. And when Alfie traced, at last, the sleekest, warmest places of his flesh, he cried out sharply, his cock jerking between them. Alfie brought his fingers to his lips, got them good and wet, and Fen moaned, just at the sound of it. He lifted his hips, hollowed his spine, presenting himself to Alfie’s touching.

“Fuck. God.” That in answer to the first swirl of Alfie’s fingers. “Oh yes.”

Suddenly Alfie looked up, all motion stilled. “What’s that?”

“Um,” said Fen, sounding slightly annoyed, “it’s my arse.”

“No, that noise. It came from downstairs. I thought I heard rattling.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He nudged eagerly against Alfie’s hand. “It’s probably just the kids come back to fix their handiwork.”

“What? Seriously? The little bastards.”

“Alfie—Oof.”

He hadn’t meant to dump Fen off his lap quite so unceremoniously, but…that was sort of what happened. And he didn’t mean to leave him lying in a heap on the sofa like a half-squashed daddy longlegs, but…that was sort of what happened as well, as Alfie ran to the window to see what was happening.

Sure enough, squinting through a gap in the curtains, he could just about make out shadowy splodges on the street. There were definitely people down there. He banged on the glass, but either they didn’t hear or they didn’t care.

Fen struggled into a sitting position, one leg curled over the other for modesty’s sake, his nakedness a little ridiculous now. “It’s not worth it. It’s never worth it.”

“No way,” Alfie growled, even the pleading note in Fen’s voice not enough to hold him back. “This crap stops tonight.”

With that, Alfie charged out of the room, down the stairs, and through the side door. He tore round the corner, bellowing the traditional North Eastern battle cry of “Oi!” Found a tangle of kids and bikes and cans of spray paint, FAGGO in big cheerful letters emblazoned across the newly scrubbed grille. He was so angry, he could feel it bubbling in his skin. And it was so much easier to be angry.

His appearance generated a gratifying amount of alarm and the vandals scattered, snatching their bikes and careening away in a clatter of pedals and a swoosh of wheels. Alfie surged after them, yelling bloody murder and grabbing wildly. He managed to get a handful of hoodie. Brought its owner pinwheeling backwards off his BMX.

The bike spun into the kerb, and the kid gave a terrible screech, arms and legs thrashing in all directions. But Alfie had spent most of his adolescence getting into fights, and the instincts were still there. He was slightly hampered at first by not wanting to brutalise a child, but as soon as the child began yelling obscenities at him, he lost all such scruples. He wrestled the kid against the bonnet of the nearest car—not his own, of course, there was no way he was doing that to his Sagaris—and pinned him there with his arms twisted up behind his back.

“Alfie, what the fuck are you doing?” Fen, barefoot and wearing what appeared to be a purple silk kimono, came running into the street.

It was actually a good question. He couldn’t just let the kid go—he’d only come back. Maybe do worse. But, now he had him, what was he supposed to do with him? If Alfie had ever pulled a stunt like this, his dad would have belted the living shit out of him. But you couldn’t go around doing that to other people’s kids. Honestly, Alfie wasn’t even sure he’d be able to do it to his own. It hadn’t done him any harm, but the thought of it just…didn’t sit well with him, like the time Kev had dared him to drink a pint of off milk. He didn’t resent his dad, but, he realised with a sudden and eerie clarity, he didn’t like him much. Was probably more than a little bit scared of him. And he would never want his son to feel that way about him.

He would want his son to feel protected and looked after and loved. Or, y’know, daughter. If he had a daughter. That’d be cool too. And, oh God, they were all right about him. His dad, this bloody kid, everyone. He was soft. A sissy faggot nancy.

He shoved the lad a little harder into the car and prepared to impart a (verbal) life lesson about respect. “Now listen here—”

“Gerroff me, you fucking dirty queer. And fuck you. Cocksucking freak.”6

“Shut up.” Alfie tried not to sound horrified. All he was doing was teaching this kid that adults were powerless. That he was powerless. “Just…shut up and…stop being a git.”

His anger was leaking away. Which gave him space to feel a lot of other awful shit: confusion and loneliness and hurt, and where the fuck had that come from? They were just kids. They shouldn’t be able to hurt him.

“Please let him go.” That was Fen, all gentleness, with his southern-softened vowels, the night air stirring his too-long, pink-tipped hair, and the edges of whatever the fuck he was wearing, making the pattern of flowers ripple.

Out of nowhere, Alfie was furious again. And it felt sweet and strong and safe. It was like Fen was fucking asking for it. Why couldn’t he even pretend to be normal?

He gritted his teeth, adjusting his hold to free a hand—not entirely sure what he was going to do, but wanting, more than anything, to do something. So he could stop feeling like this. “Someone has to teach the little bastard a lesson.”7

The kid went crazy, screaming in earnest now between the insults, and pounding his feet against the pavement. Lights began to glow in the windows of the houses opposite.

“Oh my God, stop it. Stop it right now.” Fen’s hands closed around Alfie’s elbow, as he tried to physically drag him away.

But Alfie was having none of it. He shook him off easily—and had just enough self-control to be careful about it. He didn’t want to hurt Fen. Or have him get hurt. Just wanted him out of the way.

The kid, of course, used this momentary distraction to make another escape attempt. “Lemme go. Fucking faggot, fucking cocksucker, lemme go.”

“You really need to widen your vocabulary,” Fen told him wearily. “In the eighteenth century they called us mollies and mandrakes. In Hebrew, there’s noshech kariot, which means ‘pillow biter,’ and in Spanish there’s maricón, which I can’t really translate, because it has something to do with the Virgin Mary, but apparently it’s very insulting.”

“This isn’t the time to be fucking clever,” Alfie growled.

“But didn’t you say we ought to teach him a lesson? If he wants to spend his life insulting a group of people, he should get better at it.” Fen folded his arms, his attention on the kid again. “If you were from the Caribbean, you could call me a batty man, which refers to a specific sexual preference. And in Mandarin, there’s duànxiù, meaning ‘cut sleeve.’ It refers to Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty, who chose to cut the sleeve from his garment rather than disturb his male concubine, who had fallen asleep on it. Although now I think about it, that’s rather romantic and probably wouldn’t suit your purpose. But, even so, there’s always the old standbys: poof and fairy and—”

“Shurrup.” The kid turned his head and spat at Fen, spattering his dressing gown thing with strings of phlegmy saliva.

Fen didn’t react at all—same as all those years ago. “Let him go.”

“But he spat on you. He’s calling you…us…names.”

“So? You can’t beat up homophobia. Or children.”

Alfie swayed, slightly sick with the aftermath of adrenaline. “What do we do?”

“We hope he grows up and stops being afraid. Just like you did.”

The lightest brush of fingers against Alfie’s arm, not to stop him this time, but simply to reach him. Like he was lost and Fen was calling his name. Guiding him through the dark.

It made something weak inside him buckle.

And just then, the kid slammed his head back. Got Alfie right on the nose.

“Jesus Christ.” His ears exploded with the crunch of his own cartilage. And then there was pain. Blood in his mouth. Flashing lights behind his eyes.

As Alfie staggered, half-blind, bewildered with the sheer shock of it, the kid kicked him hard in the shins and bolted for his bike. Pedalled furiously away.

The merry jing-a-ling-ling of a bell sliced through the sudden silence.

Across the road, at what he clearly considered to be a safe distance, the kid swerved to a halt. “Faggot,” he yelled, shrill and triumphant. He was too far away to really see, but Alfie was sure he grinned. A feral and empty grin.

Then he wheeled his bike around. And was gone.

“I’m not a faggot.” Alfie staggered after him, not even giving chase, just moving because…what else could he do? Stand still? “I’m not a faggot, do you hear me?” The night took his words, as if they were nothing. “I’m not a faggot. I’m…I’m a person.”

Half the lights in the street were on now. The shadows of strangers staring down at him. Watching. Judging. Who the fuck knew?

“Alfie, oh, Alfie.” Fen, running after him, all streaming silk and flying hair, gleaming like a candle flame. “Are you all right? Your nose? Is it broken?”

“Don’t think so. But”—this terrible grief crested inside him and then came roaring at Fen—“what the fuck are you thinking? Being out here like that?”

“Like what? I’m here because I was worried about you.”

“I can take care myself. I’m not some poncy southern cream puff, you know, who can’t hold his own in a fight.”

A brief, tight silence.

“Yes, I’m well aware you’re good at hurting people. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be at your side. Even if”—Fen rolled his eyes—“you’re your own worst enemy.”

“I was handling it. You just made it worse. Flouncing around like some kind of…”

Fen had gone very pale. Very still. “Like some kind of what?”

“Some kind of”—Alfie gestured at the flowery kimono—“pansy.”

There was a rushing in Alfie’s ears, like listening to the sea through a shell, except inside his head. And his mouth was so sour and coppery he thought he might be sick.

“In case you’ve forgotten,” Fen said quietly, “I am a pansy. And so are you.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have to act like it.”

“Oh my God.” Fen actually threw his hands in the air, purple silk billowing around him. “Go to therapy, Alfie Bell. I’ve got too much going on in my life to deal with your bullshit.”

He turned on his heel and swept away, heading for the side door.

Alfie stared after him, full of all this stuff he couldn’t figure out or articulate. He was sure he was angry, but it hurt. Everything hurt. And he felt so alone. And Fen was leaving.

“It’s all right for you,” he heard himself shout. “You have a choice.”8

Fen stopped abruptly. Turned. Blazingly furious. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t have to be like this. Or live like this. Or deal with any of it.” The words bubbled out of him, and they tasted like blood. “You could be with a woman. You could be straight.”

“But I’m not straight. Who I’m with doesn’t change who I am.” Fen threaded his fingers through his hair and pulled so hard it must have hurt. “I’m such a fucking idiot. How could I ever think you, of all people, could respect me or understand me or care about me. Next time just put my head down the toilet, you pathetic, waste-of-space, walking cliché.”

“Oi!” Across the street, a window sash rattled and one of Fen’s neighbours leaned out. “Some of us are trying te kip. Calm the fuck doon, or I’ll call the bizzies on ye.”

For some reason, that only made Fen laugh—one of his bitter ones, though. “I’m causing a disturbance, but kids vandalising my shop and throwing eggs at my house don’t? You’re a bigoted old wazzock, and you can piss right off.” He glanced at Alfie, eyes steel in the greyish moonlight. “And the same goes for you. I never want to see you again.”

Alfie’s world was treacle. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t feel. “All my stuff’s still in the flat.”

“Then get it and get out.”

It took more effort than Alfie would have believed possible—almost more than he could muster—to move his feet. But somehow he did, one step, then the next, then the next.

Fen didn’t even look back.

18

Nothing seemed real. Not Alfie. Not Fen. Not the living room, where they’d been so happy less than twenty minutes ago. It was like those stories about fairy gold, which glittered so bright and made you think you were rich, only to turn back to stones when the sun set.

He grabbed his keys. His wallet. Phone.

Coat.

Was he forgetting something? He didn’t know anymore.

He didn’t know anything.

There was this pressure in his head, building and building. Maybe he’d broken his nose after all.

And then there were tears streaking out of his eyes. The salt of them mingling with the drying blood and stinging. He made a wet, choked sound. Shock mostly.

Put a bewildered hand to his face. His fingers came away wet.

“Alfie?” Fen. Sounding very far away. “Alfie, are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

He was leaving. That was it. He was leaving because Fen didn’t want him anymore. Because he’d fucked everything up. Said all this stuff…stuff he meant and didn’t mean and couldn’t find his way through. And he was just so tired and sad and scared of everything.

Fen again, “Are you crying?”

He was almost into the hall when Fen’s hand brushed against his shoulder. Another of his so-light touches. But Alfie felt it like the needles of a tattoo gun.

Fen was in him so deep. Under his skin.

He would wear him forever. In all the colours of every flower that daily dared the sun.

And that was when it happened. Hairline fractures became rifts. Tore open vast and terrifying chasms. He broke.

Turned into Fen’s waiting arms and sobbed and sobbed and couldn’t stop.

“Don’t look at me,” he muttered, through the mess of spit and snot and blood.

Fen’s arms were tight. Unyielding in their strength. And they wouldn’t let Alfie go. His voice, though, his voice was soft as summer waves. “Shhh. It’s all right. I promise, it’s all right.”1

“It’s not. It’s not fucking all right.” It took Alfie a moment to find the problem. He knew it was there, knew everything was wrong, but Fen, being held by Fen like this, kept making it different. Then he remembered. “Men don’t cry.”

“Oh, Alfie, Alfie Bell”—now Fen’s voice broke—“of course they do.”

He sniffed. “Not proper ones.”

“Now listen here. You’ve said more than enough nonsense for one evening. Everyone cries. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.”

They had somehow ended up on the floor: a slow, entangled slide from feet to knees. Which meant Fen had managed to get himself all round Alfie. Wrapped him up tight. It made Alfie feel small. Well, smaller than usual. But not entirely in a bad way. Truthfully, he wanted to live here. Inside Fen, forever.

“It’s blummin’ awful,” he said.

Fen’s mouth twitched a little, like he was trying really hard not to smile. “Well, you probably have the crying equivalent of blue balls. Things are always more intense when you suppress them.”

“Don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“I’m not saying you should. Cry when you need to, that’s all.”

Alfie prickled a bit at that. “I’m not some bleedy-heart—”

“Alfie, seriously. You need to stop this, for your own sake as much as mine. I don’t want to hear another fucking thing about how you’re not this or not that. Why not spend the time figuring out who you are, instead?”

“That’s the problem, mate.” Alfie wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’ve no fucking clue.”

Fen gazed at him, pale and solemn, eyes cutting deep. “I thought I knew, before tonight.”

“I…I really fucked up. All that shit I said to you.”

“Some part of you believes it, though.”

He burrowed into Fen, fully expecting to be pushed away. But he wasn’t. “I just… I guess… I know you’re not straight, I do get that. Sort of. But I don’t know why you’d be with a man like. If you could be with a woman.”

“Because,” Fen said gently, “for me, it’s not about gender. It’s about the person. And I happened to meet a man I really liked. Someone strong and kind and sexy and bossy. And so I wanted to be with him.”

“All those past tenses are really freaking me out.”

“Yes, well, he was a complete dick to me tonight.”

“He’s… I’m really sorry.”

Fen sighed. “I know you are. But I meant what I said. I’ve been queer all my life. You and your friends didn’t give much choice about that. And I can’t deal—I won’t deal—with someone who can’t accept me. Or accept himself.”

“I’m trying.” Alfie’s eyes had apparently decided they wanted to cry again. “I’m trying really hard. P-please don’t give up on me.”

“I suppose it would be pretty unfair,” Fen conceded, after a horrifyingly long pause. “Considering all the times you haven’t given up on me.”

Alfie uncurled just enough that he could meet Fen’s gaze straight on. “I’ll never give up on you, Fen. Never.”

“You know something, Alfie Bell? It scares me witless…but I think I believe you.”

They rolled apart, Alfie realising he’d got a crick in his neck, and Fen shaking his arm like maybe he had pins and needles in it. It was weirdly companionable to lie there on Fen’s hideous, brown-patterned carpet, side by side, staring at the cracks in his ceiling and feeling almost okay.

“How’s your nose?” asked Fen. “It looks horrible. Um, no offence.”

Alfie touched it gingerly. And winced. “It’s probably okay? Just needs cleaning up.”

“Aren’t you supposed to put frozen peas on it?”

“I dunno. Am I?”

“For the swelling or something?”

“Do you have frozen peas?”

“Let me check.” Fen darted into the kitchen and came back with something pinkish clasped in his hand. “I found this frozen chicken breast. God knows how long it’s been in there. Will it do?”

The idea of holding a fossilised dead bird against his face didn’t really appeal to Alfie, but Fen was looking all wide-eyed and hopeful and adorable. “I guess the important thing is that it’s cold. I’m sure it doesn’t matter what it is.”

“Okay, good.”

So Alfie accepted the fossilised dead bird. And it did at least numb his nose enough that he was able to wash away the blood and general mess without hurting himself too much. Once he was de-gored, he was relieved to discover he was basically fine. Probably he would be swollen and tender and bruised for a bit. But that was the extent of the damage.

He came back to the living room to find Fen in a pair of navy-blue sweatpants, which hung low enough to show the sleekness of his belly and the sharp jut of his hips. It was a nice look, but he felt kind of bad about it.

“Uh. I’m sorry I said… Did I… What happened to the purple thing?”

That made Fen laugh. “You can rest easy if you think I’d let your issues affect my style. The kimono’s in the washing machine because a teenager hocked over it.”

“Oh. Right.” Alfie was still in no way a fan of the kimono, but he was oddly relieved to know he wasn’t responsible for its absence. He slumped into the embrace of the sofa. “It’s really late, isn’t it?”

“Eleven or twelve, maybe?”

Alfie clenched and unclenched his hands. “Uh. D’you want to mebbe go for a drive?”

“What? Now?”

“Aye. I dunno…it clears my head sometimes.”

It seemed kind of a weird idea, now it was just hanging there. But to his surprise, after looking at him for what felt like a long time, Fen nodded. “If that’s what you want. Just let me go get a top.”

A few minutes later, Fen was tucked into a hoodie and they were back on the street, making their way to where Alfie had parked the Sagaris. The keys were a reassuring weight in his hand. Something made him stop, though, before he unlocked the door.

“Do you want to drive?” he asked.

Fen squeaked. “Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“Is this guilt? Because you called me a queeny part-timer?”

“No. I mean… I do feel guilty. But that’s not why I offered.” Actually, he wasn’t really sure why he’d offered. It should have been his idea of hell, surrendering control of his beloved car to someone else. “I just thought you might like to.”

“I really would. But are you sure you trust me? After what happened last time.”

“You going to do that again?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I trust you.”

Alfie handed over the keys, and they swapped sides. This time, it didn’t feel so bad, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Where shall we go?” Fen had to raise his voice over the leonine growl of the engine waking. “Round the block?”

At first Alfie didn’t answer. Then, “When I was a teenager, I used to head up the A1 towards Edinburgh. It’s really nice cos you’ve got the sea and stuff. Just promise to slow down when I tell you.”

“I promise.” Fen turned his head, met Alfie’s gaze directly. “I’ll never do that again.”

Alfie felt a tug at the corner of his mouth—a smile that happened all on its own. “Guess I believe you.”

And then they were off. True to his word, Fen drove carefully through the streets of South Shields and Jarrow. Guiding them into the glitter-streaky darkness of the Tyne Tunnel and out again, past North Shields, and finally onto the A19 heading north.2

The Sagaris wasn’t exactly easy to handle—she was all power, no control—but Fen was doing okay. It was kind of nice, watching him do that. Watching him grow his confidence. And then just…get it. The joy. Like nothing else on earth.

As he’d predicted, there wasn’t much traffic on the A1. It unfurled before them like a ghostly ribbon beneath the cloud-crumpled sky. The world became a strip of light. And the night swallowed everything they left behind.

“You can open her up a bit, if you like.” Alfie pulled out his phone and turned on Cyclops. “Just remember to slow down for the cameras.”

“I…I’m nervous. What if I kill us?”

“Then we’ll be dead.”

Fen’s hands tightened on the wheel. “That’s not helping.”

“You’ll be fine, pet. Go on, now. Make her sing.”

There it was: the familiar throaty howl that never failed to grip Alfie’s heart, make his pulse race, and the effortless slide from fast to faster to really fucking fast. They soared past seventy-eighty-ninety-one hundred in fragments of seconds. You couldn’t even really see it happening. Only feel it.

And, suddenly, Fen was laughing. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

“Fun, right?”

They had to shout over the engine.

“Fun?” Fen sounded rough and breathless—sexy as hell. “I feel…I feel like I’m defying gravity.”

“Well, let’s not try any stunt jumps, eh? This isn’t the next Grand Theft Auto game.”

“I somehow keep forgetting you’re musically illiterate. It’s a song.”

“Oh aye? Going to do it for me?”

“I’m not sure I can hit the F but”—Fen tossed the hair back from his face—“but, you know something? Right now…maybe I can.”

So they roared along the empty A1, past hazy fields and trees that looked like shadows of themselves, while Fen—his voice as pure as starlight—sang about a wizard, and change, and how nobody would ever keep him down.

Alfie had no way of telling if he got the note right. But he didn’t care. It was just nice hearing Fen sing again—though did it count as again when he barely remembered the first time? He wished he could. But the truth was, he couldn’t link that silver-and-gold sylph boy to the man he was now. Just like the stupid kid Alfie’d been couldn’t have connected Fen—or James, as he’d been then—to a person whose life he was ruining. But, still, for the first time since the night after the wedding, Alfie’s head felt a bit less split open. Like maybe there were bridges after all. Even if it meant accepting the reality of someone he didn’t want to be. And someone else other people didn’t want him to be. And the fact they were both him anyway and always had been…

Fuck. Maybe he did need therapy.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been entangled in phenomenology, but then Fen broke the silence. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

Somewhere between South Shields and Edinburgh probably wasn’t the answer Fen was looking for. Alfie glanced out of the window, looking for clues, but it had been such a long time since he’d driven this way, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to recognise the scenery in daylight. “Near Berwick maybe? I don’t think we crossed the border, anyway.”

Fen made a cute little startled noise. “I drove us to Scotland? That means I should probably stop, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t have to.”

A river snaked by, gleaming dully in the darkness.

“N-no, I should. Or I might not. It’s kind of addictive.”

“Well, you’ll run out of motorway eventually.”

“Let’s try to avoid a Thelma and Louise situation.” Fen slowed and eased them into a slip road, and then into a twisty little B road, searching for somewhere they could turn around.

There still wasn’t much for Alfie to see—a stipple of wooden fences marking out a tumble of grey-washed fields that muddled into the sky. And no moon. Just its glow locked behind ragged clouds, turning their edges yellow, like a grandma doily.

“I’m also ridiculously horny,” murmured Fen, as he stopped the Sagaris on a dirt track beneath a dangling-branched tree.

“You what?”

“Apparently driving your car really fast while singing musical numbers excites me.”3 Fen caught him by the wrist and dragged his hand to his cock. Which was as stiff as the gearstick and quite a bit hotter.

“Lemme help with that.”

Fen’s hips bucked. “No, I mean yes, oh fuck. I mean, I want you to fuck me.”

“Not sure there’s room.”

“Who said anything about in the car?”

At that moment, zero-to-sixty in three point seven seconds had nothing on Alfie. Seat belt off. Door open. He just had time to blurt out “I haven’t got—” when Fen, coming the other way, at about the same speed, shoved the crisp crinkled square of a condom into his hand. Then there was nothing but the collision: bodies and tongues and Fen’s fingers clumsy at his belt. It wasn’t really a kiss. It was an act of need and violence, like he could force his heart into Fen’s mouth and make him swallow it. And Fen didn’t flinch, didn’t yield. Just came at him, ferocious, claiming him right back. Until everything was heat and pressure, and the deepest taste of Fen, and Alfie could hardly bear his own wanting.

He grabbed Fen round the waist and flung him against the still-warm bonnet of the car. Fen landed with a gasp, steadying himself with his hands for a moment, before wriggling out of his trousers. At least until they got tangled in his shoes, leaving him kicking with all the grace of a mountain goat. Alfie tried to help, except he ended up nearly dragging Fen back off the car. So the whole thing was basically carnage. But the world had spun a bit skew-whiff—or Alfie had—and it had all sort of become…part of the same thing. The messy stuff and the sexy stuff together. Like maybe he’d never seen anything quite as beautiful, or maddeningly erotic, as Fen’s bare knees flailing in the greyish moonlight.

He nearly dropped the condom twice. Then tried to put it on inside out.

“Come on come on come on.” Fen propped himself on his elbows, watching Alfie from between his splayed-open thighs. And Alfie was kind of lust-shocked with how lewd he looked like that, all exposed and shameless, his cock dripping, his balls drawn up tight, and shadows arrowing into the cleft of his arse, pulling Alfie’s gaze with them.

Finally, he was ready. He wrenched Fen’s legs even wider, dragging a rough, undeniably enthusiastic moan from him. Lined up as best he could, groping with the lube-slickened head of his cock through the soft and secret places of Fen’s body.

“I’m waiting for you, Alfie Bell.” Fen’s glasses were full of reflections—made his eyes glitter. “Fucking own me.”

Stupid worst impossible fucking time to hesitate. But…

“Own me back?” His voice sounded weird and thin just then.

Fen flung a knee over one of Alfie’s shoulders, curled a foot over his hip. “Of course I do. Now fuck me and make me feel it. Make me scream.”

Suddenly Alfie wasn’t hesitating anymore. He shoved inside in one merciless thrust, taking Fen’s body as he’d taken his mouth.

And Fen really did scream, this wild, naked sound. “Oh God yes. Like that. Just…like…that…”

Before dissolving into sharp cries and punched-out groans. The occasionally jolty yes or breathless A-Ah-Al-fie. Since what Alfie was giving him was less a fucking than an onslaught, slamming their bodies together with a force that rocked his car. He wasn’t exactly a stranger to rough sex, but he hadn’t realised how much he’d been holding back before.

Somehow, with Fen, it felt safe not to. Like he wanted everything Alfie could give and was strong enough to take it. If Alfie was worried about anything, it was the Sagaris, but right then, clenched in the fierce heat of Fen, a few dents seemed like nothing.

Besides, he had a few dents of his own. And was figuring out how to live with them.

He mumble-growled something—didn’t even know himself what he was trying to say—and shoved Fen’s hoodie up to his armpits, exposing an arch of straining, sweat-shining skin. Hooking Fen’s knees over his elbows, he leaned over him and licked his way up Fen’s stomach like he was doing a tequila slammer. Then suckered his mouth over a nipple and pulled until Fen threw back his head and wailed with jagged ecstasy.

Alfie lifted up again. Got back to fucking. Staring down at Fen. In that strange, moon-touched light, he was a piece of silver, shaped to the curves of the Sagaris, fey and feral and lovely. His back was arched, his throat exposed, his hands flung haphazardly towards the windscreen…and Alfie felt happiness break inside him like tears. He came, a second or two later, in a muddled rush of urgent passion and helpless tenderness, so deep in Fen that he felt almost part of him. And, for the first time in a long time, whole.

“Oh shit.” He forced open his eyes. He was supposed to be good at this—and he’d come first, like he didn’t know how to fuck somebody. “Shit. I’m so sor—”4

“Shh. No. Don’t move.” Fen twisted on his softening cock. “Right on the edge…just…”

Alfie wrapped a hand round him.

“God yes please. Hard. Yes. Perfect yes…oh.”

A few hard pulls and a slippery finger tracing a line between his balls and his hole, where Alfie’s cock still nestled, and Fen came too. So debauched and pretty, sprawled across Alfie’s car, his glasses steamed up and his hair all over his face. His mouth stretched open in moaning, wordless bliss, and his warm semen spilling riotously over Alfie’s fingers.5

It was irresistible. Alfie brought his hand to his fingers and licked them clean. Yeah, so it wasn’t the most delicious thing in the world, but it was Fen. The taste of Fen’s pleasure.

Fen lifted a weary hand and gave him a teasing sort of thumbs-up. “A-plus gay, Alfie Bell.”

“I don’t normally.” Alfie could feel himself blushing and was glad for the darkness. “I just wanted to…cos it’s you.”

He eased out carefully and tugged off the condom. Then tied up the end, rolled the whole thing into an old tissue, and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“I don’t want to litter.”

“Of course you don’t.” It was hard to read Fen’s expression through the shifting shadows. And when he finally spoke, it was quietly, almost like he was on the verge of laughing, but maybe not. “You know, I used to think I was so messed up for being in love with you. After everything you did to me.”

“Wait. What?”

“Just…kiss me, will you?”

Alfie settled gingerly over Fen, braced on his elbows so he didn’t crush him (or the car). They kissed for a long time, sticky and sore and sweet, the night air nibbling playfully at Alfie’s exposed arse. Afterwards, and once they were dressed again, they lay on the bonnet together, Fen’s head tucked against Alfie’s shoulder, his bent knee resting on top of Alfie’s legs.

“You didn’t guess?” he asked.

“Well, you said before that you sort of fancied me like. But you didn’t say…” Alfie swallowed. He’d always been taught to be suspicious of anything that smacked of unmanly sentiment. “But I didn’t know you liked me.”

“I didn’t like you. I loved you. Or had a crush on you, I guess.”

Alfie’s heart was in free fall. And he couldn’t tell if it was joy or terror. “Uhm.”

“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?”

“Nooo…”

“Don’t panic, this isn’t a proposal. I just wanted to say that…I get it now. I kept wondering if I was some kind of masochist, but it wasn’t that. It was this. I think I always saw this.”

“Saw what?”

“You. The boy who rescued butterflies. Unless”—Fen slanted a look at him—“you don’t remember that, either?”

Of course Alfie remembered. He’d made himself look like a right nancy. And his dad had been furious. It was kind of expected you’d get suspended from school occasionally, for fighting, or cheeking a teacher, or playing the wag. But for a butterfly? It’d been beautiful though. This red miracle in a grey place. “It was probably a dare or summin.”

“Oh.”

Except now Fen sounded disappointed. Which was worse than anything.

“I just felt bad for it, alreet?” He sighed. “Don’t think I’ve been brave since.”

Fen wriggled a hand into Alfie’s. “This is brave.”

“Why though?” Alfie shifted so he could see Fen’s face—all pointy and Fen-like and pretty and perfect. “I don’t want to be brave. I just want to be happy.”

Fen squeezed. “Then let’s do that.”

He made everything sound so easy. “I wish I could wrap my head round it.”

“Wrap your head round what?”

“I dunno. There’s all this stuff I still sort of believe about…stuff. And I don’t know how to stop.”

“Oh Alfie, petal.”

Alfie hadn’t been called petal in years. It reminded him not of his mam exactly, but the warm feeling you got after you’d fallen over, and you’d been fussed over and cared for, and you realised that you weren’t really that hurt after all. He blinked, feeling sniffy and prickly.

Fen brought their entwined hands to his mouth—kissed his way across the joints of Alfie’s fingers. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can’t be the sort of man you want to be. The sort of man you are.”

Alfie clung a little to Fen’s fingers, feeling pathetic, but not quite able to let go. And far too aware he’d cried his eyes out earlier in the evening. “I dunno what kind of man I am anymore.”

“I do,” said Fen fiercely. “You’re kind and loving and generous and protective and bossy and sexy as hell. You’re going to make someone an amazing husband someday.”

“Sure you aren’t proposing?”

Fen laughed.

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind.”

Fen laughed again. “You must really like fucking me.”

“I really like everything about you.” He sat up, pulling Fen with him. “Don’t you want to?”

“Get married?” Fen sounded so horrified it was almost funny.

“No. I mean, not now. I mean, I would like to get married someday.”

“Well, I believe marriage is a heteronormative construct.”

Alfie rolled his eyes. “You would. But look, you like me and I like you and we like being together. Isn’t that dating? Mebbe a relationship?”

“We’ve known each other less than a week. And for at least some of that week, I really wanted to put your head down the toilet.”

“Actually, we’ve kind of known each other for years.”

“Oh yes.” Fen bit his lip. “All that bullying: a solid foundation of intimacy.”

Alfie did his best to sound neutral. Rather than bleedy. “That a no, then?”

“It’s a…I don’t know what it is. Everything’s really complicated right now. And in any case, you’ll be going back to London soon.”

“That’s just logistics. We could figure it out.”

Fen shook his head. “I can’t, Alfie. I’ve got to take care of Pansies.”

“It’s a shop. Not your kid.”

“Yes, well, if it was my kid, Social Services would be taking it away from me on the grounds of neglect bordering on abuse.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be running a flower shop.”

Fen hid his face behind his hands. “Please, don’t. I don’t want to have to think about this now.”

“Shit. Sorry.” Alfie flung an arm over his shoulder and pulled him in tight. “Did I wreck everything?”

“No,” said Fen in a small voice. “But I understand if you don’t want to hang around.”

“Don’t be daft. I’m always going to want to hang around. And I’m sorry I pushed.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be what you want.”

Alfie knocked his knee against Fen’s, where they dangled over the edge of the bonnet. “You can be a real doof sometimes, y’know? You’re everything I want. I just thought it’d be nice to be able to say you were my boyfriend, that’s all.”

Fen was quiet for a long time. “I’ll be your boyfriend now,” he whispered. “While we’re here. And I can pretend there’s nothing else in the world but us.”

“What a lucky bloke I am.”

Fen nestled deeper into the crook of Alfie’s arm. Put his head back on Alfie’s shoulder. “I’m so happy with you, Alfie.”

They sat that way for a while, sharing the quiet and the dark and the warmth of each other’s bodies. Time moved at its own pace, measured only in clouds that washed in rough waves across the sky. Eventually, Fen drooped, started, and caught himself with a drowsy murmur.

Alfie steadied him. “Time to get you to bed, sleepyhead.”

He tucked Fen into the passenger seat, noted, with some relief, that the Sagaris appeared to have survived the evening’s activities, and got behind the wheel. Letting someone else—well, letting Fen—have control of his car hadn’t been terrible. Had been worth it, in fact, for Fen’s pleasure in it. But he was glad to be back where he belonged.

“You want some music?” he asked, as he eased them out of the lane. “Can’t promise you’ll hear much of it over the engine. But you can plug your phone in there.”

“Oh, yes.” Fen yawned. “That’d be nice.”

He was adorably asleep about ten minutes later. But Alfie kept his playlist going anyway—a piece of Fen to keep him company on the way back home. He’d been expecting musicals, but apparently Fen also liked what Alfie privately thought of as “sad woman music.” It wasn’t what he would have chosen to listen to, but it was kind of nice anyway—though he wasn’t entirely sure what was supposed to be so upsetting. Wearing your partner’s favourite sundress was a good thing, wasn’t it?

Fen didn’t even stir when they pulled up outside Pansies. He did a bit when Alfie tugged the front door key out of his pocket and lifted him up. But then he just slid an arm around Alfie’s neck, curled into him, and went straight back to sleep. Let Alfie carry him into Pansies like a new bride.

19

Next morning, he was woken up by a flail and a shriek. He rolled over to discover a very tousled Fen sitting up in bed.

“Oh my God, what time is it?”

He groped for his phone. Squinted at the little green numbers. “Uh, nearly eight?”

“Fuck. The shop. Why didn’t you… You should have—” Fen slipped out of bed, pale and lean and lovely in the early-morning light. “I mean, it’s not your fault. But fuck.”

“You needed the sleep. We didn’t get back till three or summin.”

Fen was wrestling with his clothes, hopping absurdly on one foot as he tried to get his jeans on at the same time as his T-shirt. “Yes, but I have things I have to do. You know I can’t afford to…to…”

“Sleep?”

“Yes. I mean. No. I mean. Fuck.” Fen emerged from his T-shirt. He was glaring. “Look, you made things pretty clear last night. I know what you want, but I’m not giving up on Pansies for you.”

“Wow, no.”

But Alfie wasn’t even sure Fen heard him—he was already disappearing down the hall. Alfie rolled out of bed, scrambled for his clothes, and followed.

Fen was in the back room, dragging flowers out of cold storage. He glanced up only briefly. “I don’t have time right now.”

“I want to help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Alfie sighed. “Yeah, you do.”

“We’ve had this conversation.” Fen’s eyes flashed at him behind the heavy black frames of his glasses. “I know having you boss me around is cute sometimes, but respect a fucking boundary, okay?”

“I would if…” Wait, no. That sounded bad. Why did everything always sound bad when you needed it not to?

“If what?”

He tried again. “Fen, I…y’know…I…cried in front of you last night. I fucking cried. And you told me it was okay, and I believed you.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Well, I don’t get how it’s okay for me to do that but it’s not okay for me to help you.”

Alfie thought it was a pretty decent argument. Except he hadn’t quite expected Fen to suddenly look so…squashed. Or to go sliding to his knees among the flowers. Which, in a different context, would have been just about the prettiest thing Alfie had ever seen.

Fen blinked up at him, his eyes intensely green in the middle of all that colour. “I’m fucking everything up, Alfie. You had it right yesterday. I don’t want to run a flower shop. I don’t know how. I’m so far in debt, and all I do is lose money.”

“We can fix this.” Alfie dropped to his haunches. Reached for Fen’s hand. “I know it probably seems impossible, but I promise…money’s easy. It’s just numbers.”

“That’s the thing, though. Part of me doesn’t want it fixed. Part of me just wants it to be over so I can get on with my life.”

“Well, you don’t have to run it into the ground. We could close in a controlled and careful way. Take care of the assets and all that.”

Fen’s hands clenched into fists. “I know, I know. But it feels…really bad, throwing away my mother’s legacy. Whereas just losing it because I’m crap feels bad in a more bearable way. It’s not sensible. I can’t explain it.”

“No, I get it. It’s always harder choosing, right?”

A nod.

“Well. First things first, eh? Let’s get the shop open.” Alfie pushed himself back to his feet. “Tell me what to do.”

Fen drew in a shaky breath. “Okay. Yes. Okay.”

It wasn’t the most glamorous morning Alfie had ever spent. But it wasn’t the worst either. The work was mainly physical—and quite demanding at that—but he actually kind of enjoyed it. Being useful in such a straightforward, slightly primitive way. Also he got to show off to Fen, doing quite a bit more bending and flexing than was strictly necessary.

He washed and sorted flowers, hauled them about—surprising how heavy the flimsy buggers could be en masse—cleaned buckets and the coolers and anything else that looked messy, including the leaves and packaging left over from Fen’s baskets and bouquets. Fen also taught him some basic flower care, which was so far outside anything he would have felt okay with a few weeks ago that he was slightly startled by how comfortable he was. How much he liked looking after flowers, getting rid of the dead and wilted ones, making sure they were properly fed and watered, and that their leaves were neatly stripped. You had to be firm but gentle too, which Alfie reckoned played directly to his skill set.

Fen, meanwhile, did all the arrangements and set up the shop displays. And Alfie had to struggle to stay focused because he was very distracting. Not just in an obvious way, like his arse being all perky and tempting in his tight jeans. But the way he moved, with a dancer’s effortless grace, the strength of his arms and his supple wrists, the dexterity of his tough, callused fingers. He was singing too, along with whatever music he was playing—something about blueberry pies and being corny like Kansas.1

They made it though. And were open exactly on time. It was honestly a bit of an anticlimax because it wasn’t like there was a queue or anything—only incredibly guilty people were going to be on the doorstep of a flower shop at 9:00 a.m.—so all that happened was Fen flipping over the sign. And then they went straight back to what they were doing.

By about eleven, Fen was wrapping up the last of the orders, his creations lined up along the counter in the back room. He looked absorbed in his work, hands moving expertly among the flowers and greenery, tweaking and coaxing them into position.

“You’re really good at that,” Alfie said, coming up behind him and drawing him into an embrace.

Fen leaned back, snuggling his hips in tight. “Thank you. Mum taught me. So it’s like… Oh, this is so cheesy…but it’s like she isn’t gone.”

“That’s not cheesy. I think it’s nice.”

“She loved flowers.” Fen stroked a rose petal with the pad of his thumb. “The way they live their whole lives for a moment of beauty.”

Alfie wrinkled his nose doubtfully. “I think I’d rather last a bit longer, myself. Like one of those bushes you can’t get out of your patio.”

Fen turned so he was pressed up against Alfie’s chest, where he hid his face. “Oh, Alfie, I hate basically everything about running this fucking shop, but I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to stop doing the thing she taught me.”

Alfie didn’t really know what to say, so he just held Fen tightly, curving his body round him.

“There’s magic in it. Making flowers for people. It’s full of stories: births and deaths and marriage, love and guilt and gratitude, everything we are, good and bad and in-between.” Fen sighed. “She was better at it than me, though. Everyone wanted to talk to her.”

“People’ll get used to you.”

“I’m not sure I care. I gave up wanting acceptance from this place a long time ago.”

Alfie remembered the slinky-hipped lad he’d danced with a few nights ago. “You never know. Things change.”

“Maybe. But I don’t know if I can.”

“Wouldn’t want you to.” He kissed the edge of Fen’s brow. “So are you going to let me see your books or what?”

For a moment, he thought Fen was going to refuse again, but then he flapped a hand towards the corner of the room. “Fine. Go ahead.”

Alfie tried to see what he was being directed to. “That’s a wall, mate.”

“Beside the wall.”

“I thought that was a bin.”

“Um. No. That’s just where I…put things. You know, papers and things.”

“That’s where you put papers and things,” Alfie repeated.

Fen cringed. “I’m sorry. I know, it’s a disaster. But dying is really expensive, especially when you have a bunch of legal costs on top of it. And then there’s the mortgage on my London place, which I should really let David buy me out of, except then I really will be stuck here forever, and I won’t even have a home of my own anymore.”

“I told you. We’ll sort it out. It’s going to be fine.”

“Alfie, it’s not fine. It’s really not fine.” Fen’s voice rose and broke. “Basically, I have no money. I am running this shop on nothing. And the bank is about two red letters from taking everything.”

Alfie ran his hands soothingly down Fen’s back, trying to still his trembling. “Did your mam keep an accounts book or summin?”

“Yes, she had lots of shop stuff. I copied it all to my laptop when I sold mum’s computer.”

“Okay, so. Give me that and the rest of the day, and I’ll see what I can do.”

The practical approach seemed to calm Fen a little bit. Which was good because Alfie was way better at doing things than he was at saying things. Fen gave him a mock glare. “You’d better not look at my porn.”

“I promise. But, er, what kind of porn do you like? Just out of curiosity, y’know?”

That won the faintest of smiles, and Fen scurried upstairs to get the laptop.

Which meant Alfie was left alone in the flower shop. And, of course, despite the place having been deserted all morning, now a customer wandered in. An anxious-looking woman, about Alfie’s dad’s age, with iron-grey hair and a stern, hawk-nosed face, who stared at the displays with obvious bewilderment.

“Alreet there?” said Alfie awkwardly.

She nodded.

There was a long silence.

“Just came in for some flowers like,” she offered eventually.

“Oh aye?”

“Aye.”

Alfie peered down the corridor. No sign of Fen. What the fuck was he doing? Using the porn?

“Were you looking for anything in particular?” he asked.

“Just some flowers like.”

This was…not going so well. If Fen’s mam was best at this and Fen was good enough, then Alfie was bottom-of-the-pile clueless. He knew fuck all about flowers except what Fen had told him. Could probably just about recognise a daffodil if pushed. But then, what was that other thing Fen had said? That flowers were about people.

“I mean,” Alfie tried, “were you looking for anyone in particular?”

The woman prodded at something Alfie had no chance of recognising. A fancy lily maybe, with big curling petals? “Just…a friend.”

“Yeah?” Alfie had no idea. “So, er, how is she? Your friend?”

“Bit doon, truth be told.” The woman sighed. “It’s the chemo. It’s tough on her. Just thought I’d get summin to cheer her up.”

“That’s a good idea. She’ll like that.” Alfie got out from behind the counter and tried to look even a little bit like he knew what he was doing. “So, do you know what kind of flowers…”

Panic flashed across the woman’s face. Followed by a hot blush. “I’ve nivver bought her flowers before. Norrin forty years.”

“Well.” Alfie wasn’t entirely oblivious to subtext, but he wasn’t very good at dealing with it. He tended to blunder right through the middle and turn it into…text. “It’s never too late to start.”

“I was always too afraid what people would say.”

“I bet girls can get away with buying each other flowers.”

She shrugged.

And Alfie felt sort of weird and itchy. It was the wrong answer, and he knew it was. “And, anyway, fuck ’em. It’s nobody’s bloody business who you buy flowers for. Or what it means if you do.” He grinned. “So we going for it? We doing this?”

“Yes.” The woman took a deep breath. “Damn right we are. Except I divvent have a clue what she’d like.”

“Erm,” said Alfie.

“I can’t be doing with anything lovey-dovey. Red roses and whatnot. And I don’t want dead-bugger flowers either.”

“Dead-bugger flowers?”

“Ye knaa, the flimsy white nonsense people give you when you’re sick. Like they’re already planning the funeral. Nobody’s burying Maureen on my watch.”2

“Right. No roses. No dead-bugger flowers. Gottit.”

She gazed at him expectantly. And with so much hope it was bollock-freezing.

“So, summin cheery, mebbe?” he suggested, desperately. “I bet she’s tough as nails, your Maureen?”

“Aye.” That got him the faintest hint of a smile. Brightened her tired eyes. “That she is.”

Alfie scanned the flowers for a moment or two before his practical side intervened. “Oh. Erm. How much d’ye wanna spend?”

“Twenty quid mebbe?”

“Sounds good.” This was the moment of truth. He took a deep breath. Pointed at what was one of the few flowers he knew, apart from the ones his mam liked, roses because everyone did, and the ornamental cabbage thing Fen had given him. “So, wharraboot sunflowers? They’re bold and happy like?”

“That’s a really wonderful idea.” Fen, at last, stepped into the shop, laptop under his arm, smiling.

Alfie was incredibly glad to see him. And at the same time he wanted to shake him. Don’t you ever abandon me in the flower shop again!

“Sunflowers don’t need much to set them off. Just some nice greens.” Fen gathered up a mass of them from the bucket, his hands full of gold. “Something like this?”

The woman nodded. “Aye, that’d do nicely.”

Fen made his way back to the counter. Started performing his usual miracles with scissors and paper and bits of ribbon. Which liberated Alfie to scoop up the laptop and flee into the workroom.

There was actually a desk lurking in the corner, half-buried behind buckets and under papers. He got settled and began the painstaking task of untangling nearly two years of neglectful accounting.

And it was only when Fen touched him gently on the shoulder that Alfie realised that his neck was cricked and his eyes were gritty and that a lot of time had passed.

“Brought you something.” Fen put a paper bag down beside him, a neatly wrapped circle of greaseproof paper inside. “I hope you still like these.”

Alfie tore at the wrapping, inhaling blissfully the scent of floury bread and sweaty cheddar. “Fuck yeah. My favourite.”

“When you used to come in with your mum, you were always on at her to let you get a stottie.”3

Alfie mumbled something with his mouth full.

“I made you some tea as well. But I don’t know how you like it.”

“Milk, no sugar.”

“Really? A homegrown northern boy like you doesn’t take sugar?”

“Don’t want to get podgy.”

Fen smiled at him. “You’d look good. As long as you were happy.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe when I’m old and I’ve got no chance of ever getting laid again.”

“I’d still want to sleep with you. You won’t ever not be gorgeous to me, Alfie Bell. Whatever age or size you are.”

Alfie was still blushing into his rapidly disappearing stottie when Fen came back with a mug of tea. Proper tea, made with what was obviously a tea bag. Not the leafy stuff they liked down south. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes, I had a baguette. But I ate it on the way back to the shop because I was starving. It’s nearly three.”

“Shit, really? Well, thanks for lunch.”

Fen cleared a little space on the desk and squeezed himself onto it. “I’m not much for the domestic, but I can buy my man a sandwich and make him a cup of tea.”

“Good enough for me.”

“So.” Fen swung his feet a little. “I feel brave. What’s the damage?”

Alfie stuffed the last piece of stottie into his mouth and swallowed. Dusted off his hands. “It’s not…it’s not good, pet.”

“Yeah, I don’t need a master’s from the LSE to figure that out.”

“Something’s got to give. Even if you let David buy you out of your London place, you’re still not going to make the rent on Pansies. And even if you did…your business model is, well, it’s nonexistent, mate. You’re running at a pretty substantial deficit here.”

Fen squeezed his eyes shut. “I know.”

“It’s not unsalvageable though.”4 Alfie reached out and patted Fen’s knee consolingly. “Especially if we start controlling costs again. And thought about suppliers a bit—I mean, local is always best, and you’re importing most of your stock. There’s also a bunch of revenue streams you just don’t seem to be exploiting anymore. Like Teleflora, and you’ve got a really amazing website—”

“David made the website. And I just don’t have the manpower to cope with that volume of orders.”

“What about local deliveries, then? Your mam used to provide flowers for all these local supermarkets and churches and funeral homes.”

Fen mumbled something.

“What?”

“The van broke down, okay? And I can’t afford to get it repaired.”

“I’ll cover it,” Alfie offered.

“I’m not taking your money.”

Alfie gritted his teeth, trying not to let too much of his frustration show. “Look, I get it. My dad’s all no charity too. But this can be a loan or whatever.”

“More debt?” Fen gave him sceptical eyebrows.

“You’re going to have to do something, pet. You’re in a hole here. And, honestly, when you get right down to it, the thing that makes money is…more money.”

“This is a flower shop, not an investment bank.”

“A flower shop with most of its revenue streams compromised.” Alfie leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I can run the numbers for you, but I reckon that if we take care of the van, you can pay me back from the increased income and still come out with a bit of profit.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

Fen was biting his lip. “Okay, but even if you lend the money, Peter—you do remember him, right?—runs the garage now.”

“Peter? You mean Pete? Pete Brown? He used to be one of my best mates, I bet—” Alfie stopped abruptly. “Oh wait, no. I’m gay. I forgot. So I guess that’s out.”

“See. He was worse than you. I bet he’s grown into the sort of person who thinks having a swastika tattoo is a good laugh.”

Alfie frowned. “What kind of van is it?”

“A…white one?”

“Fen, come on.”

“I’m serious. It’s white. Has four wheels. Used to move, now doesn’t. That is the full extent of my knowledge.”

That was too much for Alfie. He reached up, caught Fen by the back of the neck, and pulled him into a deep kiss.

“I’m not objecting,” said Fen afterwards, “but what was that for?”

“I really lo—um, admire your commitment to not giving a fuck about stuff that doesn’t interest you. I’m going to take a look at the van tomorrow, okay? Then we can maybe think about reestablishing some of your mam’s relationships. Start having, y’know, cash flow.”

“Look at you, Alfie Bell.” Fen touched his lips softly. “Riding to the rescue.”

Alfie shifted a bit self-consciously. “Just like you came to mine.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

“I like who I can be with you.” Alfie stacked up some papers that didn’t need stacking. “I’ve never really liked myself much before.”

“I… God, you’re so romantic sometimes, I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Anything you like. Smile at me or kiss me. Say thank you. It’s all good.”

“Then, thank you. That’s a ridiculously nice and slightly too intense thing you just said to me.”

Alfie laughed. “Anytime, mate.”

“I have to go take care of the shop.” Fen slid off the desk and scurried away, blushing, and hiding behind his hand what was obviously his goofiest, toothiest grin.

And Alfie threw himself back into the books. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been because Fen’s mam—and her mam before her—had kept really detailed records. Time slipped away from him, and when he next looked up it was well into evening, the workroom was all tidied up, and there was no sign of Fen.

He found him, finally, outside, scrubbing FAGGO off the grille with what was left of the solvent, the last of the day’s sun making the hair on his forearms glint gold as he worked.

Fen glanced up with a wry, weary smile. “Well, at least they’ve learned to spell it.”

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I don’t. But you did so…” Fen shrugged. “Maybe if I keep doing it, they’ll get bored.”

It didn’t seem likely, but it would’ve been a bad time to say that. So Alfie grabbed some wire wool and started cleaning.

Fen made an ineffectual attempt to shoo him away. “I’m pretty sure it’s my turn.”

“Like I’m going to sit around scratching my arse while you pull a Cinderella down here.”

“Are you my fairy godmother?” Fen fluttered his eyelashes prettily.

“I’d rather be your handsome prince.”

“Are you sensitive, clever, well-mannered—”

“Wow, you’re kind of demanding about your princes. I thought they just had to be charming. Oi, what’s so funny?”5

“Nothing bad.”

They got back to work. With Fen singing this time—a remarkably cheerful song about being in agony. Probably one of his weird musical things. Alfie was going to have to get educated about this stuff. Not that he minded. It was just…Fen. Like the taste of his mouth and his cock and his tears.

“Can I ask you something?” asked Fen, in a little while. “A personal question?”

“Mate, you’ve seen me blubbing like a…like…a…”

“You’re not going to say ‘like a girl’ are you?”

“Fuck’s sake, go back to London, Kitty. I’ve already dated you.”

Fen slanted an arch look at him. “What’s that? Women don’t like misogynistic language. Say it ain’t so.”

“Oh shut up. It’s just an expression.”

“Like that’s so gay?”

Alfie sighed. “Look, you’ve seen me cry and had your cock up my arse. Not sure how much more personal it can get. Ask whatever you like.”

“I just wanted to know… I guess I just wanted to know how you didn’t…notice you were gay.”

“It’s daft.” He shrugged a bit self-consciously. Greg had asked him too and hadn’t understood the answer—though that might have been Alfie’s fault. It wasn’t the sort of thing he was good at explaining. But maybe it would be easier with Fen. “It was just never a possibility. I mean, we all knew what gay was, right? It was, well, it was you.”

“Right.”

“Sorry.”

Fen rolled his eyes. “I’m not even particularly camp.”

“I know but you’re not…you’re norra lad, are you? And I did everything right. I like cars. And football—or, at least, I did when I got a chance to watch it. And I don’t really care about my hair.”

“That’s a complete lie.” Fen’s hip nudged Alfie’s in play rebuke. “I saw you styling it the other day. Making it all cool and spiky.”

Alfie glanced away, feeling himself flush.

“Oh come on. There’s no such thing as gay hair.”

“Oh yeah?” He reached out and curled Fen’s pink strands around his fingertips.

Fen laughed, a little sharply. “What, you think the fact I was sufficiently bored and depressed one day to dye bits of my hair makes me gayer? It’s just hair, Alfie. My hair.”

“I know.”

“You should try working in theatre. Some of the campest men I know are straight.”

Alfie pulled Fen fully into his arms, pressed his face into the curve of his neck. “I know it’s all bollocks really. But that’s how I grew up. I genuinely believed that being gay was this feature of gay people. Not something that could happen to me. I mean, be part of me.”

“I get it. I grew up here too, you know.” Fen dropped his gloves and the wire wool, and wrapped Alfie up tightly. “You must have been so lonely. All these years.”

He made an embarrassed noise. “It wasn’t so bad. Kept myself busy. It was kind of easy, really. You can always make it about something else, if you try hard enough.”

“I’m so glad you worked it out.”

He looked up. Grinned. “Me too.”

“It can be one of the most difficult things in the world, I think. To accept yourself.” Fen’s eyes were intent on his. So green they were almost black in the fading evening light. “I…I’m so proud of you, Alfie.”6

It was like a fishing hook, embedded deep, suddenly torn loose. At first, all he felt was pain. Then something else, something so bright and pure it almost hurt more. Made his eyes sting with water.

“Fen,” was about all he managed to say.

And then Alfie was kissing him, hard and deep, and as rough as the edges of his unshackled heart.

20

The next day, Alfie insisted on being allowed to help open the shop because that way Fen didn’t have to get up as early, and so they had longer in bed together. There was something especially sexy about Fen in the morning when he was all warm and fluffy, this strange mixture of hard—very specifically—and sleepily lax. It gave Alfie lots of ideas, though some of them were sufficiently lavish they’d probably have to wait until the weekend. So it was a tangly wank instead, bodies pressed together, crossed-over hands wrapped around each other’s cocks, Fen’s moans hot and wet, like kisses against his neck.

They were still a bit later than they should have been. But since it was one of Gothshelley’s days, there was much less for Alfie to do. She was wearing a black velvet cloak with a hood over what looked like a tutu, and pink-and-black stripy stockings. And when he asked how she was, she answered, “Entropy is the inevitable consequence of the human condition.” So he left her to the window display, got the keys he needed from Fen, and went to see about the van.

It looked a bit tragic, hunched in what might once have been a garage, but was now obviously a dumping ground for unwanted floristry stuff. He cleared some space as best he could, kicking aside boxes and buckets and crumbly foam blocks, and then ran through the usual checks—the battery and the terminal cable, the fuel supply and the spark plugs—but there was only so much he could do with the tools he kept in the Sagaris. And obviously Fen wasn’t going to have any. Which meant he could either buy everything he needed for a one-off job. Or…

Half an hour later he was pulling into his parents’ driveway. His mam looked genuinely startled to see him again as he stomped into the kitchen.

“Just wanted to borrow summin from Dad,” he explained.

“Eee, sorry, pet. He’s just nipped down the betting shop. Dunno how long he’ll be. Y’knaa what he’s like when he gets talking.”

“Oh yeah. He’s totally voluble, is Da.” She didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm—which was probably for the best. It was generally accounted the lowest form of wit in the Bell household. Unless either of his parents deployed it, in which case it was hilarious and appropriate. “Is it okay if I wait?” he asked.

“Course it is, love. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Alfie plonked himself at the kitchen table. It felt slightly unreal being back here yet again, his mam pottering about and acting normal, after she’d basically told him she thought the whole idea of a man falling in love with a man was some kind of weird, impossible mistake. Which basically meant he was. And that what he felt for Fen was—

Too quick, he knew that. But if this butterfly thing, beating its bright wings so strongly inside him, wasn’t love, what was?

“Ma?” he asked.

“Yes, love?”

“You know cooking like?”

“Yes, Alfie, I know cooking.”

“It’s not that hard, right? You just follow the recipe?”

“Well, there’s a bit more to it than that.”

“What would you make for a vegetarian?”

She turned away from the tea things, frowning slightly. “Well, I wouldn’t. I don’t hold with those fancy southern fads.”

“It’s like you said the other day,” Alfie went on doggedly. “I want to cook for Fen. And he’s a vegetarian.” Well, a little bit for Fen and a little bit for himself, because a toast and takeaway diet wasn’t doing him any favours.

“Why can’t he be the one who does the cooking?”

“Because he doesn’t like to. And I don’t know if I like to or not cos I’ve never tried.”

His mam gave him a wary look.

“Ma, I’m not playing housemaid. If you must know, I only really came round cos I needed to borrow some tools from Dad so I can fix a van.”

“It sounds like you’re doing a lot for him, Alfie.”

“He’s working.” Alfie drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. “I just can’t win, can I? Either what we’ve got isn’t real, or I’m turning into some kind of limp-wristed nancy, or he’s somehow taking advantage of me. Will you just pick one, mebbe?”

She didn’t answer. Hurt, probably. Which was fair enough. But, also, not fair. Because wasn’t he allowed to be hurt too?

“What about lasagne?” she said, finally. “With vegetables instead of meat? I think I’ve got some peppers and aubergines.”

“Sounds good.” Actually, it sounded terrible. Lasagne was supposed to have meat in it. But that was Fen’s fault, not his mam’s.

And so, without either of them exactly intending to, they ended up cooking together, Alfie chopping up vegetables while his mam talked him through how to make tomato sauce and then white sauce, neither of which seemed too complicated. From there, it was basically an assembly job, layers of vegetables, and pasta sheets, and sauce, and cheese—of which Alfie snuck in extra when his mam wasn’t looking, thinking it would probably compensate for the vegetables. He felt a lot more confident in the whole process than he had about plastering the wall. And nothing ended up covered in concrete, so that was definitely a plus.

His dad came home when they were halfway done, grunted, and disappeared into the garage. Once the lasagne was in the oven and bubbling cheesily, Alfie headed out after him.

He found him half under the family car, looking a bit like the Wicked Witch of the East if she’d gone for steel-toed boots. The Haynes Manual, very thumbed, was propped open on the workbench. The way his dad tended the car, whatever car it was, from the Ford Fiesta they’d had when Alfie was growing up, to the Vauxhall Astra now jacked up and wheelless in the middle of the garage, you’d have thought it was going into outer space, not down the shops twice a week.

“Uh. Hi.”

Alfred Senior emerged slowly. His spanner clanked on the concrete floor. “Alfie.”

Silence. Going on forever.

Say something say something say something.

Then his dad asked, “Shower alreet?”1

“Yeah.” Alfie tried to keep his voice normal. No disappointment or frustration. Or hope. “It’s fine.” Another silence. Crushing him slowly until he was only about an inch tall and maybe six years old. He took a deep breath. “Fen’s van won’t start. Probably needs a mechanic, to be honest, but I’d like to take a proper look at it. So I need to borrow some stuff.”

His dad shrugged in a help-yourself kind of way. Alfie felt a bit like Aladdin let loose in the cave of wonders, with all his dad’s shining, meticulously cared-for tools to choose from. Back in London, he had his own, but it didn’t feel the same, somehow. These were the treasures of his childhood. And his dad was trusting him with them, man-to-man.

He found a spare box and filled it up with wrenches and ratchets, screwdrivers and plyers. He nabbed a hammer and a breaker bar as well, and a couple of vice grips. His dad’s second-best multimeter because he didn’t quite have the balls to take his favourite.

“Does the engine crank?” his dad asked suddenly.2

Alfie looked up from an extension bar he was wondering if he needed. “I managed to get her going, but when you put her in gear, the engine cuts out.”

“Probably electrical, then.”

“Aye. Reckon it’s the transmission.”

“Torque converter playing silly buggers, mebbe?”

Alfie opened his mouth, intended to say something about the van—hopefully something that would impress his dad and prove what a good son he was. But what came out, ragged with a child’s uncomprehending hurt, was, “Dad, why does it matter that I’m gay?”

His voice echoed off the garage walls.

Gay-ay-ay-ay.

And the silence fell even heavier afterwards.

“Well.” His dad looked faintly confused. Definitely aggrieved that this had been sprung on him. “Cos it does.”

Alfie grabbed for something safe to feel. Found anger and held on tight. “That’s not an answer.”

“Bring the tools back when you’re done.”

“You can’t even talk about it, can you?”

His dad swung round slowly like a hammer blow. “I’ve nowt te say. You’ve been too long doon sooth, lad.”

“What? Cos I expect people to talk to each other?”

“Aye well. Not all of us have te be gan on aboot wor feelings every five seconds.”

“On account of it being so gay, you mean?”

A shrug.

“It’s not gay, Dad. It’s…it’s fucking human.” Alfie’s anger was getting away from him. Tangling up in other things. Making his voice shake. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to live up to you. Make you proud of me. Be the sort of son you want. And you…you can’t even say ‘I love you.’”

Alfred Senior was staring at him like he’d grown an extra head. Probably it would have been less awkward if he had. Probably they could have dealt with that: just make sure you buy longer scarves and two hats. But this, this mess of pain and silence? Impossible. His dad pushed himself to his feet, wincing a little as his back clicked, and grumbling rather than actually saying, “Divvent be daft. Ye know I do.”

“How? How would I know that, Da, when you won’t even look at me?”

No answer. And his dad studiously staring at his workbench.

“You might as well just say it. I know you don’t like that I’m gay.”

Yet another interminable silence. And then, “No, Alfie. No, I don’t.”

What the fuck had he been expecting? And how could he ever for a moment have imagined it would feel better to hear it? The Torx screwdriver he’d been holding slipped between his fingers and clattered into the box.

“It’s not,” his dad was saying, “the life I pictured for any son of mine.”

Alfie churned confusedly. He’d felt pretty much disowned since he’d come out, so it was actually really nice to suddenly be his father’s son again. But the problem was he’d also sort of got used to being…not someone else exactly, but someone more. Maybe the person he’d always wanted to be. Who Fen had believed in long before Alfie’d had the faintest bloody clue. “Yeah, well, mebbe I don’t care.”

Alfred Senior got that look—the tightening about the jaw that turned his face into a wall Alfie couldn’t climb. But then something shifted, crumbled almost. And he sighed. “Ye’d understand, if ye had bairns of your own.”

“I might someday.”

“Ye want ’em happy. That’s all ye want.”

And that was when Alfie recognised what he was seeing, right there in front of him, etched into the lines surrounding that stern mouth, those deep-set eyes. It was sadness. His dad was…sad.

“Hang on”—he blinked back a damp burning in his eyes—“you think being gay means I won’t be happy?”

A shrug. Typical Alfred Senior response.

But, for once, Alfie wasn’t looking or hoping for more. “That’s really messed up, y’know. I mean, how happy do you think I was going to be as a lad so deep in the closet I was practically living in Narnia?”

“Ye could’ve had a normal life.”

“What’s a normal life, Da?3 A home, a job, a partner who loves me, a family who cares about me, kids someday.” He hooked his thumbs over the pockets of his jeans, realising only as he did it how Fen-like a gesture it was. “Just cos I’m gay doesn’t mean I can’t have those things. Not unless you start taking them away from me.”

Finally, his dad nodded. “Alreet. I’m gan te get a cuppa. Want one?”

That was…it? Alfie wasn’t sure if he’d broken down a wall or tripped over a pebble. If he was relieved or disappointed or if it even mattered. “No, I’m good. Should be getting back to the shop.”

Alfred Senior nodded. Looked like he was about to leave. But then he paused, frowning, as if he wanted to say something else. “You’ll let us know if it’s the transmission? Y’know, wi’ the van.”

“Aye.”

So that was that.

Alfie picked up his impromptu toolbox. Followed his dad out of the garage and into the unexpected radiance of the afternoon.4

He stopped in at the shop to drop off the lasagne, plonking the still-warm dish onto the counter.

Gothshelley stared at it. “What sinister alchemy is this?”

“Uh…”

“Smells like lasagne. Can I have some?”

“No, it’s for us. For later. And, besides, it’s not made from fresh blood and the still-beating hearts of virgins.”

“What the hell is wrong with you? I’m so not into eating the still-beating hearts of virgins.” She paused, lips curled contemptuously. “The limp dicks of people who think they’re funny, however…”

“Well, there’s definitely none of those in there. It’s mainly…whatchamacallit…aubergine.”

“Hashtag Eggplant Wednesdays.”

“You what?”

She sighed. “It amazes me how you manage to live in anything that small.” Then she half turned towards the workroom and bellowed: “Oh Fenimore, your boyfriend’s here with his aubergine.”

“I told you,” said Fen, emerging, looking all shiny in the sunlight, “he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Right, he’s just the bloke who sleeps with you and cooks for you.”

“You cooked for me?” Fen wiped his hands on his jeans and lifted a corner of the tinfoil to peek underneath. “Wow, you did.”

Alfie tried not to sound too proud of himself. “It’s a lasagne. A vegetarian lasagne.”

“I…I… This… I…” Fen had gone pink and flustered and adorable.

“I just didn’t want to live on takeaway, y’know?”

“I didn’t even know you could cook.”

“Well, mebbe I can’t. But I guess we’ll find out.”

“I don’t care if it’s awful. This was really sweet of you.”

“Are you going to kiss with tongues?” asked Gothshelley.

“Maybe later.” Fen scowled at her. “When we’re not being scrutinised by a shōnen ai–obsessed teenager.”

Alfie had pretty much no idea what they were talking about, so he ignored it. “I’m going to get back to the van.”

“What about the food, though? Won’t it get cold?”

“It’s fine, just reheat it later.”

Fen gave him big, helpless puppy eyes.

“It’s easy.” Never mind that Alfie’d had pretty much the exact same conversation with his mam less than an hour ago. “All you have to do is set the oven to about two hundred degrees—”

“How do I do that?”

“There’s a knob. Just turn it like.”

“There are five or six knobs.”

“Blummin’ heck, how can you not know how to turn on an oven?”

“I told you, I don’t do domestic.” Fen gave him a wicked look from beneath his lashes. “I will, however, make it up to you later.”

“Oh aye? Going to do the washing up, are you?”

That earned him a yelp of giggling outrage and a poke in the arm.

Gothshelley gagged. “You two are so adorable I just threw up in my mouth.”

Which was Alfie’s cue to get back to the van. He got it jacked up and was hard at work poking around in its innards when he heard the clack of major heels on the concrete floor. He rolled out and found Gothshelley standing over him.

“I made you tea. I didn’t spit in it.”5

“Er, thanks.”

She plonked a mug down beside him. It was black and was covered in jagged red script which read: And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Watching Alfie turn it in his hands, she gave a toothy, purple grin. “You like it?”

“This is yours?”

“Yeah, I stole it from St. Bede’s.”6

Alfie sipped the tea tentatively. It didn’t seem infused with holy wrath. “You stole a mug from a church?”

“Yeah, I did enter the house of God and therein I did nick His shit.”

“Why were you even there? You don’t exactly strike me as the religious type.”

She gave a velvety shrug. “I believe in nothing but the waiting dark. And KitKats. But my parents are totally Catholic.”

“Must be a bit weird. What with you being, y’know, you.”

“Not really. I mean, they think I’m going to hell, but they think everyone is going to hell. That’s what being Catholic means.” Her eyes softened. “I used to troll them by pretending to be a Satanist.”

“And they’re really okay with that?”

“Well, they’re not okay okay. They’d rather I wasn’t cheerfully imperilling my immortal soul, but they believe you have to choose faith. And I believe faith is dumb. And I also believe in premarital sex, women’s rights, queer rights, contraception, abortion, and that saying a bunch of Latin over some wine and biscuits doesn’t transform them into blood and flesh because what the fuck, that’s gross.” She reached down and yanked the mug out of his hands.

Alfie whined in protest. “What are you doing? I’m not finished.”

“Well, you should have thought about that before you tried to talk to me. Sheesh.”

“I was just being polite.”

“Polite is bullshit. And I don’t converse. I contemplate the meaninglessness of existence.”

“If I promise not to do it again, can I have the tea back?”

“No. You’re being punished now.”

“Wow.” Alfie gave her a dark look. “You can really tell you were raised by Catholics.”

He was fully expecting her to fuck off with what was left of his tea and so ducked back under the van. But, to his surprise, her boots didn’t move. In fact, she was driving one pointy toe restlessly against the concrete floor. He poked his head out. “Is everything alreet?”

“I just wanted to say that what you’re doing is, well, it’s okay. You can keep doing it.”

“Fixing the van?”

She gave him a look of withering concern. “Yeah, twonk-face, fixing the van.”

“Sorry, you mean—”

“Yeah, I mean.” She attacked the concrete even more viciously. “He was really sad before you came.”

“Well, it’s rough losing someone you care about.”

“Don’t care about people. Problem solved.”

“Did you know his mam?”

“A bit. She was”—Gothshelley rolled her eyes—“nice, I guess. Really nice, okay? Just one of those people who make you feel the world is a teeny tiny bit less shitty for them being in it.”

“Like Fen.”

“Oh shut up.”

She stomped out. Left Alfie grinning.

His dad turned out, as usual, to be right. There was definitely a transmission issue, and it was probably the torque converter. Which meant a mechanic because Alfie had learned his lesson. He wasn’t going to wreck Fen’s van as well as his bathroom out of a messed-up need to prove something that didn’t even matter. Or maybe even exist.

He headed back into the shop to give Fen the news. Found him half in the freezer, cleaning or something, bum waving prettily in the air.

It was hard not to get distracted, but Alfie made a valiant attempt. “So, I’ve got her running—”

“Oh my God, seriously?” Fen sat back on his heels. “That’s amazing.”

“Er, but only enough to get her to a garage.”

Fen slumped. “Shit.”

“Aye. Look, let’s go together. I mean, what’s he going to do? Refuse to serve us? That’s illegal.”

“He could do something awful to the van in vengeance.”

“It’s already bust.”

“He could charge me a gazillion pounds.”

“I’m pretty sure he couldn’t.”

“He could”—Fen glanced up at Alfie and, for a moment, he was just a pale-faced kid again, wild and wary—“be nasty to me.”

“Well, then I’ll fucking punch him. The bigoted bastard.”

“Oh, my knight in shining armour. That will definitely help.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

“There’s no need to punch people.”

Gothshelley stuck her head round the door to the workroom. “Now are you going to kiss with tongues?”

They both glared at her, and she retreated, cackling.

Fen slid sinuously to his feet. Tucked his thumbs into his pocket. “Let’s do this.”

“Kiss with tongues? I mean, I’m game, but shouldn’t—”

“The van.”

Alfie grinned.

“Very funny. But, seriously, don’t get in a fight. And if you pull any closet-y bullshit or suggest I wear a different colour jumper or straight-person jeans… I swear to God…I’ll…I’ll…”

Alfie dragged Fen into a hug. “I won’t. I promise. I’m never going to do that again.”

“Good. Because I can punch people too. I mean, I haven’t ever. But I’m sure I could figure it out.”

“It’s not rocket science.” He took Fen’s hand and gently curled it into a fist. “Keep your thumb on the outside and out of the way.” Traced his fingers lightly over Fen’s. “Use your knuckles, not the flats. And aim somewhere squishy—not the face like, cos you’ll probably just break your hand on their jaw.”

“Thank you, Alfie Bell,” said Fen dryly, “for the sexy lesson in violence.”

Alfie brought Fen’s still-clenched hand to his lips and kissed it. “Shall we go?”

After a moment, Fen nodded, and leaving the shop in what Alfie hoped were Gothshelley’s capable hands, they made their way to the garage.

“What are straight-person jeans?” asked Alfie, as he unlocked the van.

“Oh my God, are you kidding me?”

“I’m new at this, remember.”

“Just, haven’t you ever noticed?”

Now he thought about it, while Greg and Fen didn’t have much in common in some regards, in others they were quite similar. Especially when it came to showcasing…their assets. Alfie was actually pretty pleased to learn that, at the age of thirty, he had finally discovered his type. And that it was men with great arses. Which was when something else occurred to him. “What about me?”

“No, you’re fine. You’re pretty good, actually.”

“Really? Cos skinny jeans really aren’t my thing.”

“Alfie, you look like a Levi advert.”

“Not the one from the eighties?”

“No, the recent one. Where his jeans fit really well and he’s implausibly sleeping with a woman. Now stop fishing for compliments.”

The drive was a little bit hairy—the van was lurchy and growly, and Fen grew very quiet, picking at the dry skin around his fingernails. But still, Alfie got them to the garage in one piece. Except for a new coat of paint and some fresh signage, Brown’s Auto Repair was pretty much exactly like he remembered from when he used to hang out there after school with Kev and Pete. The same squat building, its wide, rolled-open doors giving it a sort of surprised look. He parked on the forecourt and jumped down, assailed by the familiar smells of oil and metal. Made his way inside with a confidence he was far from actually feeling.

He was barely over the threshold when a cry rang out: “Shit me stupid. Alfie. Alfie Bell.” And the next thing he knew he was being hugged and backslapped. Responding was instinctive. As was reciprocal backslapping. Though, for the first time in his life, it felt ridiculous. Why couldn’t men just…hug each other? Without this pantomime of masculinity.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’s me. And I’m gay.”

“You wha?”

“I’m gay.”

Pete did a balletic leap away from Alfie’s contaminating body.

“And I’m kind of with him.”

Alfie gestured. Fen was standing in the doorway, highlighted like a Click Me button by a shaft of dusty sunlight. And he looked…completely fucking delicious, all lean legs and sinewy arms, those long-lashed, pretty-as-a-girl eyes of his, accentuated rather than obscured by his glasses. Alfie wanted to throw him to the floor and bite mine into every gorgeous inch of him.

Fen lifted his hand and waggled his fingers in the campest imaginable way.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Pete had gone a grey-greenish colour as he stared between them. He took another step back, tripped over a jack stand, and landed arse-first on the concrete.

It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry. So Alfie just blinked. “Calm doon, man.”

After a second or two of scrabbling, Pete managed to find his feet again. He wheeled round, pelted all the way to the back of the garage, and vanished into the office, slamming the door behind him.

“Wow.” Fen looked as bewildered as Alfie. “I’ve never seen anyone succumb to homo panic quite so literally.”

“What do we do now?”

“I have no idea.” Fen slipped his hand into Alfie’s. “Shall we go back?”

“Not sure the van’s up to it, to be honest.”

At that moment, the office door opened. A new figure emerged and started coming towards them. It—or rather she—turned out to be a tiny woman, in a boilersuit and a…whatsit…a hijab?

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Leyla Brown. Can I help?”

“Um, yeah, is there another mechanic around?7 Got a busted van out front.”

There was a really long silence. It was weirdly uncomfortable.

“I mean, if there’s not, it’s cool. We can wait or go somewhere—”

“Alfie, sweetheart. Shut up.” That was Fen. “What my socially challenged partner means is: there’s something wrong with the van. Can you help?”

“Probably. What’s the problem?”

“Um, it won’t start? I’m sorry, that’s kind of the extent of my expertise in this area.”

She smiled. “It’s more than enough. We’ll bring her in, have a look at her, see what’s going on, get back to you with a quote and the cost of any parts in a day or two. We can also give her a full service and tune-up because, no offence, she looks like she needs it.”

Well. Alfie was an idiot. He wanted to crawl under a car and never come out. “I dunno how to say this now,” he mumbled, “but I think it might be the transmission. Except, y’know, you’re the mechanic. So ignore me.”

“No, that’s helpful. So, she’s turning over?”

“Yeah, but she judders out.”

“Okay.” She nodded. Turned back to Fen. “Just need you to sign a couple of things and we can get started.”

“I’ll go ring a taxi,” said Alfie. “Get us back hyem8 when you’re ready.”

Home. He’d spoken without thinking, and the word clanged like he’d dropped it. But then Fen’s fingers tightened around his, and Alfie decided maybe it was okay after all. That it had been exactly what he’d meant to say.

* * *

They got back to Pansies a little after closing time only to find everything put away and the shop already locked. Gothshelley had left them a note in the front window—which appeared to be an upraised middle finger daubed in purple lipstick on a piece of flower wrap.

Laughing, they left it there, pulled down the grille, and headed up to the flat. But something shifted between them, without Alfie really knowing quite why or how, and they didn’t even get halfway up the stairs before they were mouth-to-mouth, tangled in each other’s arms, fumbling at belts and buttons. It was so awkward, full of edges and angles, Alfie’s T-shirt sticking to his back, his jeans digging into his hips, and the wall flaking plaster as they rubbed up against it. But somehow, that just made it better. It gave this weird clarity to Fen straining against his palm, and Fen’s hand rough on his cock, to their bodies shoved together and their kiss full of what Alfie realised too late was the salt of Fen’s weeping.

When he came, it was quick and harsh and out of nowhere, a magnesium flare of pleasure that Fen wrenched out of him like a sob. Afterwards, they sat on the stairs, shoulder to shoulder, their unsteady breaths oddly synchronised in the narrow hallway.

And Alfie reached out to catch Fen’s tears.

“What’s wrong, pet?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Fen took off his glasses and cleaned them on the edge of his shirt. His eyes were reddish, his lashes glinting in the uncertain light and spiky-tipped with moisture. “I can’t tell if I’m happy or sad. I think I’m both. Or maybe being happy feels like being sad now or the other way round.”9

Alfie reached for Fen’s hands and held them tight. “It’s okay, y’know.”

“What’s okay?”

“To be happy.”

One of Fen’s eyebrows arched sardonically. “I think I’ve lost the habit.”

“Don’t be like that. I know you just feel guilty and confused cos you think you’re letting your mam down if you’re not miserable all the time.”

“Wow, Alfie. Tell it to me straight, why don’t you?”

“You saying I’m wrong?”

“N-no.” Fen swallowed. And, for a moment, Alfie thought he might say something more. But he just sighed. “I can’t believe it’s Wednesday. How can it be Wednesday?”

“We can figure this out.”

Fen shook his head. “I don’t want to have to think about it.”

“Yeah but”—Alfie wasn’t sure how to say it gently, so he just blundered on—“we’re going to have to before Monday, right? I mean, cos it’s something. Whatever we’re doing. I know you feel it too.”

“Yes,” said Fen, very softly. “I do.”

“And I’m not just going to walk away. Or let you convince me—or yourself—that it doesn’t matter.”

Fen gave a wobbly laugh. “Okay, okay. No need to get all Alpha Bell about it.”

“Cute.” Alfie turned Fen’s face to his and kissed him gently. Stole the last of his sadness. “Doesn’t have to be now. Just promise me we will.”

“I promise. On Sunday. But, um, for now”—Fen was turning the colour of his hair tips—“can we…extend our…our deal?”

“Our deal?”

“Yes. The one we made last night. On your car. You know. When we were boyfriends.”

“You mean, you want to be boyfriends again? Or still. Or whatever.”

“Y-yes. For the rest of the week.”

“Course we can, but—”

“Oh God. What?”

“But,” Alfie went on doggedly, “if we’re boyfriends, then I get to take you out proper like.”

“What, you mean dinner and a movie? Alfie, that’s what you do when you want to sleep with someone, not after.”

“Right, yeah, because once you’re going out with someone, there’s no need to make an effort anymore. I should sit at home in my socks, farting.”

Fen giggled. “Well, if those are my options, I’ll take the date.”

“Mebbe we could go to the theatre. You like that, don’t you?”

“In the North East?” Fen wrinkled his nose.

“Oi.” Alfie elbowed him. “Don’t be a southern ponce. There’s the Customs House, the Empire, the Theatre Royal. Bet we could find summin.”

“All right, all right. I’ll leave it in your hands.” Fen climbed to his feet. “Now, I think I was promised lasagne?”

“Damn right you were.”

Despite mild confusion over the oven—Fen was right, it had a lot of knobs—Alfie decided dinner was a success. Yes, he would have preferred it if there’d been meat involved, but the tomato sauce was really rich and the cheese, frankly, excessive. And that almost made up for the lack of meat. As did Fen’s enthusiasm—he ate like a starving wolf, went back for seconds, declared Alfie a kitchen god, and finally collapsed on the sofa. Alfie wrapped up what was left of the lasagne, which wasn’t much, and put it in the fridge. Did the bare minimum of washing up and then plonked himself next to Fen.

“Best boyfriend,” mumbled Fen, rolling into his lap like a sated cat.

Alfie petted him. “You alreet?”

“Food stupor.” He groaned. “Ten out of ten. Would overeat again.”

The evening slipped away very quietly in lazy conversation, though Alfie couldn’t remember exactly what they talked about. Only that Fen made him laugh and made him think and made him feel weirdly comfortable at the same time. And when Fen dozed off, as he inevitably did, Alfie claimed the laptop and went to work.

“You’d better not be doing the accounts,” said Fen, stirring against his knee.

“Naw, just making some bookings.”

“Bookings?”

“Yeah. For tomorrow. For our date.” Alfie couldn’t quite keep the smug note out of his voice. “We’re having dinner at Colmans Seafood Temple.”

“At the what?”

“The place they built in the old bandstand near Bents Park.”

“That’s the closest thing we can manage to a restaurant that isn’t a curry place, is it?”

Alfie tweaked the tip of Fen’s nose. “Oi, Colmans is like a South Shields institution.”

“And this is supposed to sell it to me?”

“Look, I know it’s not the Ritz, and if we were in London, I’d take you somewhere with a bunch of Michelin stars—”

“I’m sorry,” Fen cut him off. “I was just…being a spiky little bitch. Ignore me. It sounds lovely.”

“They do local native lobster. You can’t get that at the Ritz.” Alfie grinned. “And guess what else?”

“Um, they do rhubarb crumble just like Grandma used to make it?”

“There’s a musical on at the Empire.”

Fen perked up so fast he nearly elbowed Alfie in the balls. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Which one?”

“It’s called Legally Blonde.” He paused. “The Musical. That’s how I knew it was a musical.”

There was a long silence.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, there’s kind of musicals and ‘musicals.’ And anything involving the words ‘The Musical’ puts it in the latter category.”

“Yeah, you just said the same word twice. Oddly enough, I’m kind of not illuminated by that.”

“It’s… You know the way with books there’s Jane Austen and also A. A. Winters? Well, Existing Intellectual Property: The Musical is, in musical terms, closer to A. A. Winters than Jane Austen.”

“So what’s musical Jane Austen, then?”

“Sondheim, obviously.”

“Some people like A. A. Winters, y’know,” said Alfie, a trifle sullenly.

“Clearly, given he’s constantly on bestseller lists. But that doesn’t mean he’s good.”

“Okay, I get it. You’d rather show off how clever and sophisticated you are than have fun. The Cherry Orchard is on at the Theatre Royal. Want to go see that instead? There’s no singing in it, mind.”

“Yes, I’m aware there’s no singing in The Cherry Orchard.” Fen knelt up. “I’m sorry. I’ve fucked up again, haven’t I?”

Alfie put the laptop aside. Tried to figure out what he was feeling. “It’s not you. I just don’t see why everything has to be compared to London. I mean, all everybody is doing down there is chasing the next new thing. It’s fun. But why’s it more important than the smell of the sea? And having places to go where you get recognised cos they’re yours? I want to be content with what I have. Cos what I have right now”—he slid a hand up Fen’s thigh—“is fucking amazing.”

Fen was gazing at him with that soft, surrendered look he got sometimes. “You’re right.”

“We really don’t have to go.”

“I know.” An odd little smile flickered at the corner of Fen’s lips. “But the truth is, Alfie Bell, nothing would make me happier. I’m just not used to liking South Shields. Please take me to the Fish Church—”

“The Seafood Temple.”10

“Yes, there. And then to see Legally Blonde: The Musical. I’d love to go with you.”

“Sure you wouldn’t rather see The Cherry Orchard? It reflects the futility of aristocratic values in the face of bourgeois materialism.”

“No, really—” Fen caught a glimpse of the expression on his face. “Oh, stop teasing me, you bastard.”

Alfie burst out laughing, fully intending to keep teasing, maybe in a more physical fashion. But then the doorbell rang. They stared at each other in surprise.

“I’m not expecting anyone,” said Fen, sounding worried.

“Might just be a door-to-door thing.” Or maybe the parents of the kid he’d nearly beaten up a couple of nights ago, coming for retribution. But there was no way he was scaring Fen with that. “I’ll go.”

Fen scrambled off the sofa. “Absolutely not. I’m coming with you.”

It would never before have occurred to Alfie to be…not frightened, exactly, he sure as hell wasn’t going to be frightened, but…apprehensive, maybe, about opening the front door. He kept telling himself he wasn’t on an episode of Panorama, and probably he wasn’t going to be gay-bashed in front of a flower shop, but by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, his heart was beating so hard he could taste copper at the back of his throat.

With an adrenaline-shaky hand, he unlocked the door and yanked it open. Found Leyla and Peter Brown standing on the step. She was holding some kind of box. He was staring at the ground.

“Erm,” Pete told the pavement, “I know this is weird like.”

“Is this about the van?” asked Fen, squeezing under Alfie’s arm.

“No, no. Van’s fine. This is about…” Pete seemed to run out of steam.

Leyla elbowed him. “He’s come to say sorry. For being an ignorant homophobe.”

“I’m norra homophobe.” Pete finally looked up. “I mean, I don’t really like being around puffs, but I don’t hate them.”11

Alfie bristled and opened his mouth to respond, but Fen got in first. “Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for stopping by to let us know.”

“Pete.” Leyla elbowed her husband again.

He shuffled. Went a sort of shiny purple colour. “Erm, yeah. Fen. The reason I threw a hissy fit when you came in today was cos it reminded me of a lot of stuff I’ve felt bad about. I know I was a knobhead to you growing up.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“Aye. It wasn’t right. And I’m proper sorry.”

Alfie could feel the tension in Fen’s body. But all he said was, “Thank you. And well done for reducing your violent antipathy towards queers to a mere personal distaste.”

“It wasn’t that. It was cos I was jealous, okay?”

“What?” Fen blinked. “You mean, you wanted to be roughed up by the big boys too?”

“What? Fuck me. No. I’m not like that.”

Leyla, who seemed to be amused by the whole exchange, came to her husband’s rescue. “He’s pretty straight. But people are complicated, so never say never, right?”

“I’m saying never,” protested Pete. “And I was jealous cos you…you just did what you wanted. And you never let anyone make you feel bad for it.”

“Oh, believe me. You made me feel pretty bad.”

“Well, you never let anyone stop you, then. When I spent my whole life being stopped.”

Alfie had been pretty close to Pete. Figured he knew the guy pretty well. So this was completely bewildering. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I know sorry doesn’t mean much. But I am. And I made this to show you.” Pete reached for the box his wife was holding and began easing off the lid. Nestled in the bottom were two pastry swans, their necks forming the shape of a heart, and their wings delicately iced in rainbows.

It was all Alfie could do not to laugh…but it was surprise, more than anything.

Fen stared at Pete, wide-eyed. “Did you make these?”

“Aye.”

“They’re beautiful.”

He blushed. “Ta. Always liked it better than cars. But…me da, y’know. Would’ve probably killed him. And you better not be sniggering there, Alfie Bell.”

“I’m not. I just had no idea you liked making cakes.”

“And I had no idea you liked sucking cock.”

Fen spread his arms in a peace-making gesture. “And you’re both very talented. So there’s no need to start pissing against lampposts.”

“Leyla thinks I should try to get on that Bake Off,” said Pete, after a moment. “I mean, even if I didn’t win, it’d be summin, wouldn’t it?”

Fen nodded. “You should. You really should.”

“Anyway.” Pete passed the swans awkwardly to Alfie. “We’ve kept you long enough. Leyla will be in touch about the van soon as she can. Oh, and there’s a nice coulis in there, too, for the swans. Just didn’t want ’em to get soggy on the way over.”

Somewhat dazed, Alfie carried the box up to the flat.

“You think you know someone, eh?” he said, as he carefully arranged the swans on a plate and opened the little bottle of raspberry coulis that had, indeed, come with them.

“Careful, Alfie Bell.” Fen braced his hips against the counter. “Bullies in glass houses…”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just kind of…summin, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it?” Fen smiled, a little bit sweet, a little bit sardonic. The sort of smile Alfie wanted to kiss from his mouth.

“Do you want to do the honours?”

He passed over the coulis, and Fen poured it out. The swans slipped gracefully across their glistening lake. “They’re so pretty.” He licked a curl of raspberry from his fingertips. “It seems almost a shame to eat them.”

“More of a shame not to.”

Alfie scooped one up and stuffed it into his mouth. Chomped away happily while Fen shrieked and laughed and called him a monster.

21

Fen spent the next day torturing Alfie by explaining—in extreme detail, sometimes with reenactments—exactly what Legally Blonde was about. By the time they stopped for a mid-morning cuppa, the jig was up.

“Blummin’ hell,” groaned Alfie. “It’s a chick flick, isn’t it?”

But it wasn’t that bad. Yes, there wasn’t exactly an equal gender-balance in the audience, and maybe he was just stupid-happy from his native local lobster and his date with Fen, but Alfie quite enjoyed himself. And for all his “there’s musicals and ‘musicals,’” Fen seemed pretty into it too. Alfie even caught him humming “Omigod You Guys” in the interval. He tried to tease him about it, but Fen just gave him this too-bright look and said, “This is a feel-good musical, and I am in no position to turn my nose up at feeling good.”

Which made Alfie take his hand—right there, in public. And nothing bad happened at all. Although if holding hands with a bloke was going to be okay anywhere, in a theatre bar was probably only just below in a gay bar.

Afterwards, they strolled back to the car, still holding hands, with Fen talking animatedly about the differences between the movie and the musical—a subject he had long since abandoned any pretence of having no strong feelings about. Alfie was a bit lost, but it didn’t matter. He just liked listening to Fen, especially when he was all bouncy and excited.

They were passing the Londonderry pub when a group of lads, three of ’em—who had obviously spent most of the evening inside—came tumbling out. Fen quickened his pace a little and might have pulled his hand away, but Alfie wouldn’t let him. The stares made the back of his neck prickle, though.

“And in the movie,” Fen was saying, like he didn’t quite dare stop, “Emmett is incidental rather than directly inspirational.”

Footsteps behind them.

“I can see why they wanted to centralise him a bit more, but I did feel it interfered with Elle’s agency a bit…”

Jeers now. Laughter. A mutter of “Puffs.”

Alfie whirled round. “Just fuck off, okay?”

“Leave it.” Fen tugged at his hand. “They’re not worth it.”

One of them gave a long, derisive “Oooh,” even though Fen had spoken perfectly normally. That was when Alfie realised he wasn’t intimidated or hurt or embarrassed. He was annoyed. Not even angry. Just stubbed-your-toe, tripped-over-something-pointless, ran-out-of-milk annoyed. Like he shouldn’t have to deal with something this stupid.

He strode forwards, hands clenched.

This was apparently more than anyone had bargained for. There was visible uncertainty in the group. Then the smallest of them turned and ran for it.

“Smart move,” growled Alfie, picking up speed.

One of the lads came at him. It was a bit half-hearted, to be honest. Alfie didn’t even need to punch him. Just barged into him and knocked him down. Gave him a kick on the way past. Left him curled up on the pavement like a slug. His mate had retreated against a wall. Alfie grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the bricks.

“You starting summin?”

The guy swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “N-no.”

“You sure?”

“We were just having a laugh.”

“Then you need to work on your sense of humour, mate.” Alfie shoved his captive again. Considered lamping him one, then thought better of it. “Cos you just got your arse handed to you by a puff.”

He let the lad go. Watched him ooze wheezily down the wall.

Then ambled back to Fen. “Come on, pet. Let’s get out of here.”

“Oh my God.” The moment they were round the corner, Fen pulled up sharp and whacked him in the chest. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

Alfie blinked. “Did I do summin wrong?”

“You can’t keep starting fights.” Another whack. “I don’t want a boyfriend I have to visit in hospital.” A third. “Or in prison.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Alfie caught Fen’s flying hands. “Calm doon. I can handle myself.”

“Against five? Or seven? Or a knife?”

“Well, mebbe not then, but—”

Fen’s eyes were wet, although he still seemed mostly furious. “It doesn’t matter how strong you think you are, or how manly. If someone wants to hurt you for being a pussy-boy fag, they can and they will.”1

And now he got it. Fen was scared. Scared for Alfie in a way he’d never been for himself.

“Alreet,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t do that again.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

At last, Fen nodded. “Fine.” He took a deep breath. “If you’ve promised and you mean it—”

“I mean it. Jesus, mate. What do you want me to do, cross my heart and hope to die?”

“In which case”—Fen melted into Alfie—“it’s okay for me to find you incredibly hot right now.”

They kissed, kind of ferociously, like Alfie was a pastry swan and Fen was really in the mood for patisserie. He got his tongue into all the corners of Alfie’s mouth, less of an exploration than a full-scale occupation, really. A claiming. He tasted faintly of vanilla from the ice cream he’d had at the interval. Left Alfie tender and tingling and sporting a pretty major hard-on in the middle of Sunderland.

Fen grabbed his hand again and dragged him into the alley down the side of a pub.

“Um. Where we going?”

The only answer he got was a toothy grin. And then he was being bundled up against a wheelie bin—which smelled rank—and Fen was sliding to his knees onto a piece of cardboard spread over the dirty cobbles.

Alfie, who’d always thought himself pretty worldly, was simultaneously shocked, and shocked that he was shocked. “Oh my God, you can’t.”

“Watch me.”

Fen’s hands slid up his thighs. Yanked his belt undone and jeans open. Alfie had a split second to be self-conscious about his knob hanging out before Fen swallowed him down like a python. And…oh…fucking…God…this was some porno-quality cocksucking. He had to brace one hand against the wall to stop himself from keeling over. Jam his knuckles in his mouth to stop from groaning. This was sex without subtlety—just a hot mouth wrapped round his cock, the dark, convulsing tunnel of Fen’s throat. It looked gloriously obscene too. Fen’s eyes were half-closed, a concentration-crease standing out between them, his cheeks hollow and his lips stretched tight around Alfie’s cock. And the sounds…maybe it was just because he was nervous—though nervous in a way that, if anything, made what was happening even more exciting—but he was pretty sure they should’ve been able hear those wet, sucking, undeniably fleshly noises all the way back in South Shields.

This was…this was bad gay. This was what your parents worried about. What the Daily Mail wrote about. And it was so, so good. Dirty and desperate and sexy as hell. And Alfie was…yeah, Alfie was over the edge before he’d even realised there was an edge: a shock of raw pleasure like staring straight at the sun. For a moment after, he thought he might never breathe again.

“Can’t believe you did that,” he gasped, trying to clear the sparkles from his eyes. “What if someone had come?”

Fen grinned up at him and licked his lips. “I’m pretty sure someone did.”

“Wow. You actually went there.” Alfie tugged at his zip. “This was proper reckless, pet.”

“Fun, though. And a lot less reckless than you taking on three blokes.”

Catching Fen’s hand, Alfie pulled him to his feet. “I thought you wanted me to stop doing stuff like that.”

“I do.”

“But if this is how you respond…”

“It was a one-off.”

“Oh.” Alfie tried not to sound too disappointed.

“Not the blowjob, silly. I’ll do that as much as you like—”

“As much as I like? Cos I liked it a lot.”

Fen laughed. “Well, I’m happy to commit to an intensive schedule of oral sex in exchange for not having to hear about you on the news.” He tucked himself against Alfie’s side. “Come on, Sandor Clegane, let’s go home.”

And, this time, when Fen said it…it sounded like the most natural thing in the world.

* * *

The van was ready on Friday. Leyla said the quick service was due to a combination of residual guilt, hope of future custom, and also happening to have the part in stock. Once he’d collected it and driven back to Pansies, Alfie spent the afternoon making calls and running financial models, the like of which probably no flower shop in the history of the world had ever needed before. Probably didn’t need now. But he believed in being thorough.

When he was done, he went to wash buckets with Fen and talked him through it. He would have done a PowerPoint, but he was pretty sure Fen would have laughed in his face.

“So, you see,” he finished, “if you started off just doing Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, serving local businesses and events only, even accounting for time and additional expenses, it’s totally worth it.”

Fen ran a fretful hand through his hair. “I’d have to hire someone though…”

“Couple of hours’ work, three days a week?” Alfie shrugged. “Cash in hand, mate. Under the counter.”

“Oh my God. You’re an accountant. I’m pretty sure you’re not meant to encourage people to break the law.”

“Actually, I’m an investment banker. We think of the law more as guidelines, really.”

“Should I put a sign in the window, then? Wanted: morally ambiguous driver for illegal part-time work?”

Alfie huffed exasperatedly. “Naw, just ask someone. Everyone needs a few quid now and again.”

“This is South Shields. I don’t know anyone, and I probably hate them, anyway.”

“My boyfriend could do it.” Gothshelley sailed majestically into the workroom in a cloud of taffeta. “He’s got his licence.”

“You have a boyfriend?” asked Alfie, surprised.

“Oh, what? You think just because I’m fat I’m sexually undesirable? I’ll have you know, some boys like their milkshake extra thick.”

“I didn’t mean that”—he flailed frantically—“it was more your personality like.”

She gave him a cold, hard stare. “What do you mean? I’m winning.”

“Okay,” said Fen, quickly. “Fine. Have him come in tomorrow with you so I can meet him. And Alfie, we’ll need orders in place if we’re going to make this work.”

All the we’s in that sentence turned interior bits of Alfie to mush. He reached into his pocket and produced a list. Handed it over. Earned himself one of Fen’s pointiest looks.

“For fuck’s sake. What if I’d said no?”

“I was intending to be incredibly persuasive.” He flicked a glance at Gothshelley. “And, no, it wouldn’t have involved kissing with tongues. Well, mebbe, a bit.”

She was hunched over her phone. “This isn’t your time, Alfred. I’m texting my boyfriend right now. And, awww, look what he sent me.”

She turned the screen so he could see. Something awful was on it.

Alfie flinched. “What the fuck is that?”

“That’s our kitty, the Marchioness of Mitternacht, Lady of Shadows, Bringer of Sorrows, Singer of the Ceaseless Requiem. Except he’s put a Day of the Dead filter on her face. Isn’t she adorbs?”2

Fen was studying the list. It was mainly old clients of his mam who had been only too happy to hear from Alfie. And it could have been a lot longer, except he hadn’t wanted to overwhelm their resources.

“Okay,” Fen said finally, and there was, somehow, this lightness in his voice that Alfie hadn’t heard before, “we can definitely do this.”

Gothshelley raised a hand. “I bagsy any funerals.”

“It won’t be sustainable in the long term,” Alfie admitted. “But it could be. With better suppliers and a bit more staffing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gothshelley trained a death glare on him.

“I mean, it doesn’t make sense for your highly trained workers to do stuff someone, um, less skilled could do.”

The death glare diminished a shade. “Actually, that does make sense. Fen, can we have a minion?”

“I think they’re called trainees,” said Fen. “And no.”

“I promise to look after it. Feed it and water it and clip its little claws.”

“One thing at a time, maybe?”

“If you say so.” She sighed. “I’m so exploited.”

Then trudged out again.

Fen was very still and very quiet, still holding the paper.

“Um,” Alfie asked, “did I overdo it?”

An odd little smile. “Maybe? I’m not sure. I suppose I’d kind of settled into not trying. Just waiting for Pansies to quietly die. And now that it might not…”

“It’s still your choice. You can let go. Or keep going. It’s always been up to you.”

“Yes. But this is the first time I’ve really wanted to stay.”

Alfie reached for Fen’s hand. “We could—”

“No, no,” came Gothshelley’s outside voice, “you keep soul-searching and snogging in there. I’ll keep serving all the customers all by myself.”

“Hold that thought.”

Fen darted away. Leaving Alfie cringing a little. Because it hadn’t exactly been the sort of thought you could hold. He did sort of hope they could talk about it later, but as it turned out, there wasn’t really an opportunity. They’d just finished closing up and he was helping Fen pull down the grille when—

“‘With one star awake, as the swan in the evening moved over the lake.’”

“I think,” Alfie said warily, “your pocket’s singing.”

“Oh shit.” Fen wriggled his phone out of his jeans and swiped at it to answer. “Hi, Dad… Oh God… Yes. Sorry… I’m on my way right now… Um… Yeah… Stuck at the shop… Okay. Bye.” He hung up. Hooked his thumbs over his pockets the way he always did when he was self-conscious. “Um. That was my dad.”

“Yeah, I got that when you said ‘Hi, Dad.’”

“Sorry.”

“I’m teasing, pet. What’s up?”

“I…I’m such an idiot. I usually see him every Friday. I can’t believe I forgot. Even though my head is full of the fact it’s Friday.”

“It’s okay.” Alfie caught his hands, kissed them lightly, and calmed their fretting. “Of course you should go be with your da. Want me to drive you over?”

Fen nodded. “Or”—he stared at the ground—“you could come. If you wanted. If it wouldn’t be weird.”

“Would he think it was weird? If I just turned up?”

“Honestly, Alfie? There’s not much my dad thinks is weird. He’s got me for a son.”

The truth was, Alfie couldn’t quite figure out what he thought about meeting Fen’s dad. While he didn’t want to miss out on an evening with Fen—not when they only had two left—parents were scary. He was sure it should have made a difference that he was a grown-up in his own right. That he had a job and a car and a penthouse. But he still felt as nervy as a teenager. And as supplicant as he ever had turning up on some girl’s doorstep, promising he’d have her back by midnight. Please let me date your son. And please don’t remember I bullied him for years and hate me.

“Great,” he said aloud. “Let’s do it. Do we need to bring anything?”

“Just flowers.” Fen hurried into the workroom and emerged a few minutes later with a paper-wrapped bundle, in shades of rusty orange and sunshine yellow and deep dark pink. “Some of Mum’s favourites.”

“Not pansies?”

“Oh, she loved pansies best of all, but not in bouquets. She said they were freedom flowers. We sell them mainly in pots and window boxes during the spring and summer. And we used to have lots in the garden, but they’re probably all dead now.”

Alfie took the…he had no idea what they were, gerberas and carnations maybe…as Fen turned off the lights and locked up the shop, and they made their way to the car. “You don’t really see pansies much down south, do you? But they get everywhere up here. All over the parks and in the fields come spring. Wild as weeds.”

Fen gasped. “Don’t say that. Mum always said there’s no such thing as a weed.”

“Um, what are weeds, then?”

“Flowers where you don’t expect them.”

Fen’s dad lived on Laburnum Grove, which, despite the fancy name, turned out to be a housing estate. Without any laburnums. Or groves. It wasn’t awful, but it had been a long time since such places were an everyday part of Alfie’s life. Inside, the house was cleanish and incredibly cluttered, as if the occupant was still working out how to live in it. Not at all like his mam’s pristine home.

Fen greeted his dad with a hug. And for some reason that weirded Alfie out. His mam was cuddly, but his own dad was kind of unassailable. If men touched each other—and Alfie and Billy had always wanted to be treated as men—it rarely went further than a clasp of the shoulder. Which Alfie’s body still remembered sometimes: a ghost of warmth, his father’s hand. And, as he stood there in an unfamiliar hallway, clutching a bunch of flowers in slightly sweaty hands, watching two men embrace like it was completely normal, completely easy, he was freshly shocked by how deeply so much of his childhood he had taken for granted. As if its truths were universal.

“Oh, and Dadaí?” At last, Fen stepped away. “This is my, um, friend Alfie. I hope you don’t mind that I brought him?”

“Of course not.” Alfie’s ability to gauge age was basically restricted to his own current bracket, but Aidan O’Donaghue was probably in his early sixties, lean and vigorous, a little bit taller than his son. His hair was mostly grey but for a few deep buried coppery-gold streaks, and his eyes were very bright, though Alfie couldn’t have said exactly what colour they were. Right now they were narrowed at Alfie like they could see every shitty thing he’d ever done in his entire life. “You’re very welcome, Alfie.”

They shook hands, and Alfie chanted, I’m a grown-up, I’m a grown-up, I’m a grown-up, in his head, hoping it would help.3

It didn’t.

He might as well have been standing there in his school uniform, waiting for Aidan to tell him he wasn’t good enough for his son.

“Well,” said Aidan finally. “Let’s get ourselves comfortable.”

Alfie trailed after them into the living room, which was higgledy-piggledy with books and DVDs and, slightly surprisingly, PlayStation games. Fen went straight to a vase of withered flowers and whisked it into the kitchen.

“Uh.” Abandoned and trying not to panic, Alfie picked up the nearest game box, which was a much-loved copy of Bloodborne. “I always wanted to play this. Is it good?”

“Oh God.” Fen’s voice. “Don’t get him started.”

Aidan’s eyes were still kind of wary, but he smiled at this. “I like it.”

“Dad secretly thinks he’s a medieval warrior.”

“That’s not true.” Aidan smiled suddenly. And, now, he really did look like Fen, all sharp and toothy and fascinating. With such capacity for joy. “Sometimes I secretly think I’m a starship captain. Or a cowboy. Or some other sort of gun-toting ne’er-do-well.”

Fen came back into the room and plonked the vase, now full of flowers again, back into what was clearly its usual spot. Then he tidied up a stack of newspapers. And when he was done with that, he began stuffing books back onto a shelf.

“Stop fussing me, Fenimore,” said his father. “You’re my son, not my wife.”

He’d spoken gently, but when Fen turned round, his eyes were far too shiny. Unthinking, Alfie held out his hand and was actually a bit stunned when Fen reached back to him and took it.

Alfie tugged him a little closer. “I thought you didn’t do domestic.”

“Someone has to,” whispered Fen, curling against his side.

Aidan, however, wasn’t having any of it. “No, they don’t. And Nora was even worse. I don’t think there’s a tidy gene in your body, a leanbh.”

He didn’t seem too worried that his son was practically in the arms of a guy who’d just turned up. Which Alfie should have been relieved about, but he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. And despite the fact Aidan had been nothing but friendly, he was already half-convinced the man didn’t like him. Could see right through him.

“So you might as well accept it,” Aidan was saying, “and settle down. Now can I get anybody a drink? Would you like a beer, Alfie?”

It actually took Alfie a moment to remember he was allowed. “Oh, yeah. Please.”

Once Aidan had brought him a nicely fridge-chilled bottle of Newky Brown, Alfie squooged himself into a corner of the sofa and tried to relax. Without relaxing too much. Or drinking too fast. Or generally doing anything wrong or making a bad impression.

Aidan clearly had “his” chair—a big, slightly shabby wingback—and Fen perched on the arm, one foot swinging idly. And Alfie tried not to get weirded out again. When Alfie was with his parents, he was this special version of himself he’d sort of semi-unconsciously put together to reflect what he thought they wanted to see. Even knowing they probably preferred not to see a gay bloke.

But Fen was just Fen. Just like always.

At one point when they were talking, he even said “fuck.” Alfie would never have dreamed of saying “fuck” in front of his parents. Well, not casually anyway, like you did with your mates.

Or holding another man’s hand.

It was kind of strange, watching them together. Listening to them. Alfie loved his parents, he really did. But this was different. It was like Fen and Aidan were…sort of…friends almost. Like they actually knew each other.

“Huh?” Belatedly, he realised Aidan was talking to him.

“You’re Alfie Bell, aren’t you? Alfred’s son, William’s brother?”

It took him far too long to work out that “William” was Billy. Which made it look like he didn’t know who his own family were. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Hmm.”

Alfie felt vaguely alarmed. But he had no idea why.

“What are you doing these days?”

“I’m, well, I guess I’m in banking. Equity capital markets.”

“Is there much call for that in South Shields?”

“Uh. No.” He laughed nervously. “I live and work in London.”

“He’s just visiting, Dadaí,” added Fen.

And, to Alfie’s relief, the conversation moved on. He couldn’t entirely keep up, but that was fine. It was way better than having to try to explain himself to Aidan. They did talk about the shop a bit, though, and Fen got all excited and hand-wavey as he explained some of Alfie’s ideas. Aidan nodded and mmm-ed in all the right places, but he didn’t seem exactly thrilled. Not that Fen noticed. Or perhaps Alfie was worrying about nothing.

They had omelettes for dinner, which Fen said—not entirely joking—was the only thing his dad could cook. But they were good omelettes, fluffy and gooey with cheese. And when they were done eating, genetics or not, Fen insisted on doing the washing up. Alfie tried to help, but he was forbidden on account of being a guest.

Which left him, once again, alone with Aidan. He turned slightly apprehensively back to his host and crashed straight into a frown.

So. That sense he’d got that Aidan didn’t like him? Not paranoia after all.

Though, when Aidan finally spoke to him, his voice was low and pretty calm. Maybe because all his anger was held in his eyes, turning them icy. “What are you doing with my boy, Alfie Bell?”

Sleeping with him? Wanting to be with him? Falling in love with him? “Uh…doing?”

“Do you think I don’t remember? Don’t know how you treated him?”

Oh shitting fucking shit fuck. “I didn’t… I’m not… I never…” He stopped. Gave up. Tried something else. “Then why didn’t you put a stop to it?”

“Because he never told me.” Aidan stood and moved across the room, restless the same way Fen was restless. Except there was no one to soothe him. “If someone hates you, they can hurt you in so many ways. But that’s nothing compared to what someone who loves you can do. Fenimore has his pride. When he has nothing else, he has that. I won’t ever be the one to take it from him.”

Alfie felt sick. Mainly at himself. “I never hated him. I was just young and stupid, and I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing.” No answer from Aidan, so he blundered on. “I’ve changed… I’ve changed a lot. I’m trying to be better. And Fen is more important to me than anything. I just want to make him happy.”

There was another awful silence. Alfie found himself staring hopefully at the flower pattern on the carpet, just on the off chance they decided to twist up his ankles and devour him.

“If that’s true,” said Aidan at last, very slowly, as if he didn’t quite believe it, “if you really do have feelings for my boy, why are you trying to keep him here?”

“Uh.” Alfie, once again, found himself reduced to monosyllables. And, having made the mistake of looking up, he couldn’t look away. There was something so fierce and so desperate (and so familiar) in the way Aidan’s eyes held his.

“Nora had a good life. A life she chose.” Now there was the faintest tremor in Aidan’s voice, and somehow that was even worse. “But it’s over. He can’t live it for her. Don’t make me lose both of them, Alfie Bell.”

Alfie could feel sweat gathering under his shirt. “But what can I do?”

“Make him give up that bloody shop. God knows I’ve tried. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

“Um, I’m not sure he does a lot of listening to other people.”

Out of nowhere, Aidan smiled. Though it was for Fen, not for Alfie. “He gets that from Nora.”

Alfie tried not to visibly squirm. This was far worse than anything he could have imagined, up to and including the possibility that Fen’s dad had a small dog he could accidentally throw out of a second-storey window, like in that old lager advert.

“Okay, but look,” he tried, “shouldn’t this be up to Fen? Isn’t Pansies all he’s got left like?”

The smile vanished, and Aidan was glaring at him again. Though Alfie saw the grief now, stark in his eyes like an unfading shadow. “Our Nora was not her things.”

“I know. But mebbe there’s more to it than that? He says he likes working with flowers cos it reminds him of her.”

“You haven’t had to watch him disappear.”

It felt like a bruise inside, thinking of Fen being so lost. But wasn’t he happier now? Hadn’t Alfie made him happy? “You don’t think he’s coming back a bit?”

“I think,” snapped Aidan, “that my son is throwing his life away. And I think you’re helping him do it.”

Alfie opened his mouth. Had nothing to say.

“This was never what he wanted.” Another of those sharp, too-shrewd looks. “But it’s what you want, isn’t it? Oh, you walk and talk like a big man these days, but you’ll always be a small-town boy, Alfie Bell.”4

After a moment, he nodded. Because, well, yeah. It was true. This forgotten, cliff-edged corner of the North East was his heart. The sea had left salt in his blood. He belonged here.

“Nora was the same.” Aidan glanced away—his gaze falling on the flowers they’d brought. “But let Fen live his life. If you’ve really changed, do something good for him and let him go.”

And that was when Fen came bouncing out of the kitchen, the dish towel still in his hands. “I’ve got the best idea,” he cried. “Let’s dig out my old SNES and play Mario Kart!”

Right now, Alfie wanted to go and sit in a hole somewhere, far away from Fen and his father, from their loss and their love.

“Sounds great,” he heard himself say. “Just got to nip to the netty first like.”

“Door at the top of the stairs.”

He fled. Blundered into the bathroom. Slammed the door and locked it. Slumped on the floor, gasping like he’d just run a mile. Then he pulled out his phone, fired up his browser, and googled Fen O’Donaghue.

Shit, Fen had a website. A really fancy one with all these amazing photos that streamed across the page with impossible brilliance. Beauty Is Light, it said. There was a portfolio too, of all the shows he’d worked on. He’d won awards. And there was a picture of him on his About page, so completely nerdy-hipster-gorgeous that Alfie wanted to cry with confused adoration. He was wearing his big black glasses and a bottle-green blazer that made his eyes ridiculously bright. Like at any minute he was going to laugh, and you’d wake up alone among the elf furrows or next to Hurl Stane, your memories full of magic and your hands full of dust. His hair was shorter too—he had this tousled undercut, wayward strands curling over his brow—and he looked so fucking happy.

And that was before Alfie hit social media. Then it was just an endless carousel of Happy Fen. Who, with different hair and different glasses and his dandy clothes, could almost have been a stranger sometimes. Alfie’s dad would probably have called him a reet bobby dazzler—with a faint undertone of censure. Fen certainly enjoyed his selfies. And this other bloke was everywhere. From everything Fen had said, Alfie’d been picturing David as this quiet, awkward sort of person, maybe a bit on the homely side. But, no, homely was way out. Honestly, Alfie had seen less attractive film stars.

Nothing had been updated for over a year, but it was pretty fucking obvious: Aidan was right. This was Fen. This was his life. These friends and these pictures, this job, that really ill-advised scarf-tie.

What he was doing in South Shields—what he was doing with Alfie—was…a mistake. A moment of grief that Alfie was trying to turn into something else. Something that said more about what Alfie needed than what Fen wanted.

And Alfie’d been hiding in here for far too long. They’d probably think he was taking an antisocially epic dump. He shoved his phone away, pissed even though he didn’t really need to, and held his hands under the cold water tap, trying to get a fucking grip. His face floated in the bathroom mirror, pale as a moon, and just as disconnected from the rest of him.

That was when he caught sight of the paper pinned to the wall. There was a message, handwritten, careful block caps, decorated here and there with flowers. It said: You are Nora Shaftoe. You have Alzheimer’s. This is your house. You live here with your partner, Aidan O’Donaghue. The young man is your son, Fen. They love you very much.5

It made Alfie start. Glance over his shoulder. Of course, there was nothing behind him, the empty room already reflected in the mirror. But he could remember her so clearly suddenly, with her yellow braids, and the deep dimples that made her look always on the verge of smiling. He didn’t know her well enough to miss her or grieve her in any sense beyond the general, but just then, he felt the shape of her absence. The way the world had softly shifted around the people she had left behind.

In their place, he didn’t think he would have taken her note down either.

When he got back downstairs, he found Aidan and Fen on the floor by the television, trailing wires everywhere. Fen was laughing and teasing his dad about the SNES being the gateway drug to console gaming. Alfie had no idea how he was supposed to pretend to be normal now, but then Fen glanced up and beamed at him, and that was all it took. Alfie’s swirl of pain and worry and vicarious sorrow didn’t seem important in the face of such rare and uncomplicated joy. Besides, the second the game came on, with that ridiculously cheerful, bleepy music, Alfie was right back in the early nineties. Saturday afternoon at Kev’s house.

“Oh my God.” Fen seemed equally captivated by nostalgia and excitement. He was sitting cross-legged, now, and staring at the screen like a kid at story time. Except he didn’t look remotely like a kid. “O’Donaghue House Rules: winner stays on, no screen blocking or controller grabbing, though inducing distractionary laughter is permitted. And you can’t be Yoshi.”

Alfie wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself. If he started avoiding Fen for no apparent reason, it would look completely suss. Also he didn’t want to. So he stretched out next to him and began unwinding one of the controller wires. “Why not?”

“Because,” Aidan explained, “he’s Fen’s favourite. But you should be whoever you like.”

Fen lowered his eyes, all contrition. “Yes, he’s right. You should play whoever you like. Just be aware, I’ll dump you if you choose to be Yoshi.”

“Why are you so into him?” Alfie gazed helplessly at the character-select screen, trying to remember who was who and if they were any good in a go-kart. “He’s just this weird dragon-dinosaur-turtle-hybrid thing.”

Fen gasped. “Are you kidding me? He’s a queer icon.”

“Yoshi? Yoshi’s gay?”

“I don’t think,” said Aidan dryly, “he’s a dragon-dinosaur-turtle-hybrid thing who chooses to be limited by labels.”

“Also,” added Fen, “I like his cute little boots.”

“Okay. Fine.” Alfie selected Princess Peach.

Aidan lifted a curious brow. “Interesting choice.”

“What?” Alfie bristled. “I just thought she might like to go for a spin in a go-kart instead of being kidnapped all the time.”

“No, I just meant it’ll be an interesting match. Both she and Yoshi have high acceleration and good handling, but low overall top speeds.”

“Oh.” Alfie blushed. Kev would have totally taken the piss out of him for choosing to play a girl. “And how the blummin’ heck do you remember that?”

Fen had of course gone for Yoshi. “I should have warned you. Dad has this eidetic memory gaming thing going on. He can do all the special moves in Soulcalibur and everything.”

“I thought you just pressed all the buttons simultaneously as hard as you could.”

“Me too. Learning how to play is practically cheating.”

Yoshi and Princess Peach did, indeed, turn out to be evenly matched. Or perhaps Fen and Alfie were evenly matched in how much they’d forgotten how to play Mario Kart. They spent most of their time veering wildly off the track, getting rebuked by the angry cloud, and, when it became clear that neither of them had much chance of winning honestly, trying to run each other off the road.

It was just…fun. In the best possible way. And Fen was at his most adorable—the tip of his tongue prodding at the corner of his lips as he wrangled his go-kart round particularly tricky turns. It would have seemed impossible to Alfie less than ten minutes ago, but somehow both the past and the future seemed a long way away right now, and he was enjoying himself. Doing something silly with Fen.

“I’m so glad,” he muttered, as he dragged Princess Peach out of a death spin, “I’m wearing my tiara for this.”

Fen accidentally elbowed him, as he tried—and failed—to take a corner. “I do love Yoshi, but I wish he could keep his tongue in. I think it’s causing wind resistance and slowing me—Oh, you bastard!”

Alfie had remembered how to deploy a banana skin. And while Yoshi skidded helplessly in the wrong direction, Princess Peach veered drunkenly over the finish line.

“Yes!” The occasion definitely warranted an air punch.

Fen pouted. “Fuck you. You…overprivileged harlot.”

“Well, fuck you back…you sexually ambivalent green dude.”

“And both of you somehow have driving licences?” asked Aidan.

Fen laughed and passed the controller over his shoulder. “Come on, Dadaí, show us how it’s done.”

Alfie stuck with Princess Peach, just because he could, while Aidan deliberated.

“You know what I don’t get”—Fen tucked his head against Alfie’s shoulder—“all of them are specific characters except that poor koopa troopa. He’s just some random guy. What’s he even doing there?”

Stroking his fingers lightly up and down Fen’s arm, Alfie was quietly thrilled by the goose bumps that sprang up in his wake. “That’s Bill from reprographics. He’s a demon in a go-kart.”

“And his boss just came up to him one day and was like, ‘Hey, Bill, stop walking backwards and forwards across that ledge waiting for a plumber to jump on your head. I want you to join me in a spin-off game’?”

“Maybe he’s Bowser’s special friend.”

“But then why does Bowser spend all his time chasing a princess?”

“Oh man, she’s probably in on it. She’s probably like, ‘I’ve got this random plumber who won’t leave me alone, can you help?’ And Bowser is probably like, ‘Just tell him you’re not into him.’ And she’s like, ‘But he keeps saying he’s been friend-zoned, and I’m like, Hello, I’m a fucking princess, you’re a blue-collar worker, this really isn’t going to work.’”

Fen wriggled closer, laughing. And then, as his father chose Donkey Kong, let out a low whistle. “Looks like you’re fucked, sweetheart.”

Alfie was, indeed, fucked. Comprehensively and humiliatingly trounced by an enormous ape in a string vest. He joined forces with Fen after that in an effort to take Aidan down—and by the end of the evening, they’d won only a scant handful of races against their simian nemesis. Not exactly respectable, but not utterly shameful either.

Of course, the moment the music fell silent and the TV turned dark, everything Aidan had said came crashing back down on Alfie. His brain got it. But his heart…his heart didn’t have a fucking clue. It had abandoned everyday duties like moving blood and oxygen around. And instead it was dancing. Dancing for Fen.

As they were leaving and Alfie was pulling his jacket on, Aidan caught his arm. “I shouldn’t have doubted you,” he whispered. “I can see how much you care.”

Alfie nodded, the words I think I’m in love with him teetering preciously on the tip of his tongue.

“So remember what I said. Think about Fen. And do the right thing.”

“O-okay.” Alfie’s voice came out so hoarse he had to clear his throat. “I will. I’ll do whatever it takes for him to be happy.”

“You’re a good lad, Alfie Bell.”

And then Aidan hugged him. Not the way Alfie thought men hugged, with brusque, slightly abashed affection, but warmly and without haste or hesitation. It kind of shocked him a little bit. But then he was hugging back, embarrassed by his own clumsy fervour, finding something he hadn’t even known he was looking for, the way a sapling aches for the sun.6

* * *

“You’re quiet,” said Fen, on the drive home.

Alfie knew he should say something. He was supposed to be thinking about Fen, and it was wrong to keep pretending.

But…would another night make all that much difference? Another night in Fen’s bed, in his body, maybe. Another day to hold his hand and see his smile. Make him laugh and bounce around and arch his brows and say Alfie Bell in that tone of pleased exasperation or exasperated pleasure. If he did the right thing tomorrow, maybe it was okay to be selfish now?

Well, no. Of course it wasn’t. It was never okay to be selfish. But he wasn’t sure he had the strength to be good. He just wanted to be with Fen.

He tried to smile. “Naw. I’m fine. A bit tired.”

“Tell me about it. My dad’s exhausting with his leet Mario Kart skills. Let’s go to bed early”—Fen checked his phone—“okay, earlyish.”

“Sounds great.”

It seemed kind of a waste not to seize the opportunity for sex, but for some reason, the moment he was under the covers with Fen all curled around and draped over him, Alfie’s dick packed up for the night. Abandoned him to his feelings. This deep, scared sadness. And this absolute content. There was something weird and a bit unravelling about lying here with a man he fancied the fuck out of with no fucking on the horizon. But at the same time, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than this comfort—this care—that Fen didn’t know he was giving, his breath falling gently against the back of Alfie’s neck in the dark.

22

Dear Mum,

I’m happy. And I’m so sad. I don’t know how those things can coexist, but they do.

And it doesn’t feel like betrayal at all.

It hurts, though, with this scab-flaking, bark-cracking, pins-and-needles itch, finding meaning in my days again. To laugh and feel and want. To make choices in the present and think about the future. I’ve become so used to grief, I’m scared of what lies beneath it. My heart, I think, turned tender in the untouched dark. I’m full of small, gathered hopes that, if I let them, will fly away from me, as fragile as dandelion seeds.

The strangest thing is how close you feel right now. You really shouldn’t, because the shop is overrun by a goth teenager and her ludicrously camp boyfriend (who goes by the moniker of Straighty, by the way, which is short for Straightsteven—for he assures us, very sincerely, that he is all about the minge)1, and Alfie Bell is everywhere. With all his talk of local business and online presence and ethical markets. I’ve never seen this side of him before, so focused and confident—well, he’s always confident—but a little stern. And me, a little enchanted. He’s quite good, you see, at pretending to be ordinary. And he so desperately wants to be.

“An ordinary bloke”—such a strange aspiration if you ask me. But I like it when he allows himself to be more clever than he’s comfortable being. Or more gentle, more playful, more vulnerable. More the man I’m sure he is and always was. And, yes. It’s taken him less than a week, and I’m probably as hopelessly, helplessly in love with him as ever. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe it’s sex or loneliness or sorrow or something else entirely. But I’m not going to question it. Not when he makes me feel so unequivocally good.

I’m not the person I was before you died. And I’m glad because I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be unchanged by the loss of you. I will carry it inside me like an oyster with a pearl until the day I die myself. But before Alfie came to South Shields, I thought there was less of me. That maybe the best of me was you.

I know now that isn’t true. I’m still me. We’re all built of pieces really, the things that have happened to us and the people we love, and change is as inevitable as the tide, smoothing us into sea-glass. It’s nothing to be feared. I have Alfie to thank for this as well. He found me when I most needed to be found and helped me find myself again.

He’s out, at the moment, planning something. Probably, knowing him, something absurdly romantic. Actually I’ve sort of been thinking a lot too. I’d tell you, but…well, I think I want to tell him first. I know you won’t mind.2

I’ll always love you, Mum. Never stop missing you.

Your,

Fen

23

Gothshelley insisted on closing. She claimed it was because Alfie’s face was annoying her, but he suspected she wanted to make sure they got a proper evening together. He had plans for some of it—though not until it got dark—but he was saved from having to stall and make excuses and probably end up ruining the surprise, because Fen also seemed to have something on his mind.

“Alfie?” he said, picking at the dry skin around his fingernails. “Can we go to Marsden Rock again?”

Alfie reached for those twitchy hands. Squinted critically at the calluses and chilblains. “I’m going to have to get you some E45. And of course we can. We can do whatever you like.”

“Okay. I just need to get something from the flat.”

Five minutes later, they were in the car, zooming along River Drive. Fen had what looked like a battered old shoebox cradled on his lap.

“What’s that?” Alfie asked.

“Letters to Mum.”

“Oh, right.”

“It’s…it’s weird, isn’t it?”

“Don’t be daft, man.”

For some reason, that made Fen smile, just a little.

He parked by the Grotto, same as he had last Sunday, except this time Fen was with him, not waiting for him. “Want to go down to the beach?”

Fen shook his head. Just started walking along the clifftops, his hair made wayward by the wind, the pink bits so very bright in that rough grey-and-green world. And, after a moment or two, Alfie followed.

Eventually, they came to a bit of the bay that jutted out into a sort of headland. It was here that Fen stopped and swung a leg over the barrier.

With an unmanly squeak, Alfie made a grab for him. “What are you doing?”

“Oh come on, it’s perfectly safe.”1

“If it was perfectly safe, there wouldn’t be an obstruction.”

“It only comes up to here.” Fen knocked against the top of the railing. “It’s so little kids don’t go running off the edge.”

“But what about coastal erosion?”

One of Fen’s brows twitched. “Are you seriously telling me that you lived here for eighteen years and you always meticulously observed every health and safety ordinance issued by South Tyneside borough council?”

“Well, no, but I was stupid back then.”

All the same, Fen kind of had a point. Alfie had done all sorts of ill-advised things on top of these cliffs and still wasn’t dead. He gingerly climbed over and joined Fen.

Such a good view. Nothing but the sand and the sea and the sky. Almost like a painting, except for the way the wind moved through it, turning the clouds and the waves, stirring the grass, making every moment that passed different from the one before. Alfie knew South Shields was never going to get on a top ten of England’s most beautiful spots. Probably most people hadn’t even heard of it. But it was stuff like this you couldn’t capture—not even if you took a million photos. You just sort of had to be here and live in it. Part of the ever-changing world.

Fen was sitting cross-legged, gazing out to sea, still holding his shoebox. Dropping down beside him, Alfie nudged their shoulders together. “You see over there?” He pointed further down the coast, to where the cliffs jutted prominently into the sea. “I jumped naked off that on Christmas Eve one year.”

“Um. Why?”

“Dunno really. Kev and Pete were supposed to do it as well, but they chickened out.”

“Jesus, people die falling off these cliffs.”

“Now who’s all”—he did a mock flail with his hands—“health and safety or whatever. And, anyway, I didn’t fall, I jumped.”

“You’re an idiot, Alfie Bell.”

He flung an arm across Fen’s shoulders and pulled him in tight. “Aww, you’re worried about me. In the past. That’s so sweet.”

Fen scowled. “Oh, shut up.”

“It was blummin’ awful. So cold it was like being punched. And when I got out, my balls were just gone like.”

“They were gone?”

“Yeah. Whoosh. Right up inside. I thought they were never coming back. I was fucking terrified, man.”

“Well”—a palm slid shyly over Alfie’s thigh—“they seem to have recovered.”

“They’re good.”

They were quiet a bit after that. Probably Alfie had killed the conversation with his knackers. But Fen’s hand, which was now resting against his knee, was warm, easily affectionate, and he seemed basically okay. Maybe it would have been a good time to bring up Pansies and all the stuff Aidan had said that Alfie had been carrying round with him all day, like stones in his pockets. But it was really nice, being here with Fen as the sky changed colour around them, and he’d planned out this special evening for him. And, anyway, it would have been shitty as hell to start talking about everything else he had lost, and was losing, when he was sitting there with his box of letters. So Alfie told himself he wasn’t going to feel guilty. Or worried. Or fucked up and pointlessly sad. He was just going to let things happen. Make this last a little bit longer. Even if it was only a handful of hours.

That wasn’t much, was it?

That wasn’t letting Fen down? Or thinking only of himself? Or proving every bad thing Aidan thought about him was right?

“Last time I came here with Mum,” Fen said, “I mean to the beach, there was this moment when…we’d just been talking, I can’t even remember what about, and then I…I had this feeling, it was so eerie, that she wasn’t with me. And then she was looking at me. And she said, ‘Who are you?’”

“Oh pet.” Bundling up every other thought like dirty socks for the laundry basket and putting them firmly out of mind, Alfie turned his head and nuzzled the edge of Fen’s brow. “I’m sorry. That’s proper rough.”

“It sounded like her but not like her at the same time. And she was backing away from me going, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ over and over again. And I don’t know if she knew where she was or maybe even who she was. And it was late, so there was only us there. On this beach that must have looked like an alien planet or something. And I was suddenly a stranger and couldn’t help.”

“What happened? Was she all right?”

“Yeah. I followed her until…until she came back. What’s really strange is that I’m not even sure she remembered forgetting. But when she didn’t know me, it was like she knew she didn’t know. She looked so…so scared, Alfie. And my mum isn’t scared of anything.”

It was one of those very northern sunsets—shredding the sky silver and gold, and gilding all the grey waves. Fen’s fast-falling tears too. Alfie kissed them away. Held him until both tears and sun were gone.

Then Fen opened the lid of his box.

“You sure?” Alfie asked. There were so many letters in there, squashed and creased and packed in tight.

“Yes. I’m ready.”

A shake and the first few papers broke free. Another and then more. And then more again. The wind caught some of them. Swept them away over the flat, black sea. Made them dance like pale moths against the shadow of the distant rock.

* * *

“I know this probably sounds bizarre in context,” said Fen, as they made their way back to the car, “but I’m starving.”

“Naw. Emotions are like sex. They work up an appetite. You want to go somewhere for dinner?”

“I’m not sure I can face sitting in a restaurant with my nose all runny and my eyes bright red.”

Alfie kissed the nose in question. “Proper Shields date, then?”

“McDonald’s?”

“No, you doylem.2 Chips doon Little Haven.”

“That’d be absolutely perfect.”

As far as Alfie was concerned, there was only one chippie in South Shields. Colmans—of the Seafood Temple—was famous, rightly or wrongly, and got visited by all the celebrities and won all the awards, but Alfie’s family had always got their fish ’n’ chips from a little red hut near the pier. Over the years, the little red hut had grown, and now it even had its own premises—still called the Red Hut—on Ocean Road.3 He parked down a side street and nipped inside, emerging a few minutes later with a newspaper-wrapped package tucked under his arm. Back in the car, he passed it to Fen for safekeeping and drove them to the Little Haven beach. The tang of batter, salt, and vinegar was so intense in the confined space of the Sagaris, he couldn’t quite tell whether he was smelling it or tasting it.

God, he’d missed this. Proper chips. Thick and golden and fluffy as clouds inside. Not American-style fries or herb-crusted, truffle-oiled potato wedges or whatever other crap they served in London. And they ate them the way chips were meant to be eaten: with fingers, out of a polystyrene carton, while wandering the scrub-speckled dunes.4

It was cold enough to mist their breath, but the night was very clear, full of pinprick stars and this gleaming circle of a moon, drenching the smooth sea and the wet sand in silver, until they shone like polished things.

When they were done, Alfie took the empty chip box out of Fen’s hand, wadded it up, and stuffed it into his pocket until he could find a bin. Then he pulled him close. “Hey, can I show you something?”

“Your big surprise? Absolutely.”

They headed down Sea Road to the South Pier, which curved into the North Sea for nearly a mile of rough, white-grey stone and marked the end of Little Haven and the beginning of Sandhaven. The pier itself was sealed up for the night, though Alfie and Kev had slipped round the gates on many occasions. Which, now he thought about it, was just as fucking stupid as the rest of the stuff they’d done as teenagers. There were no lights or barriers, and the sea could get pretty rough sometimes—he’d seen the waves surge high enough to swathe the lighthouse in a cloak of white water churned as fluffy as ostrich feathers.

Alfie led Fen past the dark amusement arcade to the funfair. It was shut down for the winter season, and the front gates were locked, but since it backed directly onto the beach, you could basically walk round. Something he hadn’t considered, though, was how dark it would be without the hectic lights of the arcades to guide them. And how quiet without the laughter and the screams, the rattle and swoosh of the roller coaster, and the music blasting. Strangely eerie, with the stilled carousels and most of the rides nothing but metal frames.

“Oh my God,” whispered Fen. “This is like something from a Stephen King novel. Are we even allowed to be here?”

“We’re not not allowed.” Alfie groped out blindly and found some random bit of Fen he then used to locate his hand. “Look, it’s fine, I used to work here during the summer.”

“I know. You used to do the Waltzers. And you used to take your shirt off when it was hot.”

Alfie squirmed in the darkness. “The things you remember.”

“I remember everything, Alfie Bell. I remember the way your hips moved with the rise and fall of the platforms. I remember the way the muscles would bunch under your skin when you pushed the cars round. I remember how wildly the girls would scream for you and how much I envied them.”

“I really loved it, Fen. I mean, not the girls screaming. Walking the Waltzers. I was only going round in circles, but I felt so free.”

“You looked it.”

“Wait here a moment, will you?”

Fen yipped and latched on. “You’re going to leave me alone on my own in the dark? I’ll probably be murdered. By evil clowns.”

“I’ll be less than a minute. There’s no clowns, evil or otherwise. And this would be a crap place for generic murderers to hang out because it’s a closed-down fairground in the middle of the night—really low foot traffic for murdering.”

“I’d be reassured if it didn’t sound like you’d thought about this so much.”

It was hard to tell in the dark but… “Are you taking the piss?”

“Maybe.”

“Right. Stay here. And if you get murdered, you’ll totally deserve it.”

“I probably will get murdered,” Fen called after him. “By irony.”

Lighting his way with his mobile phone, Alfie scrambled onto the Waltzers and made his way through the cars to the central booth. He’d borrowed the key from Fowler—the bloke who owned the ride, and thankfully still remembered him—that afternoon. Got his permission, since getting arrested wasn’t quite the evening he had in mind. The lights on their own were even more startling than he remembered, bright as a neon fairyland, gold and purple and pink. He fired up the ride—lowest setting—and stepped down from the booth onto the now rolling platforms.

For a moment, he panicked, not sure how to move and convinced he was going to fall. But his body remembered—how to adjust his stance, distribute his weight, move with the motion—and he made it easily enough across the cars and back to Fen.

That was when this memory hit him out of nowhere. He’d fallen once. Long after he’d got the hang of it. A summer day, just like any other, a group of friends climbing into one of the carts, the usual excited babble, a few flirtatious, hopeful glances to earn his attention. And a boy, his face long forgotten, but a boy and a smile, and suddenly everything spinning the wrong way, including Alfie. Followed by a pratfall. Fowler hoisting him under his armpits, getting him back on his feet. “Happens to the best of us,” he’d said, “and always right in front of a pretty girl, am I right?” Alfie had laughed. Nodded. And never thought of it again.

Until now. Looking into Fen’s dazzled face.

“Oh, Alfie.”

He held out his hand with a flourish. “Your carriage awaits. I’ll teach you how to walk ’em.”

“It looks a lot scarier up close.” But, still, Fen let himself be drawn forward.

Actually, he had a point. It was more difficult on the outside. Alfie darted back into the centre, stopped the ride, and beckoned Fen over to the booth. After a moment of hesitation, Fen came, stepping as warily as a gazelle over the platforms.

“I’ve seen you running over deadly seaweed rocks,” Alfie said. “Sitting on the edge of crumbly cliffs. You’re going to be fine.”

“Maybe you just want an excuse to make me cling to you and scream.”

Alfie gave him a look. “I need an excuse for that?”

Fen was a jewelled rainbow under the Waltzer lights, but Alfie was sure he blushed. “All right, how do I do this?”

He nipped into the booth to get the ride going again. “Well, when you’re ready, step onto one of the platforms. Walk against the spin, but let your body move with it.”

“Like dancing?”

“Yeah…I guess so. Also, look at the platforms, not the ground, and basically, keep going. And when you want to step off, just do it, don’t dither and second-guess yourself. I’ll be with you all the way.” He glanced at Fen’s pale, slightly trembling hands. “Oh, and take your ring off. Just in case it catches on something. You probably like having all your fingers.”

Fen said nothing for a long moment before he slowly unwound the band of green wire from his fourth finger and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. Then he looked straight at Alfie. “Okay.”

“Well, then. Whenever you feel ready, just relax and step—Oh.”

Fen was gone. Whisked away by the Waltzers like leaves on the wind. Alfie dived after him, jumping across the platforms until he caught up. But he’d worried about nothing. Fen was fine, calm, graceful as a reed, his hair flying like a flag.

“Man,” he gasped, “you scared the crap out of me.”

Fen’s smile was all pieces of brightness. “Can we go faster?”

So they went faster, climbing the notches steadily until they were going about three quarters of the ride’s full speed. Fen had been right—it did feel weirdly like dancing, following each other between the carts, moving apart and coming together, Alfie sometimes steadying Fen when he wobbled. Until, eventually, they weren’t moving at all, just turning with the ride, Fen folded in Alfie’s arms, leaning back against him, their bodies pressed together by the rise and fall of the platforms as they spun and spun through the light-encrusted dark.

Only this time, Alfie knew he wasn’t free and couldn’t even pretend. He belonged to love and time, and neither of them would let him go, no matter how hard he bargained.

Another day.

Another hour.

Half an hour then. Fifteen minutes. Ten. Eventually, with every second clinging to him like coal dust, Alfie turned off the ride, and they sat in one of the carts, snuggled under his coat.

“That your mum’s?” he asked, as Fen wriggled the piece of wire out of his pocket and wrapped it round his finger again.

“Yes. Dad gave it to her for a love token, since they never married. Pretty scandalous back in the eighties.”

“Wow, yeah. How come?”

“Mum didn’t really see the point of marriage.”

“I think it’s important,” said Alfie firmly.

“Love is certainly legally complicated without it.” Fen faffed with the band. “I mean, officially I’m my mother’s next of kin, not my dad. Or, rather, I was.”

“Yeah, there’s definitely that side of it. But there’s also what it means to other people. I wouldn’t want there to be any…any doubt like, that whoever I was with was the most important person in my life. Especially cos, well, he’s going to be a man. And people are stupid about that.”

There was a brief, slightly uncertain silence.

And then Alfie said, “Fen, look—” at the same time Fen said, “Alfie, I’ve been thinking—” which made them laugh, fall silent again, and then get entangled in an abortive sequence of “Oh sorry” and “After you” and “No, you go.”

Finally, Alfie got a full sentence out: “You first.”

“Well. Okay.” Fen drew in a quick, sharp breath. “But it’s…um…it’s kind of a bit…oh, I don’t know. But I think I might hate myself forever if I don’t try.”

“Is this a proposal?” It was supposed to lighten the mood—calm Fen down—but it didn’t work at all. In fact, as soon it was out, Alfie couldn’t have imagined a worse thing to say.

Hooking his fingers into his pocket again, Fen drew out what looked like a tightly folded newspaper clipping and handed it shakily to Alfie.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a job. Part-time. It’s doing outreach for this tiny company called the Shoestring Theatre. They got a lottery grant, and they’re all about bringing theatre into local communities through collaboration with—Alfie, it’s in Newcastle.”

The newsprint was hieroglyphics, and Alfie’s heart was spinning like the Waltzers were still on. His voice floated out of him as if didn’t belong to him anymore. “It seems quite a long way from lighting design.”

“Well. Yes. And I’m slightly scared of children, but they can’t all be homophobic little shits, right?”

“Probably not all of them, no.”

“I might not get it, but I think I have a decent shot.” Fen was talking very quickly or Alfie’s head was working very slowly. “And because it’s part-time, I’d still be able to work in the shop a bit. If…if you—oh God, I warned you this was crazy—if you wanted to run it with me.”

No words were in Alfie’s mouth. At least none he could say. None that weren’t yes.

Fen covered his face with his hands. Squirmed in a helplessly embarrassed kind of way. “It sounds even worse now I’ve said it aloud. I don’t know what I was thinking except that I did. Think it, I mean.”

There was sandpaper in Alfie’s throat. He made a croaking sound.

“Can you say something, Alfie? Even if it’s just…‘Man, you’re nuts.’” A sound that was probably meant to be a laugh, except it came out all shrill and wobbly. “Although it’s not as nuts as…as well, it could be. You actually like South Shields and you seem very—to my mind, bewilderingly—interested in flower shop management.”

“Yeah, but”—Alfie forced the words out—“what about what you want?”

Fen gave him this smile, bright and fearless in the moonlight. “What I want? Oh, Alfie Bell. I’m head over heels in love with you.”

Joy and sadness and pain and love collided in Alfie’s chest like some kind of terrible motorway accident. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Worse than jumping off that cliff into the icy depths of the North Sea. But all he could hear was Aidan’s voice, carried to him as inexorably as the ceaseless hush-hush of the ever-turning tide.

You’re helping him throw his life away. If you’ve really changed, do something good for him. It’s what you want, not what he wants.

let him go let him go let him go

“You can’t give up your whole life,” he mumbled, “and everything you want to do, for me and the memory of your mum.”

Silence again. The sea still roaring too loud in Alfie’s ears.

“Well.” Fen’s fingers danced uncertainly against the edge of the Waltzer. “Not exactly what I was hoping to hear. But I can imagine worse reactions. And you haven’t said no.”

“Come on, Fen. You know we can’t.”

“I know it’s a bit out there. But ‘we can’t’ is pretty strong.”

“I can’t, then.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I mean…” Alfie had never felt so useless. So wordless. So hopelessly adrift. “I can’t.”

Fen laughed like he had that night at the Rattler, brittle and fractured. “My, er, my heart’s kind of dripping blood on the floor here. I just did the emotional equivalent of putting my head down the toilet for you. Don’t you think I deserve a bit better than that?”

“Uh. What?”

“Man up, Alfie.” And when he couldn’t even find a way to respond to that, Fen shoved him in the shoulder hard enough to jar. “Man up and tell me the truth. Any truth. You don’t actually want this. You don’t love me. You like what you have in London and the whole save-your-local-florist act was bullshit. But don’t you dare sit there like Marsden-fucking-Rock and give me nothing.”

There was no way he could tell Fen he didn’t love him. It was a lie so big and deep and absolute that uttering it would have been practically blasphemy. But he had to say something that would convince Fen to leave. Be who he was supposed to be. Claim all the happiness and freedom he deserved. “You’ll end up hating me,” Alfie tried, and wished there was even a flicker of conviction in his voice. “You’ll wake up one day and realise you’re living a life you never wanted.”

“Jesus Christ, what do you think I’ve been doing for the past year and a half?” He could feel Fen trembling beside him. And, then, all of a sudden in a graceless scramble, Fen was out of the seat and out of the cart. Glaring down at him. Arms folded tightly over his chest. “It was you who taught me how to want again. And what I want is a life like this. With you. And, you know something”—Fen gentled unexpectedly—“I think you want it too.”

He did. Of course he did. But Aidan had trusted him. Had believed in him. Thought he was a good person. How could he let him down? Betray them both, father and son. Just because he was lonely and in the wrong place. Fen deserved better than a flower shop in a town he hated and the love of a man who had spent more than half his life afraid.

Fen kicked him lightly in the ankle. “Don’t make me beg, Alfie. But I will if you need to hear it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “cos I won’t do it. You need to get over your guilt or whatever, and stop trying to drag me into it.”

He wasn’t sure what kind of response he was expecting. He was prepared for sharpness, at the very least, but Fen seemed suddenly and surprisingly calm. Sure of himself in every way that Alfie wasn’t. “It was guilt that brought you here too, you know. But guilt doesn’t have the power to make someone stay or change or fall in love. Trust me, Alfie. Please. I know what I want.”

Alfie swallowed. “And what about all the other things you wanted?”

“What about them?”

“They’re your dreams and stuff. And you’ve never liked it here.”

“South Shields gave me a lot to run away from. But”—Fen spread his arms wide, letting the light weave through the strands of his hair and fill his eyes with electric stars as he gazed straight at Alfie—“look what it’s given me back.”

“I’m not enough.”

“You are.” Fen flashed him the briefest of smiles. “But rein in your ego. There’s Pansies and Dad and the scent of peonies on a spring morning. There’s the way the wind fights you and the way the sky changes. The way the air always tastes of the sea. There’s everything my mother loved and everything I’m learning to.”

“Fen…” Except Alfie didn’t have anything else. Just a sad little name and the tears he was frantically holding back.

“So you see,” Fen went on, “it’s not really about what I want any more. It’s about what you want. Which I…I kind of have to hope is this crappy little nowhere town, abandoned by industry and forgotten by history, with very little to recommend it except that it’s ours and”—his voice wavered, and broke at last—“you could spend a lifetime here, with this prickly, grieving flower shop boy.”

And that was when Alfie knew: there was no way out of this. Fen was too strong, too honest, too full of courage. And if Alfie had been half as strong and half as honest, if he’d had any courage at all, he’d have pulled Fen back into his arms and never let him go.

Said fuck it to Aiden. To Fen’s other world. His other boyfriend. To any future that wasn’t this one.

But what would that make him? He’d ruined Fen’s childhood out of carelessness and cruelty. How could he do the same thing again and call it love?

So he put it right, as he’d promised he would.

“I’m sorry.” He had to pause to steady his voice. To clear the guilt and anguish clogging his throat. “I thought I could do this. But I made a mistake. It’s not for me. I need to go back to London.”

The world cracked. Flaked into pieces.

For a long moment, the longest moment Alfie had ever lived through, Fen said nothing. Then he gave a chill, empty smile.

“You know,” he murmured “it’s getting absolutely hilarious how many times I let you hurt me. You’d think I’d learn but…” He shrugged. And, just then, it was easy to remember he’d once been on the stage. “Well. Thank you for another week of fuckery, Alfie Bell.” Then he stepped off the Waltzer deck and walked away through the empty fairground.

24

Alfie woke up at 5:00 a.m. on Monday morning feeling like he had a hangover, except it wasn’t physical. All the same, he dragged himself off his handcrafted, hypoallergenic, gazillion pocket-spring lambswool mattress and out of his Egyptian cotton sheets—in which he’d had the worst night’s sleep of his entire life—and got into his multidirectional, astonishingly powerful shower. Stood with his face turned into one of the jets that wasn’t going to explode his eyeballs, oddly disorientated by the gleaming glass and chrome, the lack of pink tidemarks and pale hair. The pristine tiled walls.

He dressed in his best suit, the bespoke one from Savile Row that had cost him in the region of four grand and made him itch in weird places, and went to work. To the meeting with J.D. Jarndyce, where he was probably going to get fired. Which, right now, he did not give a fuck about.

Jarndyce occupied a cubbyhole on the third floor. It was where he’d started when the company had been Locklear Grayson Bayle. Before it became Locklear Jarndyce Dance, then Jarndyce & Dance, and finally J.D. Jarndyce. He said he liked to remember where he’d come from because it never took much to send you back there.

His first question, rapped out even before Alfie’s bum had met the seat, was, “Tell me why I shouldn’t fire you.”

It was pretty much what he’d been expecting. Which meant he should have prepared one of those polished “I’m the best at everything” type answers. Except…he just couldn’t be arsed. He sighed. “Look, I’ve been working here for seven years. You’ve seen what I can do. And you’re not going to decide whether to fire me based on what I say in the next ten seconds cos you’ve already decided.”

Jarndyce was a slim, polished conker of a man, smoothed and toughened by forty years in the pocket of corporate London. The only time Alfie had ever seen him smile was in the photograph he kept on his desk: him and Dance in some green-gold Oxbridge place, arms around each other. He was the sort of person it was hard not to admire. Though nearly impossible to like. And right now, his cold, tarnished-steel eyes were stabbing Alfie.

“I’ve always rather liked you, Bell,” he murmured. “And you’re right. I had decided to fire you.”

“Uh. ‘Had’?”

“I’m going to give you another week. Come back next Monday with a better answer, and we’ll see.”

Alfie shifted uncomfortably. Accidentally rammed his foot into the back of the desk and brought all the photos toppling over: the university boyfriend, the ex-wife, and the three kids, one of them apparently in the middle of an androgynous, purple-haired rebellion.1 “Shit, sorry. I’m just not sure I’ll have a better answer. I’m not going to come in here and start begging.”

“That’s not what I’m looking for.”

“Well, what do you want?”

Jarndyce picked up one of the photos and put it back in its usual place. “Someone who wants to be here. Who will make this their life, as I did.”

It was dismissal. But Alfie, still sitting there, heard himself ask, “Is it worth it?”

“It depends on your priorities. To me, yes.”

“I don’t see why you can’t have a bit more balance.”

“Because,” said Jarndyce impatiently, “life is conflict, disappointment is inevitable, and I prefer not to live with failure. See you next Monday.”

* * *

Alfie went straight back to bed. There was actual sobbing involved. A bit of howling. Lots of drinking. Some clinging to his pillow.

He just hadn’t quite realised it was possible to feel this way. It was like last week but backwards. All that joy turned into pain. These barbed-wire knots stuck inside him, impossible to dig out again unless he ripped himself to pieces.

Suddenly a whole bunch of movies were making a lot more sense. He’d always rolled his eyes when characters got all heartbroken and boring, letting their lives go off the rails or the plot slow right down while they got to grips with their emotions. It had seemed like a bit of an overreaction, considering the world went on, other people existed in it, and sometimes there were terrorists to catch, or supervillains to stop, or spaceships to blow up.

But right now, Alfie couldn’t have saved the day if his life depended on it. Laurence Fishburne could have turned up on his doorstep, blue pill in hand, and Alfie would have told him, “Sorry, too sad.” And, wow, now that he thought about it, it had been fucking forever since he’d been to the cinema.

As he lay there, among the takeaway boxes and empty bottles, he realised that maybe part of the problem was the fact all this was new to him. He’d broken up with people before, of course, but it had never mattered because he’d never cared. So he’d had no practice. He’d never fallen in love. Never been wrecked by it. And built up no calluses on his heart.

This was basically his adolescence. Every boy he should have pined for and been with and moved on from. Except for the fact he was thirty years old and had never felt so alone or broken.

* * *

By Thursday he’d come to the conclusion that you couldn’t actually die of being miserable. He’d also decided he wasn’t going back to work for J.D. Jarndyce.2 He had no idea what he was going to do instead, but at least he’d made some kind of decision. And he’d made it for himself. Not for Fen or his friends or his parents. Or even the ugly little seaside town that was the only place he’d ever really been happy. Probably he wouldn’t go back there—once he would have been too scared, and now it would be too full of Fen—but there had to be some other place in England he liked. With a coastline and a job for someone with a BA in maths, a master’s in econometrics and mathematical economics, and seven years in the city behind him.

He could even get a dog. In this fantasy future, where he would have enough time to care for one. Make lasagne a lot. Learn to make something that wasn’t lasagne. Presumably at some point, he’d stop hurting. Stop dreaming of silver-gold hair and long legs tangled round his. And stop feeling like the best time of his life would always be a single week.

So when a text from Greg arrived, suggesting (apparently in all seriousness) that they spend their Friday in a cabaret and cocktails club that was previously a Victorian toilet, Alfie decided he might as well take advantage of having nothing to do and invited everyone to come round for dinner instead. Responses ranged from Do what? to Can you even cook? but eventually they agreed to the experiment. Kitty even asked to bring her new relationship prospect. Her exact words.

By the time his friends turned up, Alfie was running only slightly late and hadn’t turned Canary Wharf into a smoking ruin, so he was calling it a win.

“I was going to bring you a bottle of something,” was Greg’s greeting. “But then I realised you’d only sneer at the vintage, so my gift to you”—flourish—“is me.”

Alfie gave him a one-armed hug because the other hand had an oven glove on it. “I don’t suppose you come with a receipt?”

“How very dare you, Alfredo. You should want to put me in pride of place and treasure me forever.”

Kitty’s new relationship prospect turned out to be a tallish, handsomish man in his early forties, with brown hair, brown eyes, and an air of studied normality. His name was Charles Randall (he was one of those men who did not lightly bear diminutives—definitely a Charles, not a Charlie) and when Greg—rather naughtily—asked him what he did, he said he was attached to the diplomatic service.

“Oh my God!” Greg gazed at him entranced. “You are a spy.”3

He smiled pleasantly. “Well, if I was, I’d probably have to kill you now.”

“It would be the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Kitty sat down at the table where Alfie had never dined. “You said that about Burning Man.”

“That was more of an intense sexual-spiritual experience.”

“I don’t think I know you well enough for that,” murmured Charles, as he slipped into a chair next to Kitty.

Greg smiled at nobody in particular. “Give yourself another five minutes or so. It’s probably as long as you’ll need.”

Alfie glanced up from his saucepan. “What’s the matter with you?”

“He’s decided he’s shallow,” sighed Kitty, with mingled sympathy and exasperation. “Because you and I both met people we didn’t completely hate the prospect of being with.”

“About that—” Alfie began.

But Greg cut him off. “It’s true. I don’t do anything and I don’t have to do anything…which means I probably won’t do anything. And nothing bad or interesting has ever happened to me. So while I’m fun to flirt with, what’s going to happen to me when my arse droops and I’m not hot anymore?”

“I don’t know.” Alfie thought about it. “Maybe you could get a cat.”

Greg made a distressed noise. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. I mean, not about the cat. But serious that you’re being stupid. You’re, what, twenty-four?”

“Nearly twenty-five.”

“Not exactly over the hill, then. And you don’t like relationships anyway.”

“I don’t know what I think about relationships anymore.” Greg was staring at the wall. “Mainly I feel that I’ve failed at them—which could become relevant if I decide I want one and don’t know how to get it.”

Kitty gave him a look. “Yes, Greg, that’s called life. Wanting things, and not being able to figure out how to get them.”

“Urgh.” Alfie pulled some newly bought plates off the drying rack. “Tell me about it.”

She turned a little ruefully to Charles. “So, yes, these are my friends. You must be so happy to be here.”

He chuckled. Ran his thumb lightly over her knuckles, the touch hopeful and gentle at the same time. Making Alfie a little wistful for the simple magic of another person’s skin. “It’s fine. I am happy to be here.”

Meanwhile, Greg—instead of sitting down like a normal person—had gone prowling around Alfie’s flat. “There’s something weird about this place. Wait. What the hell, Alfie?”

He looked at where Greg was pointing. “Oh, they’re called flowers. They grow in green places.”

“Yes, I know what flowers are. I just don’t know what they’re doing here.”

“Just fancied getting them, I guess.” Alfie shrugged. “They’re ornamental cabbages.”

Greg leaned over them, inhaled, and immediately jerked away. “Eew. Rank.”

“I like them,” offered Kitty. “Compost chic.”

Alfie nodded. “That’s exactly what I was going for.”

“What are you cooking anyway?” Greg had now infiltrated the kitchen area and was peeping over Alfie’s shoulder into the pot.

“It’s a vegetable tagine, with almond couscous.”

Greg was staring at him like he had no idea who Alfie was. “Alfie, how do you even know what couscous is, let alone how to make it?”

“I’m expanding my horizons.”

“Into vegetarianism?”

“You never know. Might come in handy someday.”

Suddenly Greg screamed. “Oh my God, you’ve murdered someone!”

“What? No. I told you, it’s vegetarian. Have you been binge-watching Hannibal again?”

“There’s blood in your oven! You’re like…Sweeney Todd. You’re feeding us people.”

“That would be Mrs. Lovett.” Alfie wagged his spoon vaguely. “And I’ve tasted this, and it’s not the worst tagine in London.”

Kitty and Charles had come over to investigate the blood in Alfie’s oven. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I would never have pegged you as the musicals type.”

“I’m—”

“I know. Expanding your horizons.”

Greg seemed less impressed. “I think you’re a Cylon. Or you’ve got a parasite in your brain. What the hell happened to you?”

“I fell in love, okay?”

There was a long silence.

Charles cleared his throat. “It’s definitely not blood. I’d say it’s probably berry juice.”

“Cherry juice specifically.” Alfie winced. “There was going to be cherry pie for afterwards, but…it…well…it exploded. Nobody told me pies do that.”

“Pies explode?” Greg looked horrified.

“You’re meant to put little holes in the pastry or something. But, yeah, we’re having ice cream for pudding. Anyway”—Alfie turned off the gas—“I think we’re done here.”

He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a single-minded cook, which meant he hadn’t given much thought to actually serving the food. But his friends were happy enough to grab plates and cutlery for themselves, and he dished up direct from the pan, which he plonked on a chopping board in the middle of the table.

“Oh, and there’s a Chardonnay in the fridge,” he said, as he forked through the couscous to make it fluffy.

Greg jumped up from the table and went to get it. “Um, I’m seeing…bottles.”

“The 2010?”

“Still seeing bottles.”

“The Kongsgaard?” Alfie sighed. “It’s got a picture of two blokes carrying enormous grapes. In a sort of stained-glass effect?”

“See, why couldn’t you just say that?”

At last they settled down to eat. And it really wasn’t the worst tagine in London. Alfie blushed a little at the praise, even if it was uttered in slightly shocked voices, and proudly explained that the dish contained cumin, coriander, ginger, cinnamon, saffron, and turmeric. Which was why the vegetables didn’t taste like crap. When they were done, they took a second bottle of Two Blokes Carrying Enormous Grapes over to the worst sofa in the world and relaxed as best they could.

Kitty took off her shoes, which were fearsomely spiky, and curled up against Charles. “You know, this is really nice. Thank you, Alfie. Why don’t we do this?”

“Because none of us can be arsed to cook.” Greg cast a slightly suspicious look at Alfie. “Though that might change now Stepford Bell moves amongst us.”

“Actually…” It was probably as good a moment as any. Alfie put his wine down, oddly nervous, even though he was sure he had no reason to be. But, then, he’d spent the last five days rattling around in his own head. Talking about stuff made it a whole lot realer. “Actually, there might be some other changes. See, I’m thinking of quitting my job.”

He waited for a reaction.

“Well, that seems quite sensible,” said Kitty, eventually. “Your job always sounded dreary.”

“It wasn’t that bad. Just kind of don’t feel like doing it anymore.”

“But”—Greg gazed at him, wide-eyed, a little sad—“what are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet. I don’t think I’ll stay in London.”

“You’ll not go too far?”

Alfie went for his wine again, letting the light play through the liquid until it shone as gold as Fen.

“You’re going back up north, aren’t you?” It was barely a question. “To…whatshisname.”

“Fen. And no. That’s not an option.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m bad for him.”

Greg exploded into a derisive laugh. “Impossible. In dating terms, you’re a superfood.”

“A stupid fad that everyone will have forgotten in about five minutes?”

“Excellent for your health and well-being.” Greg scowled, an expression that made him look like a grumpy mouse. “I can’t believe he said that to you. I knew my irrational dislike was justified.”

“Um. He didn’t exactly say that.”

“So what did he say?”

“He…he said he loved me. And he wanted me to stay in South Shields with him.”

Greg stared.

Alfie rushed to explain, “But it was only because he’s messed up about his mum dying and stuff.”

Greg was still staring.

“I did the right thing.”

“Absolutely you did. I know what I want to hear when I tell someone I love them is, ‘I’m leaving you now for your own good.’”

“Same.” Kitty nodded sagely. “It’s the dream.”

When you looked at it that way, it did sound bad. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to be what’s keeping him in Shields when he could be having an amazing life somewhere else. Doing all the stuff he left to do the first time round.”

“Yes,” said Greg, in his most patient voice, “and if you were proposing to kidnap him and lock him in a basement, then I’d be concerned. But given that he seems to be volunteering to spend his life with you, I’m really not. And, oh God, I can’t believe I’m defending him.”

“What have you got against him, anyway?”

They all seemed to get very interested in their wine suddenly. And Greg finished what was left of his in a swallow—total waste of a really good Chardonnay. “Partly it feels like he’s taking you from us. But mainly because he’s everything to you that I’m not.”

“Oh. Uh.” This was the last thing Alfie would have expected. And he felt at once both bad and confused about it. “You don’t want any of that stuff.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But you didn’t even consider me.”4

Alfie threw an arm around Greg and pulled him in for a snuggle-hug. “I’m sorry, hinny. I’m such an idiot.”

“’S’okay. It’s my problem, really. And you’d better stay in touch when you’re living in a hovel in the north.”

“Firstly, we have houses up there. Some of them even have running water and broadband. And, secondly, I’m not going.”

Greg bit Alfie’s biceps impatiently. “So let me get this straight. A man you really like—maybe even love, if that gooey look you get when you talk about him is anything to go by—offered you everything one human being can give to another. And you didn’t believe him?”

Alfie had honestly tried not to think about it too much, but suddenly all he could see was Fen smiling at him in the moonlight. Those impossible words: “I’m head over heels in love with you.” And it was just this…this slice of joy, cutting right through him. Not so very different from pain right then. “It’s just kind of…massive, you know?”

“Yes”—Greg nodded—“love is, I hear. But commitment phobia is my gig, not yours.”

“Not that bit. The fact he’d have to give up so much to be with me. I mean, he thinks he’s okay with it right now, but let’s be real. Nobody should change their whole life for the sake of one person.”

None of his friends seemed to have anything to say.

Alfie shifted on the sofa, making the leather squeak. “And definitely not for a silly bugger like me.”

They kept on not saying a damn thing.

Eventually, Greg punched him ineffectively in the torso. “You’d better not be telling me that you turned down the man you’re irritatingly in love with because you got randomly insecure.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Alfie protested. “His dad told me I was wrecking his life.”

“Holy shit-balls, Alfie, you’re not sixteen. And neither is he. You don’t need parental approval.”

“No, but I want Fen to be happy. I want that more than anything in the world.”

“And you somehow think his dad is better placed to decide that than he is? Honestly, sometimes I think your values haven’t made it out of the sixteenth century.”

“Maybe,” interrupted Kitty, “this isn’t the time to debate our respective world views. But for what it’s worth, Alfie, I do agree with Greg. It’s darling the way you want to do what’s right for Fen, but at the end of the day, that should be up to him.”

They had a point. Didn’t they?

Alfie wasn’t sure if the jittery feeling inside him was hope. Or simply terror, because if his friends were right…he’d fucked up. Probably beyond redemption.

And Greg still wasn’t done. “Let me put it another way. There’s no denying that you’re a great person, and you fuck like a stallion who spent his formative years in a monastery without any other horses to play with, but you’re not so superlatively amazing that you’d render someone incapable of managing their own happiness.”

“Fuck. Oh fuck.” Alfie moved, or did something, and his glass and the bottle of wine smashed on the floor. The shards twinkled, sharp and meaningless. “I didn’t want to. I thought it would hurt me more than it hurt him, and that would be okay. Except I don’t know anymore. I just know I’m miserable and I miss him and I want to be with him.”

He buried his face in his hands. And snuffled a bit. Which his friends were kind enough to ignore. Finally he looked up again.

Kitty’s eyes flicked towards Greg. “See, why on earth would you want a relationship? It’s nothing but a confederacy of dunces.”

“Maybe I’d like someone to be idiotic over me.”

Charles smiled, somewhat mysteriously. “He has a point. I’ve rarely found love to be a particularly dignified emotion.”

There was more. But Alfie wasn’t listening. He was on his feet.

“Alfie?” asked Greg. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going back.”

“Right now? You know it’ll be one in the morning by the time you get there, right?”

“I don’t care.” Alfie ran his hands distractedly through his hair. “I’ve got to fix this. Or try anyway. Can you see yourselves out? I mean, when you’re ready. No rush.”

“Absolutely not.” Kitty jumped up, skirting the broken bottle. “I’m coming with you.”

Charles shrugged. “I’m game. As long as you don’t mind a complete stranger accompanying you to…wherever it is you’re going, to…see whoever it is you’re seeing, to do…whatever it is you’re doing.” He gave Alfie an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, your personal situation seems quite complicated. But this is exciting.”

“It’s not always like this,” Kitty warned him.

“That’s all right. Romantic, cross-country dashes probably lose their charm if you do them all the time.”5

Greg scrambled off the sofa. “Hang on. If you’re all going, you can’t leave me behind.”

“Look, everybody calm down,” said Alfie, not particularly calmly. “My car’s a two-seater, and I’m in a rush.”

“We’ll take mine.” Kitty jangled her keys. “Also, I’m not halfway to plastered.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes, I haven’t touched a drop.”

“No, I mean about coming with me?”

They all nodded.

Alfie had no idea how to deal with this. Couldn’t even tell if it was nice or completely insane. But that probably didn’t matter. Because it was happening regardless. He turned to Greg. “Don’t you dissolve or something if you go past Barnet?”

“I suppose”—Greg was tying his scarf into an elegant knot—“we’re about to find out.”

They took the lift down to the basement car park, piled into Kitty’s silver Porsche Cayenne—a vehicle Alfie had previously found utterly ridiculous—and then they were off, zooming, as much as a four-by-four keeping strictly to the speed limit could zoom, through the thin, late-evening traffic. Once they were out of London, it was straight north up the A1.

Greg did not dissolve.

Though he did make them play a wide range of travel games.

It would have been quicker if Alfie had been on his own, but then he would probably have wrapped himself drunkenly around a lamppost, and God, if that happened, how would Fen know? Who would think to tell him? Would he care?

That was when he remembered he owned a phone. And that probably the civilised thing to do was to give a person some kind of warning when you were driving across the country to try to undo the pig’s ear you’d made of the relationship. His hands were trembly as he found Fen in his address book. But it went straight to voice mail.

Probably that didn’t mean anything except that it was late. Or that Fen had blocked him. Or was being sad all on his own, because Alfie had left him.

Wow. He felt terrible. And he deserved to.

They stopped at a service station. It was only for half an hour, but it was all Alfie could do not to run up the walls. He was pronounced too jittery to drive, and Kitty didn’t trust Greg, so Charles took over.

He tried to sleep but couldn’t. The night got darker and time seemed to get slower. And he found himself sincerely wishing for those Lord of the Rings cassettes.

Eventually, though, he was shaken out of his stupor by Greg shrieking, “Stop the car! Oh my God! Stop the car!” and Kitty threatening to leave him in a ditch if he was travel-sick inside the vehicle, and the squeal of tires as they came to a halt at the side of the nearly empty road.

Staring out of the window, Alfie realised the spreading lightness was the sea.

Greg was standing under a map of the coastline bearing the legend Welcome to South Tyneside. By accident or design, it had an extra notice pinned beneath it that read, In despair? Call the Samaritans. 24 Hours. Followed by the number. Of course, Greg was gleefully taking a selfie with it.6

He jumped back into the car. “I have to Insta this.”

Alfie just groaned.

But it meant they were nearly there. And he was coming home to Fen.

They swapped drivers as soon as they arrived on the outskirts of South Shields. Alfie had long since sobered up, and it was probably easier than trying to direct a stranger through an unfamiliar place in the middle of the night. They got to Pansies about five minutes later. The safety grille, still clean somehow, was down, the flat was dark, and there was a For Rent sign outside.

“Well,” said Greg into the silence, “this is a bit of an anticlimax.”

Alfie stared, not quite comprehending.

Then he shoved open the car door and half fell in to the street. Distantly, he heard someone shouting.

Oh. It was him. Rattling on the safety grille. Pointlessly, because it was all too late. He’d fucked it all up. And he was never going to see Fen again.

He felt a touch on his shoulder. Kitty. She was saying some things.

And maybe he was weeping? Hopelessly. Right there in the street.

He pulled away from her, ashamed but too wrecked to do anything about it, and clung to the grille instead, his bowed head partially sheltered by his forearms. He could just about cope with Fen seeing him cry, but that was it. Nobody else.

Suddenly, rapid footsteps, a ferocious yell. “I told you to get the fuck away from there!”

And Kitty shouting his name.

He jerked back and got an arm up just in time to deflect a flying frying pan.

It clonked onto the ground.

And there was Fen, bespectacled, fluffy-haired, dressed in that damn kimono, staring at him, openmouthed. “Alfie…oh my God, Alfie. I thought it was those kids again.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. He tried to wipe his eyes. And his nose. “I thought you’d gone.”

“No. Not yet.”

Fen pushed his glasses back with a thoughtless finger, the gesture so habitual and disregarded and profoundly, beautifully familiar, it made Alfie want to cry again. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I came to say sorry.” It sounded ridiculously inadequate. “And I love you.” And so did that.

A long silence.

“How do you punch someone again?” asked Fen.

“What?”

“You told me how to punch someone. But I’ve forgotten. My thumb needs to go on the outside, doesn’t it?”

“Um. Yeah.” Alfie braced himself. And Fen swept towards him in a billow of satin, pale and furious and gorgeous and perfect. “Knuckles, not flats, remember.” He closed his eyes.

Then Fen’s mouth covered his. Shockingly soft. Made him stagger as if he really had been hit. He reached for him, instinctively, kind of desperately.

But Fen stepped back again. “I’m unbelievably angry with you, Alfie Bell. I’m just also unbelievably glad to see you.”

“It’s not exactly Love Actually, is it?” said Greg, with obvious disappointment.

Kitty elbowed him. “Maybe we should go find a B&B.”

“Try on Ocean Road.” Alfie jerked his thumb vaguely in the right direction. Not wanting to look anywhere except at Fen.

He was kind of aware of Kitty wishing them good night, Charles wishing them good luck, and Greg whinging that it was freezing. Then came a car engine. Then silence.

“You know you kind of”—Fen tapped himself on the chest a little self-consciously—“really hurt me. I thought maybe…after Mum…I’d be immune. Or at least a bit resistant.”

“I know it sounds beyond daft, but I was trying to do the right thing.”

“For who?”

“You. But I fucked it up, Fen. I fucked it up so bad.”

Fen was chilly and glittery in the glow of the streetlamps. “You’re really good at fucking things up, Alfie.”

“Yeah. But I want to make it right.”

“You’re really good at that too. Except I’m not sure it’s enough this time.”

“Fuck. Fen—”

“No, listen to me.” The words were quiet, but they were blades.

He fell silent at once. Waited.

“Okay.” Fen drew in a deep, not entirely steady breath. “Look. I appreciate that you came back… I mean, I thought I’d lost you for good. But I still have no idea why you left in the first place. Or what was going through your head.”

Alfie twisted his fingers together like a schoolkid who’d forgotten his homework. “I’m not sure I can explain.”

“Well, you’d better fucking try.” Fen’s calm faltered. Left him frayed and hurt. “You made me think you cared about me and wanted to be with me. But the moment it was possible, you…you ran away.”

“I didn’t want to ruin your life.”

“Because you were only with me out of guilt? Because you don’t love me?”

“I do love you,” Alfie wailed. “I love you so much. But your dad said I was selfish for making you want to stay in South Shields.”

Fen’s eyes went cartoon wide for a moment. “What does Dadaí have to do with anything? Oh my God, if he wasn’t my last living parent, I’d kick his arse.”

“He only wants what’s best for you. Y’know, like me.”

“Well, he’s a fucking hypocrite, and I’ll get onto what you are in a minute.” Fen whirled away from him and paced furiously, his bare feet slapping the pavement, and his kimono trailing behind him.

“Um, aren’t you freezing?”

“No, I’m so cross I’m actually too hot.”

“I’m really sorry,” Alfie tried again.

“Shut up. Now, listen, my fucking father’s grandmother was one of the lucht siúil. Restlessness is in his blood, he claims. When he first met Mum, he was a travelling salesman or something, but before that, he did anything that would take him somewhere he hadn’t been.”

“Okay…”

Fen flew at him, landed against Alfie like he wasn’t sure whether he was trying to attack him or hug him. “Don’t you see? He’s lived here for nearly thirty years. Because he fell in love and wanted to stay.”

Alfie wasn’t sure what to say—especially because Fen had a point here—so he settled for “okay” again. And some nodding. As he tried very hard not to clutch pathetically at Fen. Breathe in the scent of flowers from his hair.

“And in any case,” Fen was saying, “whatever my dad has or hasn’t done with his life, he has no right to make decisions about mine. And neither do you.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think he might be right about this? You shouldn’t have to stay in South Shields for me.”

Fen made a noise so frustrated it was almost a growl—and would have been adorable on some other occasion. “Perfect segue, Alfie Bell, because this is where we get onto what you are: which is a clueless, arrogant, cowardly twat.”

“Um…yeah?”

“Yes. I mean, I know you might find this hard to believe, but there is actually more for me in South Shields than you. My mum, for example. All the places she loved. And the things she taught me. Every time I make a bouquet, it’s like she’s holding my hand.” His voice wobbled and he stopped abruptly.

Alfie folded Fen into his arms. “Oh, pet.”

“I know you’re going to think this is grief, but it’s not. It’s nothing like it.” He pressed his face briefly against Alfie’s shoulder, sniffing. Then pulled away, anger snapping into place again like armour. “And, yes, I have some fucking terrible memories of this place, but when you were with me—when you weren’t being a complete arse-dick—the ones we were making together mattered more.”

“I’m sorry,” said Alfie, helplessly, a few pathetic little tears of his own slipping from the corners of his eyes. “I’m really sorry. I’m everything you said, but can you at least believe I thought I was doing the right thing?”

Fen gazed at him, his expression utterly unreadable, full of too many things and not enough. “I genuinely don’t know if I liked it better when I thought you didn’t care about me.”

“Of course I care about you. Don’t I keep saying? I love you.”

“Yes, well.” Fen’s lips got very thin and mean. “What that seems to mean to you is making decisions for me. Treating me like a child. Assuming I don’t understand where my happiness lies.”

“That’s…that’s not what love means to me.” He tried to wipe the wetness from his cheeks. “I just didn’t want to take anything more from you. Or change your life in a way that made it worse or smaller or less full of all the stuff you dreamed about.”

“You changed my life the first time you shoved me into the wall and called me a nancy puff. My life changed when I dropped out of university. When my mother told me she had Alzheimer’s. The day she died.” Something like a smile softened Fen’s mouth, reminding Alfie of all the times he’d kissed it. All the times it had laughed for him. Called out his name. “My life changed when I saw you in the Rattler. And it changed two weeks ago when you came back to South Shields for me. Change means you’re alive. And”—Fen clenched his hands and pushed them hard against Alfie’s chest, deep shudders running up the length of his arms, making his shoulders shake too—“the day you didn’t trust me, the day you chose for me, was the day you took more from me than you ever have.”

“Will…” Alfie swallowed. The barbed wire was back, clogging up his throat, shredding his heart. “Will you forgive me for it?”

Fen’s eyes were steady on his, moonlight slipping down his bared throat, pooling in the hollow at the base. “Ask me and see.”

“Please, forgive me, Fen. I’ll never do summin like that again. I swear.”

No answer. No mercy in that look.

Brackish despair sloshed around in Alfie’s stomach. “I’m not good with pretty talk and fancy promises, but you’re the most important thing in the world to me. And there’s nowt I want more than to spend my life being in love with you. If you really think someone like me can make you happy.”

The slightest upwards curl at the edge of Fen’s lips. “Not someone like you, Alfie Bell.”

“I’ve pretty much quit my job,” he blundered on hopelessly. “And you can apply for that theatre thing. And we’ll figure everything out together.” Alfie paused. Dug around in his soul, looking for the right words. And, suddenly, there they were. Tumbling out of him like the pied piper’s rodents. “I was thinking maybe I could learn to cook? And we could listen to musicals. And you could drive my car sometimes. And I could suck you off every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. And you could top me whenever you wanted cos when it’s you I like it and it’s okay. And maybe we could watch The Shawshank Redemption someday and you wouldn’t laugh when it makes me cry.”

He stopped for breath. Discovered he was gasping and slightly light-headed. Rushed on anyway. “And we could walk on the beach and maybe get a dog. I’d quite like a dog if you would. But not if you wouldn’t. Only let’s not have a cat because they’re snooty buggers. And maybe we could do this all the time, until, y’know, we’re not here anymore. Cos…well…that’s what love means to me. But it doesn’t mean anything at all really, without you.”

For a long, anguish-filled moment, Fen was silent. Then he was in Alfie’s arms, wound all around him like a climbing rose, sweet and wild, and not without his own dear thorns.

“Um,” said Alfie, “this is a yes, right?”

Fen laughed and kissed him. “Yes, Alfie Bell, it’s yes.”

“Fuck. Oh fuck.”

“Not quite the reaction I was hoping for.”

“Sorry. I’m just so…fucking relieved. I really thought… Fuck.”

“Come on”—Fen slipped from his embrace—“let’s get you inside before you swoon.”

“Oi. I’m just happy, alreet?”

“I’m not sure you deserve to be, the hell you put me through last week.”

“I really will make it up to you.”

Fen managed something like his old smile—toothy and crooked and wicked. “I expect no less.”

Hand in hand, they made for the side door. Then Alfie stopped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Fen, warily.

Before Alfie quite knew what he was doing, he was on one knee on the pavement—which was really hard and a bit painful, jabbing right into him.

“Oh my God, what are you doing?”

“I’m not proposing,” he said quickly. “I just realised…I was sort of hoping that maybe one day, it’s okay if I do?”

“Wow.” Fen gave an odd sort of laugh. Tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. Wriggled his bare toes. “Not to fall back on cliché, but this is so unexpected.”

“Can’t be that unexpected. You know how I feel about you and about stuff.”

“I really shouldn’t be into this.”

“Are you, though?”

A telltale flush stole across the arch of Fen’s cheekbones. “I…I think I might be. But only because it’s you.”7

“Well, you can look forward to me doing it properly, then.”

“Is that a promise?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Though I haven’t got anything to make it official like.”

“I do.”

And, with that, Fen unwound the green wire from his finger. Dropped it into Alfie’s outstretched palm, where it landed as lightly as a butterfly.

Epilogue

He had to get a train, then a metro, then a bus, and then he walked.1 It was a porcelain-pale day on the furthest edge of winter, and after only a few weeks inland, he had somehow forgotten how cold it got this close to the coast. The way the wind had teeth, and how it came at you, as though it wanted to peel the skin from your bones and unhouse your soul to fly wide and wild with the ever-shrieking gulls. He’d never liked it much or seen much beauty in this rough, forgotten corner of the world. He would never have imagined he would one day want to call it home.

Ahead of him, in a rush of colour, spilling across the pavement, flowers, so many flowers. Spring hues mainly, fiery pink and buttercup yellow interspersed with terracotta pots of purple pansies, their intent little faces turned up in search of sun.

The sign had been repainted too. It gleamed like a smile.

He pushed open the door. The bell was just the same.

Shelley glanced up from some monstrosity she was tending. “Hi.”

“Hi.” It was always better not to ask, but he couldn’t help himself. “What in God’s name is that?”

She contemplated it sombrely. “I call it Woe.”

He flinched from Woe. “That seems about right. How are you, Shelley?”

“I bleed inside for the untrammelled misery of the human condition.” She grinned. “So, basically I’m ducky.”

There was movement from the cold room, and Straighty emerged, his arms full of greenery. “Is there any more of the alstroemeria? Another order came in for the Flowerati Bouquet.”

“That sounds new.”

“It is.” Straighty preened behind his foliage. “One of mine, actually. A scintillating fusion of fashion and floristry that I call…horticouture.”

“I call it the end of days.” Shelley gave a theatrical shudder.

“Is he here?” asked Fen.

Which earned him one of Shelley’s best “who is this stupid arse I see before me” looks. “Course. He’s in the office.”

He made his way upstairs. Someday, probably, he would take the changes for granted. His mother had used this area mainly for storage, he’d lived in it when he didn’t really feel like living at all, and now it was something else. Something Alfie Bell had made and filled with light and his own strangely irresistible sense of order.

A couple of the internal dividing walls had been taken down, opening up the space, although Fen could see down the corridor to what had been his bedroom, and the bathroom where Alfie had once knelt patiently on the tiles and vanquished Fen utterly with his strength and his vulnerability and a little bit of looking quite extraordinarily good with his shirt off. Those muscles. That tattoo. The memory still gave him shivers. And he was suddenly so very glad that Pansies was partly Alfie’s now. For he’d gathered it up, just as he had Fen, cared for it, and reminded it how to flourish.

Except now he was nervous—or not nervous, really, so much as fluttery with longing and excitement. In his head, he swept into the office gloriously, accompanied by a brass band, ready to reclaim his lover after too long away from him. What he actually did was peep hesitantly around the corner. And there he was, Alfie Bell, leaning forward as he sat at his desk, staring intently at not one but two computer screens, his long, knotty-knuckled fingers curled lightly over the mouse.

God. His focus. So steady and sure, as though he could change the world simply because he thought it was worth trying. A study in contradictions, this man—his blunt hands and his thoughtful gaze, the ridiculously gym-honed body he had yielded to Fen’s taking—a rough-backed cockle shell, all tender and shining on the other side.

“Alfie. Oh, Alfie.” Another thing that was definitely not a glorious sweep. It was, in fact, more of a desperate scamper. But it got him into Alfie’s ever-welcoming arms, which was all that mattered.

“Uh. Wow. Fen.” This was when Fen finally stopped hugging him. “Wasn’t expecting you for a while.”

“I left David and his snotty new boyfriend2 to finalise mortgage things with the bank. Because I missed you and I wanted to be with you. We need to celebrate…everything properly, and I’m sick to death of phone calls.”

“I knew you’d get the job.”

“I knew you’d save Pansies.”

“Well”—Alfie squirmed a little goofily—“I’m working on it. And, honestly, it’s good you’re back. I could really do with someone who’ll just make bouquets, y’know? Not expressions of artistic blah blah blah.”

Fen laughed, suddenly self-conscious in the purity and simplicity of his happiness.

“You’ve cut your hair,” Alfie said.

“I felt like another change.”

“I like it.” He reached out and traced Fen’s jaw, the ridge of one cheekbone. “No hiding your hotness.”

Fen felt the heat gathering under his skin, drawn there by words and a touch and Alfie Bell. He shivered a little, exposed, flayed by this gentleness. And, strangely, made fierce by it. He slithered between Alfie and the desk, and perched on the edge, catching Alfie by the collar of the T-shirt and dragged him close.

In this regard, at least, and honestly in a lot of others, Alfie could always be counted on to take a hint. He bossed his way between Fen’s thighs, spreading them wide, and forced him onto his back, right across some papers. Which hopefully weren’t important.

“Fuck me,” was what Fen meant to say, because he was very much in favour of that happening. But what came out was, “Love me.”

Alfie made this deep, rough sound, dropping his head into the curve of Fen’s shoulder. “I do. I do. So much.”

Fen didn’t need to reply because there were kisses, all the kisses, and Alfie’s hands were everywhere, hard and certain, pulling Fen tight against his body, branding him with promises, today, and tomorrow, and every day that followed. And Fen came to him at last like a shipwrecked sailor finding himself safely beached on beloved, familiar shores.

Bonus Material

Enjoy both beloved and brand-new behind-the-scenes material as Alexis Hall takes you on a tour of the world of Pansies, including:

- Alfie Bell’s Hashtag Eggplant Wednesday Lasagne

- Floriography: The Language of Flowers

- Author Annotations

Alfie Bell’s Hashtag Eggplant Wednesday Lasagne

Best way te make this is te do up the sauces first. If you’re proper organised aboot it ye can double up the ingredients and freeze the rest for later.

Tomato Sauce Bit

- 1 tbsp olive oil

- 1 chopped onion

- 1 chopped garlic clove

- 1 chopped carrot

- 1 tbsp tomato puree

- 100 ml white wine

- 1–2 400g cans of chopped tomatoes

- Basil leaves if you got ’em lying around

- Chili flakes if you fancy

- Salt ’n’ pepper

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the onions, garlic, and carrot, and cook till it’s all gone soft like (usually about 5 minutes on medium).

Then add the tomato puree and cook for another minute. Throw in the wine and whack up the heat for aboot 5 minutes more until everything’s reduced doon.

Toss in the tomatoes and the basil and mebbe some chili flakes, if you’re into that. Season te taste. Then bring everything to the boil and leave te simmer for 20 minutes.

Me mam let it cool doon again and then gave it a whizz in the food processor, but we don’t have one yet. And, anyway, Fen prefers it a bit rough. The sauce. I was talking aboot the sauce.

White Sauce Bit

- 45g butter

- 45g plain flour

- 375g milk

- Sometimes I stir in a 250g tub of cottage cheese as well cos Fen really likes it

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Then stir in the flour for aboot 2 minutes. Slowly whisk the milk in and bring to the boil, stirring all the time. Then turn the heat doon again till the sauce has thickened.

Ye can also toss in some parmesan or the cottage cheese if you want it te be cheesier like.

Lasagne Bit

- 3 de-seeded and chopped red peppers

- 2 chopped aubergines

- 3 tbsp olive oil

- 300g fresh pack lasagne sheets

- 125g mozzarella

- Mebbe cheddar

- Salt ’n’ pepper

Heat the oven te 200°C. Grease a baking tray and lay out the peppers and aubergines, covering them with the oil and giving them a good ol’ season. Usually takes about 25 minutes te broon up proper.

When they’re done, turn the oven doon te 180°C and get one of those Pyrex oven dish things. Put a splash of oil in and do a layer of veg along the bottom like. Pour over a third of the tomato sauce, then a layer of lasagne, then aboot a quarter of the white sauce.

Do that until you’ve got three layers of pasta.

Use the rest of the white sauce te cover the top up. Scatter the mozzarella and mebbe some cheddar as well. Then stick it back in the oven and let it cook for aboot 45 minutes or till it’s proper golden and bubbly.

Note: Ye can add extra vegetables to the aubergines. Courgettes are alreet and mushrooms. But it’d be better all-round if ye just used meat like.

Floriography: The Language of Flowers

By all the token-flowers that tell

What words can never speak so well…

—Lord Byron, “Maid of Athens, Ere We Part”

Years ago, flowers and their hidden meanings were used to share messages between lovers, friends, or rivals. A bouquet of bellflower, fern, and ivy spoke of undying friendship, while a nosegay of larch and snapdragon could cut an impudent suitor off at the knees. While there’s no one true agreed-upon meaning for all flowers, in 1819 Charlotte de la Tour published a book titled Le Langage des Fleurs that historians agree was the first entirely devoted to this secret language.

A

Angelica: Inspiration

Ash: Grandeur

Azalea: Temperence

B

Bellflower: Constance

Bladder-nut: Amusement

Bramble: Envy

C

Cabbage: Profit

Centaurea: Delicacy

Clematis: Artifice

Columbine: Folly

D

Daisy: Innocence

Dandelion: Oracle

Daphne: Coquettery

E

Endive: Frugality

F

Fennel: Force

Fern: Sincerity

Foxglove: Insincerity

G

Gillyflower: Lasting beauty

Good King Henry: Goodness

Grass, quaking: Frivolity

H

Hawthorn: Hope

Holly: Foresight

Honeysuckle: Bond of love

I

Iris: Flame

Ivy: Friendship

J

Jasmine: Amiableness

Jonquil: Desire

Juniper: Succour

L

Larch: Audacity

Larkspur: Levity

Laurel: Glory

M

Mandrake: Rarity

Marigold: Chagrin

Moss: Maternal love

N

Narcissus: Egotism

Nettle: Cruelty

O

Oak: Hospitality

Olive: Peace

Orange flowers: Chastity

P

Pelargonium: Preference

Peony: Shame

Pimpernel: Rendezvous

R

Reeds: Music

Rose: Beauty

Rosemary: Revival

S

Sage: Esteem

Snapdragon: Presumption

Snowdrop: Consolation

T

Thistle: Austerity

Thrift: Sympathy

Thyme: Activity

V

Venus’s Looking-Glass: Flattery

Vervain: Enchantment

Violet: Modesty

W

Waterlily: Eloquence

Wheat: Riches

Wormwood: Absence

Author Annotations

Discover what Alexis Hall was thinking while writing Pansies.

Prologue

1. Paragraph begins with: When they were together…

Alexis: People who are born in South Shields are actually known as sand dancers. (Geordies are from Newcastle, Mackems come from Sunderland.)

Nobody really knows the exact origin of the phrase. Possibly the least problematic dates back to accounts from the 1850s of the locals dancing in the sand as they rushed to help ships that had run aground. Alternatively, it could be an oblique reference to the history of smuggling in South Shields. Orrr…um. It’s kind of maybe a former racial slur? A large number of people from Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, as well as other Arabic and South Asian countries moved to South Shields during the nineteenth century; erroneously assuming all these people hailed from desert regions, they were referred to as “sand dancers,” although the term is now proudly used by anyone hailing from South Shields.

2. Paragraph begins with: She thought about it a moment.

Alexis: Sheesh, I really did nail my colours to the “an HEA doesn’t have to be marriage” mast a long time ago. Although I do feel it’s important that this rule applies to straight people as well as queer folks.

But I think with Pansies, I specifically wanted a nonmarried heterosexual couple and for the legal implications of that to not go unrecognised; and for a queer couple to choose marriage with the same freedom that Fen’s parents choose not-marriage.

Chapter One

1. Paragraph begins with: “An’ wharraboot ye, pet?”

Alexis: Representing regionality is, of course, very important to me, but there’s always a balance to be struck in how to capture dialect phonetically. I know I sometimes go the whole hog, like with Darian’s Essex-flavoured dialogue in Glitterland, but I think Geordie (the accent of the North East) is potentially less accessible and somewhat more caricatured than Essex. It’s one of those accents that’s notoriously difficult to “do” unless you yourself hail from the north.

In the end, I decided to capture a flavour of Geordie in the rhythms of Fen and Alfie’s speech rather than attempting to fully render a Geordie accent over, you know, however many hundred pages of book. But in compensation, here is Great Aunt Sheila, right at the beginning of the book, being as Geordie as balls.

2. Paragraph begins with: Great Aunt Sheila rolled her eyes.

Alexis: Oh God, another book about marriage, expectations, and trying to live authentically as a queer person in a heteronormative world. Looks like I continue to be not done with this story.

In terms of this wedding, though, I very much didn’t want Great Aunt Sheila to go down the expected gently queerphobic route of believing Alfie should be married because he’s straight. Instead I wanted to confront him with the idea that being queer isn’t a get-out-of-heteronormativity-free card.

3. Paragraph begins with: The centrepiece of the whole arrangement…

Alexis: There is nothing in the world more sophisticated, or less pleasant to eat, than a cheese and pineapple hedgehog.

4. Paragraph begins with: “I dunno, man.”

Alexis: I’m pretty sure there are northerners of certain generations who genuinely believe this is what happens if you go down south: your lose your accent and then you turn gay.

5. Paragraph begins with: “I just meant,” Kevin was saying…

Alexis: I think friendship over time can be incredibly complicated. Like, there are some people who, for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter how much distance or however many years stand between you, you can still pick up the threads as though no time has passed at all.

With people linked to specific times and places in your life, it can be much more difficult. I think with Kevin here, Alfie assumes the fact he’s gay is what’s playing into a sense of disconnection between them. But actually, it’s more that Alfie has left home, built a different life, and come to understand himself very differently (including wanting to talk about his feelings. Gasp).

6. Paragraph begins with: If his hands hadn’t been full…

Alexis: I think this is another really difficult dynamic—given quite a lot of straight men (of all generations) will talk queerphobically in ways that are genuinely not intended to be either queerphobic or hurtful. Except intent is not impact, and feeling your friendship is dependent on you accepting language or “jokes” that are generally not deployed in safe contexts is messy and unbalancing—like you’re paying an emotional queer tax.

And so we get Alfie, who desperately wants to retain this friendship and the link to where he came from that it represents, unable to tell Kev he’s making him uncomfortable. Obliged instead to rationalise and then join in.

7. Paragraph begins with: Lisa—he was pretty sure she was called Lisa…

Alexis: For the record, I’m not sure if Kev would think that. Clearly, they have a friendship built on liking the same things and affectionately running each other down, but I also think Alfie feels so fractured by the collision of all the men he is and wants to be, his past and his future, his queerness and his understanding of masculinity, that he’s just seeing everything through a prism of “does this come across as gay?” Which is understandable but silly, and slightly unfair to the people around him.

8. Paragraph begins with: Which left Alfie trying to remember who he used to be. “What is she,” he managed, “a mental case?”

Alexis: I’m aware that this is not, you know, the sort of language one should be casually using; but, the fact of the matter is, it’s the sort of language Alfie would use. He’s a bluntly spoken northern man, for all he’s trying to do “better” (whatever that means).

9. Paragraph begins with: God, he really was a soft southern ponce.

Alexis: Facts, Alfie. A proper northerner does not feel the cold. Like ever.

10. Paragraph begins with: He wandered down to the beach.

Alexis: I love writing about place, about the specificity of places in particular. You could go to South Shields and find this exact spot. See the red groyne lighthouse. And North Shields shining across the bay.

11. Paragraph begins with: His TVR Sagaris was tucked into one of the bays.

Alexis: Well. Here’s one of those little moments where a book shows its age. I think Alfie could probably have been able to get his hands on one of these for about £35k in the mid-2010s, but you’d be looking at more like £70k in 2023.

As is probably evident from the love Alfie’s Sagaris gets in the book, I had a lot of fun choosing a car for him. I mean, he’s the sort of man who’d want an amazing car, but also he’s well off rather than super rich. I knew he’d want a sports car, probably a British-made one, so that left Jaguar or TVR in his price range. I personally, and I believe Alfie would agree with me here, cannot be doing with modern Jaguars: it’s classic E-type or bust.

So that left TVR, a company with a reputation for making deeply charismatic but unreliable cars. The Sagaris, though, was kind of their masterpiece: being both utterly wild (just look at the design of it with the gills down the wheel arches and side exit exhausts) but also surprisingly functional. I mean, as long as you don’t expect airbags or traction control. Sadly, it was also the last car they ever made, with the company closing down their factory in Blackpool in 2006.

The TVR Sagaris is also banned in the United States for being too fast, too daft, and too unsafe.

Perfect car for Alfie, I feel.

12. Paragraph begins with: As he drove by the Rattler…

Alexis: There’s still a pub here, but it’s called Platform 33 these days.

13. Paragraph begins with: Another glance: he was drinking rosé.

Alexis: Poor Alfie. The “Is this person of compatible sexuality?” dance is the worst. Especially because you have to dance it at the same time as the “Is this person interested in me full stop?” dance.

14. Paragraph begins with: The man started and turned.

Alexis: Fen is so ahead of his time. I’m pretty sure that, when I wrote this, glasses like these weren’t in like they are now.

15. Paragraph begins with: Over the years, Alfie had got pretty good…

Alexis: I’ve never had this experience myself, but I had a friend at university who was (presumably still is) built like Alfie—notably tall and broad and muscular—and it was kind of startling how many other men would take that as a kind of challenge. I mean, personally, whenever I see a massive bloke walking down the street, I don’t immediately think, “That’s an ideal person to shoulder-bash in a display of ill-advised machismo.” In terms of Alfie, though, I think this is another clash of masculinity/queerness that he doesn’t know how to navigate—in the sense that he’s used to his masculinity being legible to others, and even comfortable with it, good at de-escalating when he needs to. When it comes to his queerness, however, the idea that this is something that can be—err, forgive the loaded word—potentially penetrated by strangers, and may change how they perceive him and relate to him, feels violating and vulnerable-making to him.

16. Paragraph begins with: It was probably good advice.

Alexis: I cringe for Alfie here. Like, this feels like some kind of queer nightmare scenario where you come onto someone extremely gently and they react in visceral disgust. Of course, there’s a lot more going on than that in this particular scene, but Alfie is still seeing everything through the lens of his own queerness.

Chapter Two

1. Paragraph begins with: It all made him feel a bit weird.

Alexis: Alfie is not the most un-oblivious during this encounter. But I think he’s too vulnerable and overwhelmed to really be capable of dealing with either his own emotions or Fen’s.

2. Paragraph begins with: But when Alfie tried to drag him out of his fraying pink jumper…

Alexis: I know I’ve said this before, but the thing that continually brings me back to deep POV (whether it’s first or third person) is the way you can explore the gap between the perspective of the character and the broader perspective of the reader. Of course, here the reader doesn’t know precisely what’s going on with Fen either, but I think it’s pretty clear that something is going on. So I wanted to make sure that, re-reading with that greater understanding, Fen’s actions and reactions do feel more coherent. Like, it’s clearly a somewhat self-destructive impulse on Fen’s part, although the desire he experiences (to be close to someone, to feel someone, to be with Alfie specifically) is quite real. I think there’s also moments where he doesn’t fully believe it’s happening or that Alfie doesn’t recognise him: I think he hesitates here, for example, because getting naked with someone can be so terribly vulnerable and he suddenly thinks it could be a trick.

3. Paragraph begins with: He was too. Beautiful, if you were allowed to say that about a man.

Alexis: I think it says such a lot about Alfie’s headspace that he’s still thinking in terms of what’s “allowed” when it comes to his sexuality and relating intimately with other men.

4. Paragraph begins with: Fen went rigid and then his hips pressed forward…

Alexis: With Pansies, I kind of wanted to write a story about, you know, coming to terms with identity but in a sort of…post coming-out way, if that makes sense? Because the reality is that coming out isn’t a door you walk through and rainbows and queerness await on the other side. It’s something you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. And while I didn’t necessarily want to write a story about internalised queerphobia, I did want to explore someone grappling with discomfort.

Identity can (and perhaps should?) be mutable; we change as our contexts change, as the world changes, as our understandings of ourselves change. That is certainly not always easy. Just like it isn’t easy for Alfie, in this moment, to suck Fen’s cock. To deal with the truth of wanting to, and what that means for someone like Alfie, who grew up with a certain set of assumptions.

5. Paragraph begins with: Out of nowhere, Fen laughed.

Alexis: I think the other thing about this scene is that neither of the characters is fully aware of how the other perceives the power dynamics in play. Like Fen is in a messed-up place, terribly lonely, and carrying all these complex feelings about Alfie. And Alfie is in a different messed-up place, fighting desperately to come to terms with his queerness and how to be okay with it. So they both feel lost and disempowered, and are differently scared the other is going to take advantage (or is taking advantage) in some way.

6. Paragraph begins with: Fen took his hands away from his face…

Alexis: Something that low-key infuriates me (if one can be low-key infuriated) is when a non-bespectacled person is getting hot and heavy with a bespectacled person in a romance and they, like, take their glasses off for them. This is such a hard no for me, and for nearly everyone I know who wears glasses. Like, don’t go taking away people’s sight without consent. That is not fucking sexy. That’s just rude.

And, of course, nobody wants their glasses to slide off their nose in a torrent of sweat during a significant moment, but, like, unless you’re getting notably acrobatic, you can bang just fine with glasses on. I really don’t understand all these fictional people who whip their glasses off the second they get through the bedroom door. Don’t they want to see what’s happening?

7. Paragraph begins with: “H-hold my hands.”

Alexis: I don’t think Alfie and Fen ever realise just how much of their needs and vulnerabilities they express to each other without meaning to in this scene. When Alfie says he’s not particularly kinky, I think that’s, in a strictly literal sense, true. But I’m also on record, on record to the point of tedium, insisting that sex is about context and meaning, more than it’s about acts performed. For Alfie, expressing his queerness with another man he truly desires is always going to feel wild and special and intense and intimate to him—which is basically what he’s communicating when he goes down on Fen. For Fen, in this moment, he just wants to feel safe enough to be weak in the enormity of his grief.

8. Paragraph begins with: He tried desperately to think of what to say.

Alexis: Is there some kind of prize for worst pillow talk? Because Alfie should be in the running.

Chapter Three

1. Paragraph begins with: “Yeah, you don’t think I had enough shit to deal with…”

Alexis: So many interesting etymologies for Fenimore, both in Ireland and the UK. From the old French and Latin, fin amour, or the Irish fionamúr—meaning, you know, dear/fine love. But then there’s also the Anglo-Saxon village of Fennymere: mere being lake or pool, and fenny derived either from fīna (meaning woodpecker) or, less attractively, fyne (meaning mouldy).

2. Paragraph begins with: “Howay,” he said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Alexis: There’s quite a bit of controversy when it comes to the spelling of haway (or ha’way) versus howay (or ho’way). Some claim haway is the Newcastle variant, and howay from Sunderland, and as a general rule, they tend to be used interchangeably.

But Brockett’s Glossary of North Country Words in Use (published in 1825) contains an entry for both words: had away/haud away (meaning “go away” or “hold on your way,” supposed to be encouraging) and how’way (meaning “come away,” a term of solicitation).

Howay definitely tends to sound softer to me: haway carries a touch of impatience or aggression. Howay is softer, more conciliatory: like you’re saying, “oh come on,” rather than “for fuck’s sake.”

3. Paragraph begins with: Fen’s expression would have made…

Alexis: I have much less etymology behind Alfie’s name.

It’s just Alfie (from Alfred) and Bell are incredibly common, solid-sounding, working-class northern names.

I’ve basically called the poor man Northy McNorthface.

4. Paragraph begins with: But Fen didn’t give an inch.

Alexis: Moon snails are actually fairly terrifying—I mean, if you’re a clam. But they’re also the tiny, distinctively whorled shells I remember vividly from childhood.

In any case, this is the first example of what my assistant Mary and I now call a snail line—in this case because it literally refers to a snail. Essentially what happened was that I had got a bit stuck on the right description (wanting something specific to the North East, but also in keeping with the general imagery of Pansies as a whole, connected to either flowers or the sea), so I did what I assume most writers do in that circumstance—which is get on with the book (and their lives) and hope it’ll come to them later.

It did, in fact, come to me later—but just as I was drifting off to sleep. I know from bitter experience that what one thinks before sleep will not remain until morning, so I decided to make myself a quick note on my phone. Half-conscious, I thought I was messaging myself, but I accidentally messaged Mary instead, saying something like “Remember this line: beautiful and as breakable as moon snail shells.”

Woke up the next morning to find a confused but ever-diligent Mary had sent me a little picture of a snail with the line written next to it. So now whenever a line comes to me and I’m not in a position to get to my manuscript, I message Mary and she writes down the line for me, alongside a picture of a snail. We therefore call these lines snail lines.

5. Paragraph begins with: His hands tingled suddenly.

Alexis: Even at the time of writing, I was conscious of how complex all this was. I mean, the idea that bullies target queer folks because they’re queer themselves is incredibly messy since it sort of makes queerphobia the problem of queer people.

But, at the same time, even with Alfie either being heavily in denial or completely oblivious when he was growing up, it would have been a headfuck and a half to see how Fen was treated by his classmates. On Alfie’s part, I don’t think it’s as simple as, you know, bullying Fen as an act of self-rejection, but I do think he was acting in fear of social rejection—a fear that continues to influence his behaviour even at the point the book begins and somewhat throughout it.

More to the point, I think Alfie isn’t completely bullshitting when he attempts to downplay what he’s done. I think very few people who have engaged in bullying behaviour fully recognise it.

6. Paragraph begins with: He was too hot, then too cold.

Alexis: This is so true, it hurts. The water is better up north.

7. Paragraph begins with: He left the bathroom, couldn’t face the bed again…

Alexis: The lights of North Shields are (unintentionally) hilariously Gatsby-ish. Especially because North Shields is a bit fancier than South Shields.

8. Paragraph begins with: That was when he remembered: Fen’s mother…

Alexis: I think the Nook is still known as the Nook even now. This is the sort of detail I love—like when places acquire a history that is almost unintelligible unless you’re already in the know.

9. Paragraph begins with: His mam used to go there every Saturday…

Alexis: Mam, rather than mum, is another north/south divide thing.

10. Paragraph begins with: The Prince Edward roundabout had always been…

Alexis: Still there, last time I checked. Same sign too.

11. Paragraph begins with: Most things were pretty much as they’d been…

Alexis: I don’t know about all this, though. I hope some of these things remain. Especially Munchies.

Chapter Four

1. Paragraph begins with: Dear Mum…

Alexis: Given the complex emotional dynamics between Alfie and Fen, and their shared history, and the fact Fen isn’t always honest and Alfie isn’t always perceptive, it felt important to offer a bit more of Fen’s perspective than I sometimes do. I knew I didn’t want to go full dual narration, so this seemed a good compromise.

Chapter Five

1. Paragraph begins with: J.D. Jarndyce (formerly Jarndyce & Dance) paid him enough that he didn’t have to care.

Alexis: The love interest in Chasing the Light is Leo Dance, the son of the Dance who parted ways somewhat mysteriously with his professional partner Jarndyce, as referenced here.

2. Paragraph begins with: “Yorkshire, Manchester, same difference.”

Alexis: The thing about Alfie Bell? I think he has a type, and a bit more directly than a lot of my characters, who just fall in love where they fall in love. I think Alfie, as well as being gay, is very attracted to queerness. Like as a feeling, as an aesthetic, as an identity: he seems to be drawn to people who have a certain boldness when it comes to self-expression. Maybe because he’s so self-conscious about his own queerness.

3. Paragraph begins with: “And,” finished Alfie decidedly, “they do egg and chips for £4.99.”

Alexis: With inflation, egg and chips is probably more like £8.99 now. But this is still the perfect pub.

4. Paragraph begins with: “Oh, what’s that?”

Alexis: I bet Greg is the sort of person who, if you order chips, says he isn’t hungry and then eats loads of them when they arrive.

5. Paragraph begins with: “I’m not,” he protested.

Alexis: A friend of mine related doing something similar once by accident and was guilt-wracked for weeks. I am more on the Alfie scale of ill deeds (not, I hasten to add, that I ever bullied anyone at school).

6. Paragraph begins with: “God.” Alfie tried to get to his feet…

Alexis: Obviously one of the complicated things about writing a character who has never had to think about things like identity before is that they’re sometimes going to come out with ridiculous shit. I hope part of Alfie’s journey across the book involves breaking down ideas like this—i.e., that there are straight things and gay things. I mean, I think it can be complicated to aspire to things that are idealised in a heteronormative context…but, also, it doesn’t have to be. It’s okay to want a life partner, just like it’s okay to want to be ravaged by six or seven incredibly gay fireman.

I also think Greg is both a good and a bad first boyfriend for Alfie. Good, because he’s a sweet if occasionally shallow man. But not so great because he’s so comfortable in himself that he asks as few questions about queerness as Alfie has previously asked about straightness. He’s not taking Alfie all that seriously here, for example. Or, if he is, he’s offering the wrong kind of reassurance and not really interrogating wtf Alfie thinks he’s on about.

7. Paragraph begins with: It was not a good time for Greg to roll his eyes.

Alexis: I also think part of the reason Greg is fucking this up (not that Alfie should really be slut-shaming him in reaction) is the fact he feels a lot more for Alfie than he’s letting on or even willing to admit to himself. Greg definitely is the horny little bunny he claims to be, but there’s an extent to which he uses promiscuity as a defence mechanism. He feels safer in shallowness. Someone should probably write a book about him where he deals with that.

Chapter Six

1. Paragraph begins with: He was trying not to think.

Alexis: I normally try to avoid runs of sentences like this, because it can be repetitive to read, but Alfie is slightly more straight-talking than a lot of my narrators, and so there are times when I deliberately allow a little clumsiness into the style. And, yes, I know it’s technically third person, but the narrative voice is still meant to be reflective of Alfie.

2. Paragraph begins with: “And you don’t think,” Greg asked predictably…

Alexis: I know that “how to live an authentically queer life within an inescapably heteronormative context” is a theme I keep returning to, but I kind of think both Greg and Alfie are right here. I think, in their own ways, they’re equally trapped by heteronormativity: Greg in opposition to it, even though that opposition doesn’t always make him happy, Alfie because he wants certain things that feel as though they belong to it.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Will you stop with the ‘everything is arbitrary’ shit?”

Alexis: I think this is another of The Many Contradictions of Alfie Bell in that he’s, secretly, quite an educated bloke. I mean, he’s not great at articulating his emotions, nor the most perceptive when it comes to people (sometimes), but he doesn’t lack for smarts. It’s just he comes from a culture where his kind of more abstract smarts would be regarded with suspicion and seen as potentially unmanly.

4. Paragraph begins with: That’s kind of a weird question…

Alexis: #relatablecontent

5. Paragraph begins with: “It felt like more than that.”

Alexis: I think there’s a lot of confusion going on in Alfie’s drunken head right now—but there’s a kind of understanding that only someone from the same place you are (place in the broad sense, not just the geographical one) can give you. Probably it’s not fair for Alfie to be looking for that from Fen, given their history. But the truth is, in his own way, Fen needs the same thing.

Chapter Seven

1. Paragraph begins with: I walked through the promenades at Little Haven today.

Alexis: These are definitely still there. And still ghostly in winter.

2. Paragraph begins with: I used to imagine, sometimes, smoking with him.

Alexis: Old Hollywood movies have such a lot to answer for. I will never not find this sexy either, even though you’re essentially being like, “Let me give you some death stick, darling.”

3. Paragraph begins with: I’ll never see him again.

Alexis: I know I’ve already discussed wanting to be able to give the reader glimpses of Fen’s POV, but it’s this sort of thing that feels vital, given how far apart Fen and Alfie start in terms of their understanding of themselves and their understanding of each other. I mean, Alfie sees the, err, plant juice incident as hostility, but for Fen it was desperation. Obviously I don’t condone violence as a general rule, but I do think sometimes we lash out in fear and weakness, not as a means to hurt or dominate.

4. Paragraph begins with: The truth is, I never expected to see Alfie Bell again.

Alexis: For those who enjoy Spires connection hunting, David is Niall’s new boyfriend. We meet him briefly in Glitterland, and we’ll get to see Niall absolutely ruin everything in Fool’s Gold.

Chapter Eight

1. Paragraph begins with: Half an hour later, Alfie was flinging a suitcase…

Alexis: There are few things as beautiful as the ugliness of a place that feels like home.

2. Paragraph begins with: From there, it wasn’t far.

Alexis: I’ve long since felt that a place has truly become home when a stranger asks you for directions and you find yourself saying something like, “Go past where Debenham’s used to be and then turn left by the pub that’s taken over from The Grapes” without recognising how utterly useless that is.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Ah reet.” Fen’s customer folded his arms and glared at him.

Alexis: If you’d like a bit more insight into the development of the Geordie accent and dialect, you could do worse than a YouTube performance of “The Lambton Wyrm,” a folk song of specifically North Eastern origin.

As the name suggests, it’s about a wyrm (dragon) that a minor local lord called Lambton fished up in Weir and then threw in a well. The wyrm grew and grew down there, until it eventually emerged to consume vast quantities of cattle and children, and curl itself up on Penshaw Hill. There’s a folly up there in commemoration of John Lambton (the one who fished up the wyrm in the song) that was actually built in the mid-nineteenth century, but I was always told it was where the wyrm had lived. Anyway, the fictional John Lambton eventually comes back from the Crusades and cuts the wyrm into pieces before it can scoff any more locals, and everyone is very happy about it.

There’s also one of the worst movies that probably exists loosely inspired by this story, The Lair of the White Worm, starring a very young Hugh Grant and an equally young Peter Capaldi.

Anyway, some highlights from the original folk song:

One Sunday morn young Lambton went

A-fishing’ in the Wear;

An’ catched a fish upon he’s heuk,

He thowt leuk’t varry queer.

But whatt’n a kind of fish it was

Young Lambton cuddent tell.

He waddn’t fash te carry’d hyem,

So he hoyed it doon a well.

Chorus:

Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,

An Aa’ll tell ye’s aall an aaful story

Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,

An’ Aa’ll tell ye ’boot the worm.

What I kind of love about this is that the chorus is the basically the singer having to tell the audience to STFU, which strikes me as on brand for this part of the world. “Haad yor gobs” is basically hold your mouths—i.e., be quiet a minute.

But it’s also just full of regionality that only exists in the North East. I’ll talk about hyem later, but fash basically means he couldn’t be bothered and hoyed is a very specific Geordie word for “throw.” You’ve also got aaful for “awful,” which represents the phonetic differences between the hard a’s of the north and the softer sounds of the south. Bah, even the sounds doon there are soft.

4. Paragraph begins with: “You know tulips wilt like motherfuckers?”

Alexis: I added this line to the new edition just to indicate that Alfie hasn’t swanned in like some magical saviour of floristry here. I hope it’s kind of noticeable that Fen pairs the tulips with irises, which are a lot less likely to flop around like moody teenagers the second you get them in a glass (also tulips and irises look gorgeous together).

5. Paragraph begins with: Something darkened Fen’s eyes for a moment…

Alexis: Whether Alfie can or should be forgiven for his previous actions is not exactly a simple question. I don’t think he’s wrong that he’s changed, that he didn’t quite realise the extent of his actions, and that he sincerely wants to apologise/make amends (independent of his desires). But I think part of that journey had to be a true understanding of the impact he’s had, and personally, I feel he gets there here. Though I have tweaked the language in the re-release to emphasise that.

Honestly, I’ve done slightly more tweaking and polishing with Pansies than I have the previous Spires books. One of the difficult things about Alfie’s voice is that he’s intended to be a bit rough around the edges, but the reality is, this was my most ambitious book at the time of writing, and I was also a bit rough around the edges. I hope, having got a bit more experience of this whole writing gig under my belt, I’ve been able to stay true to Alfie’s perspective but offer a bit more emotional clarity on some of the trickier issues of the story.

6. Paragraph begins with: He needn’t have worried, though.

Alexis: This story makes me gah. It’s not true, exactly. But I used to walk through a graveyard in Oxford on my way to one of my jobs (I mean, as a shortcut I took respectfully, I wasn’t just gothing-out), and I started to notice that there was a grave there, quite an old one, that usually had a single orange gerbera daisy in a holder by the headstone. It always looked so wildly bright amidst the green and grey. Needless to say, I grew curious about who it was for, and then I discovered the grave was for an Air Force captain—beloved son and husband—who died in 1944. I don’t know who was leaving the daisy, maybe a friend, maybe family, maybe even a stranger, but there was just so much time between then and now, and still such loss felt, that it fucking broke my heart. Obviously the story that made its way into Pansies is made up, bar a detail or two, but I’ve never forgotten the daisy. And maybe it, y’know, blooms in these pages too. For all remembered love.

7. Paragraph begins with: “Oh. Uh. That’s harsh.”

Alexis: I honestly think sadness is the hardest emotion. Rightly or wrongly (probably wrongly), anger feels active and consequently empowering. Sadness is just shit.

8. Paragraph begins with: He’d felt the same way as a kid…

Alexis: This is another one of those complex ideas that found their way into Pansies. Because, God knows, I under no circumstances support physically punishing kids. But it’s also a reality of some (emphasis very much on some) types of working-class upbringing, and I wanted to represent that fairly here, without it necessarily being a big deal for Alfie.

9. Paragraph begins with: He hadn’t even been resentful at the time.

Alexis: I do think, however, this is a world view Alfie needs to move beyond. And it’s one he’ll meet the limitations of in this very scene. I deeply understand his need to have things be neat and simple and fixable. But the reality is that life is complicated, and people are complicated, and he has to find ways of coping with that—even embracing it—over this very black-and-white perspective he’s been raised to assume is the default state of the world.

10. Paragraph begins with: “I…I can’t,” Fen whispered.

Alexis: I hope it’s pretty obvious that this is the right outcome here. Like, Alfie needs to face up to the fact that he can’t just fix the past with a single gesture or display of manly resilience. And Fen, for all he’s incredibly messed up right now, at least recognises that retribution is not actually giving him what he needs.

Obviously, Alfie was young and daft and scared, and didn’t fully understand what he was doing, but he was flatly in the wrong and he can’t change that. In the same way that Fen forgiving or not forgiving Alfie can’t change anything either.

They can only move on, either together or apart.

11. Paragraph begins with: No answer from Fen.

Alexis: I will just say floristry is murder on the hands.

But I also think it’s sort of reflective of Alfie and Fen’s relationship, and the people they are, that Fen is this somewhat femme-leaning queer type who does manual work, so his hands are rough. While Alfie thinks of himself as a manly man, but he does a city a job and has hands to match.

12. Paragraph begins with: “It’s fine,” he declared with great authority…

Alexis: Apparently Alfie has learned less by nearly having his head stuck down the toilet than he perhaps should have: he’s still trying to fix things.

Chapter Nine

1. Paragraph begins with: Eventually, he headed back to the town centre…

Alexis: I think I write a lot about places in my work, but I usually default to the beautiful: the rolling English countryside or Oxford with all her spires and gold. Because of this, it felt important to pay the same amount of attention to South Shields, which has its own kind of loveliness, even if it’s a loveliness coupled with loss. Loss of its industry. Loss of its future. It’s honestly kind of the ideal setting for a book about grief.

2. Paragraph begins with: Later, he sat in his car…

Alexis: When I wrote this book, the Raj was still there. Now it is not. This makes me intensely sad.

3. Paragraph begins with: Before he’d got his car…

Alexis: Some of these places have gone, others have come. But Greggs will always sell you a disproportionately sized Belgian bun.

4. Paragraph begins with: “So? I’m retro.”

Alexis: She was retro when I wrote this. Now she’s either fossilised or in again.

5. Paragraph begins with: “It’s fine, it’s not a crime.”

Alexis: I don’t care how old this book is, Trent Reznor in opera gloves will never not be a whole mood.

6. Paragraph begins with: Gothshelley gazed at him and then shook her head sadly.

Alexis: This remains some weapons-grade trolling.

7. Paragraph begins with: When the bucket was about a quarter full…

Alexis: I couldn’t tell you if I identify more deeply with Luc trying to clean his flat or Alfie Bell trying to do this: maybe it’s a both situation?

8. Paragraph begins with: And then a jet of cold water hit him right in the face.

Alexis: It’s been a while since I’ve read this and the level of fucking up Alfie perpetrates on Fen’s innocent bathroom genuinely took me by surprise. Like, this is impressively disastrous.

9. Paragraph begins with: “Yeah, I’m in town at the moment.”

Alexis: I think this probably tells you everything about Alfie’s dad. Like, he may have made some questionable parenting choices when his kids were younger, and he may not understand Alfie’s sexuality, but when you have a practical problem he will be there without question, without hesitation. It’s how a lot of working-class British fathers express love, though obviously it’s not without its problems.

10. Paragraph begins with: There was a familiar pink jumper…

Alexis: So, obviously C.S. Lewis is a complicated figure, especially as regards queerness—although he did have something of a habit of forming very emotionally intimate relationships with queer men. His work and his perspectives are pretty inextricable from his Christianity, and I’ve read things that suggest A Grief Observed was a heavily fictionalised account of his real bereavement (rather than a direct expression of that experience). But when it comes to emotions as intricate as grief, I think it’s very hard to track where narrative begins and emotion ends. The fact is, to this day, I find A Grief Observed rather marvellous. Irrespective of how meaningful you find Lewis’s wrangling with God—I personally find his doubt more convincing than his faith, but that probably says more about me than about either Lewis or faith—the grief feels terribly true. And I have always appreciated that the book ends, in a way, slightly arbitrarily (Lewis has run out of notebooks)—not necessarily with a greater understanding of grief, which is unfathomable, but with an acceptance of grief itself.

11. Paragraph begins with: His parents used to have a record player.

Alexis: I am usually a person who favours convenience over sentiment. I prefer ebooks to hard copy, for example. But I was raised with vinyl and—embarrassed though I am to admit it—I get sentimental for vinyl. For me, the inconvenience in this context brings something to music, and how we listen to music, that we should be wary of losing. And now I hate myself a little bit.

12. Paragraph begins with: “I’m complicated.”

Alexis: Honestly, I think this is not so very complicated; it’s just Fen isn’t ready to be completely forthcoming with Alfie yet. But, knowing Alfie’s background, I think Fen instinctively understands (even before Alfie admits as much) how difficult it must have been for him to come to terms with being gay and to come out to his family. And so Fen recognises that reaching out to his dad for help must not have been straightforward for Alfie. Yes, it’s another gesture, but it’s a real one, demonstrating Alfie is willing to put Fen’s well-being over his own comfort.

13. Paragraph begins with: Fen just stared at him, expression unreadable.

Alexis: It felt important to me that Fen was gentle here, even in spite of all the tense and messy things between him and Alfie. I think there can be this sense that “out and proud” (or whatever) is the natural culmination of a journey into comfortable queerness, which it can certainly be for some people, but I also believe we should be wary of positioning anything as the single, or right, way to be queer. And shaming people for their shame is, you know, the opposite of helpful.

Chapter Ten

1. Paragraph begins with: “Yeah, all right.”

Alexis: To be fair to Alfie, it’s a good idea to do this in general if you drive a Sagaris because the door release button is under the wing mirrors, and this is bananas, delightful, and confusing for nearly everyone.

2. Paragraph begins with: “Doing this to me.”

Alexis: I can’t lie, there’s an element of very direct fantasy fulfillment going on in Alfie Bell for me (and for Fen as well). Essentially, in writing him, I wanted to take all the particular qualities I feel are inherently northern and celebrate them in a queer context.

3. Paragraph begins with: He whirled round, pale with outrage.

Alexis: Sooo…I was kind of trying to explore a bunch of different things with Alfie. Part of it is as straightforward as him trying to find his place within various paradigms. I mean, it goes without saying, I hope, that he should not be slapping anyone’s arse casually, irrespective of their gender identity. But I think, in moments like these, he’s trying to reorientate himself in a dynamic that he always understood (erroneously, I hasten to add) to be defined by gender. Like, Alfie has his ways of loving and his ways of wanting to be loved. It’s important to him to feel like a caretaker, and that’s no bad thing, but he needs to let go of the idea that this makes him “the man.”

4. Paragraph begins with: “I can’t tell if it’s hot or annoying…”

Alexis: Alfie has a lot of traditional views, some he needs to let go of, but I don’t think he’s wrong here.

5. Paragraph begins with: “Any friend of Alfie Bell’s.”

Alexis: Something I tried to do consistently throughout Pansies is demonstrate to Alfie (and to the reader) that his very narrow view of South Shields (like many of his other narrow views) would benefit from a more flexible perspective. Like, yes, it’s a small-ish community… yes, the town is long past its glory days… yes, there are people who may be old-fashioned, ignorant, uncertain, or flatly queerphobic…but, actually, there’s a lot of care and acceptance to be found as well.

6. Paragraph begins with: Fen didn’t seem impressed by this line of reasoning.

Alexis: Fen is being deliberately pissy and obscurantist here. Like there are less dickish ways to express this idea. But I share his frustration. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool if you don’t like musicals. But there is a special circle of hell reserved for people who trot out the old “it’s just not realistic, man” chestnut. Very few genres of fiction take realism as their primary goal; we only get sneery about it when it’s a genre we don’t like.

7. Paragraph begins with: “Oh man, they hate that down south…”

Alexis: This is absolutely true. The south has spent centuries exploiting the north, but will they share a plate of chips, will they bollocks.

8. Paragraph begins with: “No, but”—Alfie finished the last swallow…

Alexis: Alfie isn’t articulating himself very well here, but I don’t think he’s way off base. He’s kind of a work-to-live person, which is probably an odd choice if you go into investment banking. But at the same time he does have this strong need to take care of people, and I think it makes him feel safe to have a job that will let him do that: it’s this one stabilising idea for him when everything else seems to be shifting. On top of which I think he does like knowing he’s got a place in the world and things he’s demonstrably good at (since he isn’t good at the same things his family are).

Chapter Eleven

1. Paragraph begins with: “What’s wrong, pet?”

Alexis: I think this is such an important moment for Alfie because this is explicitly his mother’s language, and he uses it without self-consciousness—essentially opening up avenues of caring for others that are not defined by either his father or his understanding of his gender.

2. Paragraph begins with: “N-nothing.” Fen was still leaning away…

Alexis: This scene was tough to write, not just because of Fen’s grief (his acts of self-destruction, for better or worse, are consistently entangled with Alfie), but because I didn’t want their past to just vanish with an apology or two. I don’t think Fen is lying when he insists he’s not scared of Alfie, but I think those habits of fear remain—for a little while at least.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Bloody hell,” he muttered, in a moment of despair.

Alexis: Getting unlikely rom-com references into my books is kind of an established theme for me at this point, I think.

4. Paragraph begins with: “It looked nice, okay?”

Alexis: I love Pretty Woman, and I love this scene, but Alfie is absolutely right—this is an absurd amount of pressure to put on someone, and I always try to keep it in mind when trying to introduce people to things I’m into. I guess it might be different if I was more into opera (I mean, I quite like opera), but probably nobody needs Vampire: The Masquerade to become part of their soul anytime soon.

5. Paragraph begins with: And for a moment, they were silent.

Alexis: Honestly, I kind of feel this too.

But I also think it hints at ways Alfie and Fen have more in common than they realise: this need for a form of self-articulation that is followed by catharsis/absolution and the possibility of moving forward. Right now, they’re both very stuck.

6. Paragraph begins with: “Well, Audrey’s gorgeous, but she can’t sing for shit.”

Alexis: A+ choice of big goddamn hero from Fen here.

7. Paragraph begins with: Maybe Alfie pushed him, or maybe he didn’t…

Alexis: This is another not-so-subtle attempt to provide Alfie (and, ahem, the rest of us) with a queer reimagining of a heterosexual trope. I mean hot lady on a car is, you know, quite the long-standing classic—although I did want to ensure, in this context, it was somewhat less objectifying. That Fen is inviting Alfie to behold him and desire him.

8. Paragraph begins with: “You mean,” Alfie asked…

Alexis: Okay, I know I wrote this, but I wrote it many years ago, and “the misplaced optimism of the incredibly horny” is SUCH A MOOD.

9. Paragraph begins with: “I dunno. But keep me around long enough…”

Alexis: Given how very complicated a lot of my characters feel about love—and love, the word, specifically—it seemed important to allow at least one of them to be pretty comfortable with the whole shebang.

I secretly kind of adore this straightforwardness in Alfie—I think I’d probably be quite swept away by it. The certainty, and the fearlessness of that certainty, is refreshing and contrasts with my own tendencies towards “everything is complicated help Barthes.”

Plus, given how destabilised Alfie feels about his own queerness, I wanted to show that how he feels about love and relationships has remained the same. Like, not everything about how you fall in love has to change with who you fall in love with.

10. Paragraph begins with: Alfie was pretty sure this was a trap…

Alexis: One of the things that’s personally complicated for me with Pansies as a romance is that it’s nudging at ideas that are not necessarily my natural wheelhouse. Like, in my own way, I’m pretty practical. I like to sort of build up a body of evidence that people are good for each other, and they normally move towards emotional declarations and lifetime commitments at a pace that feels to some degree realistic.

Alfie and Fen essentially fall in love over the course of a single week together. I like to hope I still demonstrate that they are better off with each other than not, and I don’t want to say this isn’t “realistic” because some people do fall in love rapidly, but Pansies is as much about place as people. Or rather it’s about people in places. The way Alfie and Fen falling in love with each other is mirrored in and mediated through the way they fall in love with South Shields: how it comes to represent home for them, not just hurt.

Chapter Twelve

1. Paragraph begins with: We sat on plastic orange chairs…

Alexis: Flying creatures trapped in rooms is one of my greatest horrors. It’s this perfect storm of symbolic and physically uncomfortable (wings beating against glass is worse than chalk on a blackboard for me).

Chapter Thirteen

1. Paragraph begins with: He tried to imagine Fen there but couldn’t.

Alexis: I’m now trying to decide if David does, indeed, wear pointy shoes…

I think he’s a bit of a dandy, but not a pointy shoes type of dandy.

2. Paragraph begins with: There was a pause. Alfie watched the wavering shadows…

Alexis: I know it’s gross to be smug about your own writing but, to this day, I like this line. I like it because it feels so true to Alfie’s perspective and Alfie’s voice.

3. Paragraph begins with: He thought about giving up and going back to London early.

Alexis: This was a really daft thing for Greg to say, given his feelings for Alfie. I think he just assumed that a stage of promiscuous sex was an inherent part of queer identity, and Alfie took it as a sign that Greg wasn’t interested in developing anything emotionally significant with him. And, again, with Greg I wanted to show that it’s possible to invest in or take for granted very narrow perceptions of queerness and queer life, in exactly the same way that it’s possible to do with heterosexuality.

4. Paragraph begins with: Alfie had expected to be basically miserable…

Alexis: Minchella’s, I’m delighted to report, is still there. You can Google it for pictures of delicious ice cream.

5. Paragraph begins with: Alfie had expected to be basically miserable…

Alexis: This is a regional dialectal feature I was super happy to slip in. Basically it’s tautology (massive long here or geet big, to use another northern term) for emphasis, similar to the double negative (I didn’t do nothing), which is also for emphasis. Both of these tend to get dismissed as ignorance or a lack of education, because they’re not as present in standard English.

6. Paragraph begins with: “They better not,” said Kev.

Alexis: This was another moment where I wanted to demonstrate that just because Kev is working class and has those values, those values are not oppositional to being a decent human being.

7. Paragraph begins with: Once they were done with eating…

Alexis: And makes me feel even older now…

8. Paragraph begins with: He felt the contact ripple outwards somehow…

Alexis: Obviously Alfie and Fen had particular experiences of queerness while growing up, Alfie being so embedded in a particular culture that queerness became almost unthinkable, and Fen so alienated from that same culture for his queerness. But it felt important to not portray South Shields (or any small town with a strong working-class community) as the place where queerphobia happens—especially because there’s already a strong (and historical) devaluing of the north from the south.

9. Paragraph begins with: Eventually, he left the pond behind…

Alexis: One of the many fascinating things (and yes, I stand by that many) about the history of South Shields is the fact you can witness fairly readily the layers of history there. Like, there’s the remains of a Roman fort. It was regularly raided by the Vikings. It’s been a fishing port. I think there was a salt-panning industry. And, of course, there was the coal mine, the shipbuilding, and all the other maritime industries that the twentieth century ultimately destroyed.

It’s strange to think—especially if you visit South Shields today, see the remains of so much, and feel its quiet—that it’s significance as a port was such that it was heavily air-raided, and bombed, during the First World War.

For our purposes, however, with Alfie Bell looking at the relic of an artificial waterfall, it’s South Shields’s past as a fashionable Victorian seaside resort. Now it’s kind of a backwater, but the Victorians left some typically Victorian shit behind, like this waterfall. Apparently the North Marine Park (across the road to where Alfie is now) used to have peacocks wandering around it in its Victorian heyday.

Chapter Fourteen

1. Paragraph begins with: The tide was coming in, but slowly.

Alexis: I’m pleased with this description of Marsden Rock because it feels Alfie-ish.

You can Google for a picture if you like, but basically Marsden Rock is a stack of compacted limestone that broke away from the softer cliff face at some point in the past. It has a bunch of caves underneath it and at one point had a natural arch, except this collapsed and fell into the sea, leaving Marsden Rock and a second, thinner stack that was briefly named Son of Marsden before it was, err, demolished due to safety concerns.

You can still walk right up to the base of the rock during low tide (though you have to be careful because it’s completely cut off from the shore when the tide comes in). Back in Victorian times, there were apparently stairs cut into the side so you could sit on the top. I suspect those are long, long gone—and climbing it would be incredibly dangerous. So, y’know, don’t do that if you’re ever in South Shields.

2. Paragraph begins with: Alfie grabbed Fen’s elbow and dragged him back…

Alexis: I know Alfie has a slight fear that too many words aren’t manly somehow, which makes him self-consciously position himself as somewhat inarticulate. But I do think it’s important to recognise that saying the right thing doesn’t have to be complicated; it just has to be sincere, like he is here.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Fifty-six.” Fen tugged his hands free…

Alexis: Eesh, this book goes hard. Sometimes I worry that my ambitions with it outstripped my capacity to execute them. But, still, Pansies is important to me, and I’m glad I tried.

I know I’ve fretted about this in annotations before, but something that I find really anxious-making about writing in general is the degree to which the specific can sometimes be taken as universal. Like, you write one character who makes an impossible choice, like Nora Shaftoe does here, and it may seem like I—the author—am trying to say this is the “right” choice for everyone. Or, worse, that I’m implying a wider judgement about the possible quality of life or individual value of people with particular progressive conditions.

I hope it goes without saying that I don’t believe that. But, like Nora, I do believe in personal autonomy. Above all else, I believe in that.

4. Paragraph begins with: Fen drew in a shuddering breath…

Alexis: Coming back to Nora and her choices, it was important to me when I was writing about her, and them, not to accidentally present a picture of such decisions as straightforward.

I think one of the most complicated things about existing in the world is the way certain rights and freedoms can be framed or seen as competing for space. Like, I don’t know, the word queer. There are some people for who this word is deeply painful, others for who it is deeply liberating; both are and need to keep being true. But it’s hard not to believe, especially if you’re strongly inclined one way, that these two perspectives are treading on each other’s toes—that if person x embraces the label queer, that’s trampling the painful experiences of person y.

And something like, well, assisted suicide (and the right to die in general) is even more complicated because the stakes are sky-high. But the point is, you can believe something is morally right without it being easy. You can support someone’s choices while those choices are tearing you apart. The freedom and the pain are equally valid, equally real.

5. Paragraph begins with: “Some eighteenth-century weirdo…”

Alexis: This is genuinely true. The man’s name was Jack Bates, but he got the moniker Jack the Blaster when, as Fen says, either unable or unwilling to pay rent, he blew open the caves at the base of the cliffs at Marsden and moved in with his family. They couldn’t have been exactly comfortable because the caves would semi-regularly flood with seawater, but this unconventional living arrangement attracted visitors who wanted to see the family living in caves. The family made a small business out of this, serving food and drinks to the people who came—although Jack also had other, less legal sources of income that certainly benefitted from his choice of home (he was a smuggler). Apparently he was fairly wealthy when he died about ten years after moving into the caves. Oh, which he did when he was eighty, by the way.

After Jack the Blaster, there came Peter Allan, who continued the work of excavating the caves that Jack the Blaster had started. He was also a canny businessman who (despite some issues acquiring a licence) sold ale from the caves and set up a ladder system on Marsden Rock itself so visitors could climb it.

After he died in 1849, the caves passed through various hands and eventually fell into disrepair before being restored in the early twentieth century. There’s still a pub there now, and a lift that takes you from the top of the cliffs to the beach has been fitted in the shaft originally excavated by Jack, Allan, and others.

And it’s also supposed to be haunted. Because something like eighteen skeletons were supposedly discovered during Allan’s excavations. One of these was reputedly John the “Jibber,” a smuggler who informed on his comrades, and who was then left to starve by said comrades, hung in a barrel dangling into one of the caves, possibly near the current lift shaft.

6. Paragraph begins with: “Oh, it’s my dad. He really loves this stuff.”

Alexis: I don’t know if this is a specifically British working-class thing, but it sometimes feels like the smaller and less significant the place, the more locals will be just, like, super hard-core into it.

7. Paragraph begins with: “Had competition,” Alfie growled.

Alexis: This is broadly correct, though obviously somewhat abbreviated, as Alfie is, um, distracted right now.

As he says, following the loss of the Adventure in 1789 (which was apparently super harrowing—like, it had a thirteen-man crew, who everyone had to watch die from the shore because the seas were too rough to risk a rescue boat), a committee was formed in South Shields and a prize offered for the best design of a lifeboat.

Of all the designs submitted, the final decision was between William Wouldhave (a parish clerk and painter) and Henry Greathead (a shipbuilder). Honestly, these two should probably just have kissed: I mean, lifeboat-builders to lovers is a romance arc waiting to happen. Apparently Wouldhave was offered half the prize money, but he took offence and declined, and Greathead (who is often credited as the sole inventor of the lifeboat) combined ideas from the two designs (as well as from Lionel Lukin’s first unsinkable boat, which was built in 1784) to make the first lifeboat, the aptly named Original.

Greathead made thirty-one Original-type lifeboats over the next two decades. And he never took out a patent on the design, preferring to share his ideas for the good of others.

There are two monuments between the North and South marine parks that stand in South Shields to this day: one baroque clock, honouring both William Wouldhave and Henry Greathead, and one to-scale model of a lifeboat based on the original designs of Wouldhave and Greathead (although the model itself was built some forty years later).

I think in early drafts of this scene, Alfie provided more details about the history of the lifeboat, but then I realised probably most readers weren’t likely to be super engaged by minutiae about South Shields in the middle of a make-out scene.

8. Paragraph begins with: Fen was waiting by the entrance…

Alexis: I’m aware I come back to this idea semi-regularly in different contexts, like a kind of personal trope. But I really love it: the moment sex with someone you care about (and please don’t think I’m knocking casual sex) becomes such a completely mutual thing.

Chapter Fifteen

1. Paragraph begins with: “I want one of those…” Alfie shaped a V with his hands.

Alexis: Apparently my complex personal history with the romancelandia V-cut goes back a fair way. Don’t get me wrong, I know romance is a fantasy/escapist space, and it’s okay to have heroes with difficult-to-maintain body types. And I’m certainly not disputing that a V-cut looks pleasing. But I think I don’t like V-cut as the default body type for masc characters we’re supposed to find attractive, especially because it is so specific and demands quite a lot of the, err, V-cut haver.

Basically, I think I just like to emphasise that certain body types aren’t necessarily “natural” or easy, even if they’re appealing. Also I wanted Alfie’s physicality to be about strength and solidity, rather than being fashionably super cut.

2. Paragraph begins with: But, fuck, he looked so good.

Alexis: I’m not sure, but I think Alfie does more looking than most of my POV characters. Don’t get me wrong, I know particular flavours of physical description are a kind of romance novel trope (and we all know how I love a trope), but I think I prefer to establish rather than dwell. Or else have the POV character notice specifics about their partner’s appearance only when the context is significant—like the colour of their eyes in sadness or whatever, or a particular curl of their mouth.

Alfie, though, I’m noticing on revisiting this book, is staring at Fen all the damn time. I think it’s partially because finding men attractive is still fairly new to Alfie, so it feels daring and freeing for him be able to admire openly. But I also think, from a more authorial perspective, it’s a bit to do with Fen not being the sort of hero who was regularly or typically presented as attractive—at least when I wrote the book; queer looks very different within the genre now. I mean, he’s not particularly masc-coded, he wears glasses, he presents himself in a deliberately queer way (his hair, the way he dresses).

So I guess Alfie and I were on the same page of wanting to celebrate and make space for Fen a bit.

3. Paragraph begins with: “God, you give good hug, Alfie Bell.”

Alexis: I think I’m getting old (even though I was comparatively less old when I wrote this) because I am really so here for scenes where the main characters hug and have a nap together.

And I can’t tell anymore if that’s because it’s genuinely romantic or I’m just tired.

4. Paragraph begins with: And must have dozed off…

Alexis: This is another one of those moments I enjoy where the romance comes with a touch of reality. I don’t know why this makes it feel more romantic to me, but it does. I think I tend to call it friction in fantasy—like if the fantasy is too easy, too perfect, it doesn’t seem as meaningful to me. Maybe I’m just a weirdo. Oh wait. It’s probably that.

5. Paragraph begins with: It was sexy as hell. But also intimidating.

Alexis: Nurrggh, penetration politics is rearing its ugly head as usual. I really wish I lived in a world (and wrote in a genre) where I didn’t have to spend so much time thinking about who put what body part where. Except, unfortunately, I do because we, as a culture and in fiction, persist in thinking it matters.

I think it’s especially tricky in romance because the genre requires sex acts to mean something: that’s kind of the whole deal. But I think that often leads to certain sex acts becoming tropified in ways that can be problematic. For example, back in the day, being penetrated was often framed as submissive (and, of course, it can be—anything can be submissive if you choose for it to be so), and occasionally the conventionally masculine character would allow it once near the end of the book to prove his “trust” in the relationship/other person.

Hyper awareness of these dynamics and expectations means that I generally tend to follow two “rules”:

(1) most unlikely person tops

(2) vers until proven otherwise

And this, mostly, holds true for Pansies. Although the limitation of these rules is that it makes it difficult to write characters who have strong preferences (for whatever reason), and that feels complicated too: because some people just have a preference, and that’s okay, and doesn’t have to matter either.

I think what I was trying to explore with Alfie here was navigating the spaces between what is natural preference and what is socially conditioned. Also, given Fen is much more overtly femme-presenting, I wanted to ensure I wasn’t reinforcing the whole “the pretty one’s the bottom” stereotype.

6. Paragraph begins with: Fen moved his mouth to Alfie’s ear.

Alexis: I’ve mentioned before how it felt important for Alfie to sometimes find the exact words for Fen. I think Fen here finds the exact words for Alfie.

7. Paragraph begins with: A rough hand, tight on his cock…

Alexis: My ever-anally retentive side is concerned at the number of alls in this paragraph, and in Alfie’s narration in general. But they’re also intended to be part of his voice, a tic he falls back on when he’s in his emosh. In the end, I chose to leave them all here because I thought if there was a moment for Alfie to be in his emosh, it was now.

8. Paragraph begins with: It turned out Fen didn’t actually have any food…

Alexis: Is Primula a thing elsewhere? To be honest, I don’t even know if it’s a thing anymore. It’s basically like a creamy cheese spread squeezed out of a tube like tooth-paste. Retrospectively that does, indeed, sound gross.

9. Paragraph begins with: “Aren’t you supposed to be a vegetarian?” Alfie asked.

Alexis: Apparently vegetarians who sometimes break their vegetarianism is a theme with me. I know I’ve said this about Oliver in Boyfriend Material too, but I just think it’s important for people to be able to falter in their principles sometimes. I mean, on some principles, anyway. Probably not murder or something (although maybe it would depend who was being murdered?).

10. Paragraph begins with: “Yes. Well.” Fen’s hands shifted idly…

Alexis: Another theme appears to be people living in squalor while in emotional distress. Can’t relate at all. Cough.

Chapter Sixteen

1. Paragraph begins with: Alfie rolled Fen onto his back…

Alexis: My god, these two are horny. I had forgotten how completely horny they are.

2. Paragraph begins with: He followed her into the hall…

Alexis: Goddamnit, I miss wallpaper. It’s just not a thing in the south. I mean, it makes every room that isn’t enormous look over-decorated and cluttered, but it’s so fucking extra.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Wha?” His exclamation brought them both up short.

Alexis: I don’t know if the good room is specifically a northern thing or a working-class thing in general. It’s exactly what it suggests: a room for guests that is fiercely guarded by the home owner.

4. Paragraph begins with: “Have you seen me decking?”

Alexis: Okay, I keep wondering what is the most South Shields line in this book, and I think this might be it.

5. Paragraph begins with: “Y’know I love ye, don’t ye?”

Alexis: Ouch ouch ouch. Even from the future, this scene hurts. I normally don’t write so overtly about queerphobia, not because I don’t think it’s, you know, important, but because I don’t want every book about queer people to have to be about queerphobia. Like, while it may be something many of us experience in some form or another, it is not the defining feature of our lives and shouldn’t be presented as such.

But I think with Pansies I was trying to explore queerphobia from various perspectives, none of them entirely straightforward (I mean, even what happens in the next chapter has its complications). With Alfie’s parents, I didn’t want a situation where they were overtly rejecting him for being gay—more sort of implicitly rejecting him in ways they don’t fully understand, and he doesn’t know how to address, even though he’s trying here, bless his heart. I also wanted to look at the ways that parental rejection/queerphobia could coexist with a genuine conviction of love. Because I think Alfie’s parents really do love him, and I think Alfie believes that too; it’s just they’re also hurting him very deeply.

Chapter Seventeen

1. Paragraph begins with: A rough, exasperated sigh.

Alexis: And we’re back on the queerphobia carousel. Weeee.

This one is complicated because I think living with this sort of generalised queerphobia is something you kind of get used to or desensitised to by just, you know, being alive and queer in the world. And that’s probably a good self-protection strategy: Fen is not wrong here, when he points out he has more to care about than the thoughtless cruelty of some randoms. I think that’s important.

But I also think Fen might have been slightly conditioned to passivity/resilience because of his childhood experiences and that Alfie is right not to necessarily simply accept this kind of thing as inevitable or unchangeable, because if you do, you run the risk of normalising it. And there’s nothing “normal” about bigotry in any form.

2. Paragraph begins with: “I’m not,” he lied.

Alexis: I know I’ve already spoken a bit about dialect and accent, but I did want to demonstrate Alfie code-switching, sometimes unconsciously. Like, he’s gone more Geordie here because he’s flustered.

3. Paragraph begins with: Fen shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know.”

Alexis: I kind of feel the same way as Fen, honestly. There was originally a longer section here about all the ways this version of Les Misérables doesn’t work. But then—even though Fen and I share similar ideas about musicals—I realised I was just holding forth about Les Mis through a fictional character. Which again, is not something anybody is reading my books for. And is also not fair to the fictional character, since they need to be an authentic representation of who they are, not a mouthpiece for the author (irrespective of whether the author agrees or disagrees with them).

4. Paragraph begins with: Fen’s eyes glittered at him.

Alexis: As I said earlier, I didn’t want Alfie and Fen’s past to just vanish or get “resolved” (whatever that would mean or look like), but I did want them to revisit it in different ways as their relationship developed. In this case, tentatively playfully, with Fen able to use Alfie’s size and strength—his capacity to physically overwhelm Fen—for his own pleasure. Rather than having them being used against him.

5. Paragraph begins with: “Oh Fen.” The words escaped before he could stop them.

Alexis: Okay. No. This is the most Shields line.

6. Paragraph begins with: “Gerroff me, you fucking…”

Alexis: I’m usually really careful with how I use slurs in my work. In this case, I kind of deliberately gave them to a child because…well. Kind of the thing about children is they don’t have an adult’s understanding. I’m not defending this awful kid, but I don’t think his intent is to hurt exactly. I think he’s just being a kid, which involves being destructive sometimes. From my perspective, it’s very much a playing with a match because bored or curious or indifferent or wanting attention or simply to do something and suddenly setting the house on fire type situation.

7. Paragraph begins with: He gritted his teeth, adjusting his hold…

Alexis: The theme of “teaching” is kind of running deliberately through this scene because I kind of wanted readers to remember that—even though this kid is a little shit—prejudices are learned. They’re not inherent to bad people or bad kids.

8. Paragraph begins with: “It’s all right for you,” he heard himself shout.

Alexis: Poor Alfie really does say every rubbish thing like he’s playing Internalised Queerphobia Bingo. But I think he’s reacting to a lot things here—his mother today, his family in general, all the conflicts he feels—and taking them out on Fen when he’s really just scared and hurt.

Chapter Eighteen

1. Paragraph begins with: Fen’s arms were tight.

Alexis: Given how vulnerable Fen is for most of the book (physically, emotionally, even financially), it seemed important the relationship find places to self-balance. Like, as much as Alfie would love this to be a mansel in distress story, where he sweeps in and rescues Fen, it’s more of a Pretty Woman situation: he rescues him right back.

2. Paragraph begins with: And then they were off.

Alexis: I was wondering where best to mention this in the annotations. But, since we’re on the scenery, this seems as good a place as any. Did you know Turner painted South Shields in 1823? Yep yep. You can Google it: Shields, on the River Tyne. It shows keelmen (the folks who used to work on the keels, large boats that carried coal from the riverbanks to the waiting collier ships) working through the night at the mouth of the Tyne.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Apparently driving your car really fast…”

Alexis: Can’t disagree.

4. Paragraph begins with: “Oh shit.” He forced open his eyes.

Alexis: Again, this might be a personal preference thing, but I don’t always like the magical “and they came together in perfect harmony” that is generally the gold standard of romance novel fucking. I mean, sometimes it’s nice for sure, but I resist it as a default sign of successful sex. I mean, let’s be real, simultaneous orgasm is incredibly logistically difficult to—no pun intended—pull off. Bodies are different, and arousal peaks and troughs in different ways. I don’t like the implication that you’ve failed at sex, or failed to be a good partner, if you ejaculate at the “wrong” time. And it’s kind of inherently phallocentric because it focuses sex entirely on the actions and reactions of a single dong.

5. Paragraph begins with: A few hard pulls and…

Alexis: I actually laughed at myself when I read this line—mostly affectionately. Like “warm semen spilling riotously” is…so much my bullshit I cannot even. I’m into it though. Obviously one wants one’s warm semen to be riotous. Screw all that well-mannered and civil warm semen.

Chapter Nineteen

1. Paragraph begins with: Fen, meanwhile, did all the arrangements…

Alexis: Tell Alfie you love him without telling him you love him, Fen.

This is from South Pacific, “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy.”

2. Paragraph begins with: “Ye knaa, the flimsy white nonsense…”

Alexis: Turns out Great Aunt Sheila was right all along. Our Maureen is a lesbeen.

3. Paragraph begins with: “When you used to come in with your mum…”

Alexis: One of my weird quirks as a writer is that I always want what my characters are having—which can get weird, because there’s a moment Ellery, in the Billionaire books, takes coke and nobody should be sitting around being like, “Wow, I could murder some cocaine right now.”

I could, however, really murder a proper South Shields stottie, exactly as described.

4. Paragraph begins with: “It’s not unsalvageable though.”

Alexis: Wow, past me was really interested in the full details of how to make a local flower shop profitable again. Good on you, past me.

The thing is, I’m always really into “saving the [x]” type plots, but I’m too much of a logistics pedant not to want to know something of the how. I guess this represents a compromise: it shows Alfie knows what he’s talking about, sets out a clear path of recovery for the shop, but doesn’t make the entire last third of the book about the intricacies of running a flower shop.

5. Paragraph begins with: “Wow, you’re kind of demanding about your princes.”

Alexis: This is from Into the Woods, for anyone who isn’t a musicals person.

I think the exact line of Sondheim’s Prince Charming is “I was raised to be charming, not sincere,” but thankfully Alfie is both charming and sincere.

6. Paragraph begins with: “It can be one of the most difficult things in the world, I think.”

Alexis: No, you’ve got something in your eye.

It’s so strange coming back to your own work after a long time. I forgotten I’d written this and then it got me.

Chapter Twenty

1. Paragraph begins with: Then his dad asked, “Shower alreet?”

Alexis: This is such a certain-type-of-dad thing. Will ask about the functionality of a stranger’s shower before you.

2. Paragraph begins with: “Does the engine crank?” his dad asked suddenly.

Alexis: I think his dad, like his mum, is really trying. They’re just not succeeding. Which is what makes this so fucking painful.

3. Paragraph begins with: “What’s a normal life, Da?”

Alexis: Alfie has learned. I am proud of this fictional bloke I wrote. Yeesh.

4. Paragraph begins with: Alfie picked up his impromptu toolbox.

Alexis: Needless to say, this is deliberately ambiguous. I genuinely don’t think reaching out to your parents in this way is easy or quick, I don’t think one speech can change a lifetime of assumptions and values (an idea I come back to fairly regularly when it comes to protagonists and their families). But I personally feel that Alfie made a difference here. I think his dad got maybe not “it” but some of it. And “let us know if it’s the transmission” is, from a certain point of view, northern working-class man for “I love you.”

5. Paragraph begins with: “I made you tea. I didn’t spit in it.”

Alexis: Clearly I was enjoying the fuck out of writing Gothshelley.

6. Paragraph begins with: “Yeah, I stole it from St. Bede’s.”

Alexis: I did actually have a mug like this once, stolen from the Catholic Chaplaincy in Oxford. They went hard with their mugs over there.

7. Paragraph begins with: “Um, yeah, is there another mechanic around?”

Alexis: Okay, Alfie may have done some learning. But he still has plenty of learning to do.

8. Paragraph begins with: “I’ll go ring a taxi,” said Alfie.

Alexis: So one of the fascinating things about Geordie—why, as a dialect, it’s so rich—is that it has strong Danish and Norwegian influences on account of the Viking raids.

Hyem (pronounced kind of like yem) is similar to the Danish hjem and derives from the Old Danish hēm which in turn is from the Old Norse heimr. Home, by contrast, which is the more common term in the south and in standard English, is from the Middle English hōm (itself from Old English hām).

This piece of linguistic history sometimes gets disputed (the Vikings didn’t actually settle anywhere along the Tyne, so it’s hard to demonstrate a direct linguistic link via dialectal terms), but it’s also possible that hyem spread from Cumbria (which did have some relatively short-lived Viking settlements) or else it got picked up from Dutch sailors coming into port.

Either way, it’s a notable feature of Geordie that stands distinct from standard/southern English. You can also find it in the nursery rhyme/folksong “Bobby Shaftoe,” where the line mis-transliterated as “he’ll come back and marry me” is, in its northern form, “he’ll come hyem and marry me.”

9. Paragraph begins with: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Alexis: In the same way I didn’t just want Alfie and Fen’s past to disappear or get checked off as fixed, I didn’t want Fen’s grief to vanish off-page. Because, in my experience, that’s not how grief works. And for all Fen feels he’s had “enough” time and should be over it, he’s still so close to the emotional epicentre: a year is nothing to grief. So here’s a moment where grief catches him unaware again.

In terms of what you might call the, err, journey of Fen’s grief, I was trying to mirror A Grief Observed to some degree—i.e., that he doesn’t get over it or move beyond it, but he’s able to accept it and begin to live with it.

10. Paragraph begins with: “The Seafood Temple.”

Alexis: By the way, Colmans Seafood Temple is a really lovely restaurant. It’s got these floor-to-ceiling glass windows that look out over the beach and the sea, so you’ll catch a truly glorious sunset if you go at the right time.

11. Paragraph begins with: “I’m norra homophobe.”

Alexis: As apologies go, it’s probably a good job Pete can’t play the ukulele.

Chapter Twenty-One

1. Paragraph begins with: Fen’s eyes were wet, although he still seemed mostly furious.

Alexis: This is one of the most debilitating truths about violence, I think. Toxic masculinity teaches us that if we’re strong enough or manly enough, then that inherently protects us from the threat of violence: that violence is essentially a punishment for the weak. But the fact of the matter is, if someone is committed to enacting violence upon you, you will get violence enacted upon you. It doesn’t matter how big or how strong, or how manly, or even if you’re experienced at fighting; all someone needs is a knife or a bunch of like-minded mates.

2. Paragraph begins with: “That’s our kitty, the Marchioness of Mitternact…”

Alexis: It’s a good job Marchioness of Mitternact, Lady of Shadows, Bringer of Sorrows, Singer of the Ceaseless Requiem is never on page because otherwise Gollum (from 10 Things That Never Happened) would have competition for Best (aka Worst) Cat.

3. Paragraph begins with: They shook hands, and Alfie chanted…

Alexis: Like Alfie, I always assumed that there would come a point in life when I believed I was a grown-up and that would make meeting other grown-ups, like the parents of one’s partner, easier. It has never happened.

4. Paragraph begins with: “This was never what he wanted.”

Alexis: Aidan is seriously over-reaching here, but I think it’s pretty obvious why he would. Given how little Fen has let his father protect him, and the fact Aidan is, of course, grieving too, I hope it’s forgivable that he comes down so hard on Alfie without truly considering what Fen wants. I mean, Aidan is a very different father to Alfred Senior, but—with all the love in the world—he lets his son down too through a failure of understanding.

5. Paragraph begins with: That was when he caught sight…

Alexis: I have seen such notes in the houses of people living with Alzheimer’s. I can’t lie, they always give me a pang, but I also admire the sort of stubborn practicality of it.

Nora’s surname is from the folksong “Bobby Shaftoe” (which, as I’ve mentioned, has its own northern variant). She even has the yellow hair.

Incidentally, Bobby Shaftoe was one of my earliest remembered crushes. I mean, come on, the lad was a fox: silver buckles at his knee, combing down his yellow hair. I’m also pretty convinced that he’s not coming home to marry any of the ladies who make claims to the contrary: he’s a vain, handsome, notably well-dressed man who has run off with a bunch of other men. Read the room.

6. Paragraph begins with: And then Aidan hugged him.

Alexis: Clearly Aidan gets massively in Alfie’s head here in a really messy way, at the very least facilitating Alfie’s worst decision of the story.

I’m very aware (and Alfie is made aware by literally everyone else in the book) that “I must leave you for your own good” is a shite trope, but I think at least part of what’s feeding into it for Alfie is…not wanting to feel he let down another father. Even if it’s not his own father.

As already discussed, Aidan is overprotective of Fen here, just like Alfred Senior is overprotective because he believes being gay will make Alfie unhappy, but Aidan is emotionally giving in ways that Alfred Senior isn’t (and probably can’t be). Which I think breaks Alfie a little bit because he’s so desperate to feel accepted by someone fulfilling a paternal role.

Chapter Twenty-Two

1. Paragraph begins with: The strangest thing is how close you feel right now.

Alexis: I wish I’d made more of this in the book as a whole, but northern nicknames, like Irish nicknames, are a whole thing. Like it’s very much a “did one thing at school once” or “had a big duffel coat for a while” and you’ll be known as Duffelcoat (or the equivalent) for the rest of your life.

2. Paragraph begins with: He’s out, at the moment, planning something.

Alexis: I guess it’s kind of obvious (as I often say, I’ve never claimed to be a subtle writer), but I think this is the first time in the book Fen has chosen not to confide in his mother first.

Chapter Twenty-Three

1. Paragraph begins with: “Oh come on, it’s perfectly safe.”

Alexis: Please note it is not perfectly safe. It is actually quite dangerous. Alexis Hall does not condone anyone circumventing safety barriers on cliff edges. Or anywhere else.

2. Paragraph begins with: “No, you doylem.”

Alexis: I hope I’ve spelled this correctly. It could be doilem? It’s basically Geordie dialect for a dullard. If I had to guess (and it would be a guess), I would think it’s possibly from the Romani dinilo as there’s quite a lot of borrowing between Geordie and Angloromani (for example, gadgie is a Geordie dialectal term for, you know, “bloke/lad” that comes directly from gadjo gadji, a not wholly positive term for non-Roma).

3. Paragraph begins with: As far as Alfie was concerned, there was only one chippie in South Shields.

Alexis: Apparently this has gone downhill? Noooo. Please no.

4. Paragraph begins with: God, he’d missed this.

Alexis: Look, this is actually, categorically, true. The south cannot make good chips. I don’t make the rules.

Chapter Twenty-Four

1. Paragraph begins with: Alfie shifted uncomfortably. Accidentally rammed his foot…

Alexis: For people who like connection hunting in Spires, this is Angel, who Laurie meets briefly in For Real.

2. Paragraph begins with: By Thursday he’d come to the conclusion…

Alexis: As I’ve stated in other places, I have complicated thoughts (I mean, I have complicated thoughts about what socks to wear in the morning) about third-act breakups. I know they can sort of feel more tropey than authentic, but I do believe they’re often necessary to confront the couple with an obstacle (to demonstrate they will overcome obstacles in the future) and for the individual characters to make decisions outside the relationship. Like here we see Alfie changing his life for himself and working to come to terms with expressing his identity, not just doing things and making changes because he wants to either prove himself to Fen or be with Fen.

3. Paragraph begins with: “Oh my God!” Greg gazed at him entranced.

Alexis: Clearly I need to write a romance where the actual protagonist or love interest is a spy. Because I seem to keep pairing secondary characters up with spies. Or maybe I just assume spies are more common in everyday life than they actually are, given I went to a university from which government agencies directly recruit. I mean I do generally assume that people who tell me they work in either customs or the diplomatic service are spies.

4. Paragraph begins with: “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Alexis: I think Alfie just took it for granted that someone as exuberantly out and comfortable with his sexuality as Greg must just automatically know what they want in all circumstances. When, of course, people and their wants are always complicated—no matter how confident the act they put on. Greg, however, should definitely have been more honest, both with Alfie and with himself.

5. Paragraph begins with: “That’s all right. Romantic, cross-country dashes…”

Alexis: Obliviously comments the author who would later write a book with another cross-country dash in it. Even to the same part of the country.

The reality is, though, they haven’t lost their charm for me yet.

6. Paragraph begins with: Greg was standing under a map…

Alexis: I did actually see this sign, complete with the Samaritans advert, on my way into Tyneside once. I have no idea if it’s still there. I hope so because it did make me cackle.

7. Paragraph begins with: A telltale flush stole across the arch of Fen’s cheekbones.

Alexis: Revealing parallel I’ve accidentally made here between getting married and being topped.

In all seriousness, though, I think it’s fairly useful for me to think of Pansies as almost in dialogue with Husband Material, even though I wrote Husband Material many years later. Spoilers for Husband Material?

I know that many readers were disappointed that Luc and Oliver did not choose to get married at the end of Husband Material—perhaps because it feels inherently romantic to have true love change your perspective on the institution of marriage. The thing is, though, it doesn’t have to? The love isn’t diminished by that choice, nor the longevity of the relationship, and marriage—let’s be real—remains a fairly problematic social convention. And I think what’s important about Luc and Oliver is that neither of them had particularly strong positive feelings about marriage in the first place (and Oliver has strong negative ones).

Alfie, though, Alfie does—for all the reasons he lays out in the book, including not wanting to feel that his sexuality has taken away from him something that would be important to him if he was straight. And because of that—because of Alfie—Fen changes his mind. And it seems right that he would and could, because Pansies is a book all about change.

Epilogue

1. Paragraph begins with: He had to get a train, then a metro, then a bus, and then he walked.

Alexis: Look, I wrote a damn epilogue. I know I have a reputation for abrupt endings, something that has in no way changed how I approach writing an ending. With a lot of romances, I like to keep a sense of openness about the relationship and the future of the couple. As a general rule, I believe in HFN not HEA. I guess I might just be a commitment-phobe in writing as well as in life because I feel I can genuinely guarantee a HFN without rushing the characters through a relationship, compromising who they are or treating heteronormative assumptions as the default.

With Alfie and Fen, however, it’s so clear what they want from their relationship and each other. It’s a home and a business and a future and marriage, and a dog, and kids, the whole shebang. So it didn’t feel like I was closing anything down or missing any stages by showing you a glimpse of how that begins.

2. Paragraph begins with: “I left David and his snotty new boyfriend…”

Alexis: Yep, sounds like Niall.

About the Author

Alexis Hall is a connoisseur of puddings. He is particularly partial to a crumble.

For more information:

Website: quicunquevult.com

Instagram: @quicunquevult

Also by Alexis Hall

London Calling

Boyfriend Material

Husband Material

Material World

10 Things That Never Happened

Spires

Glitterland

Waiting for the Flood

For Real

Thank you for reading this Sourcebooks eBook!

Join our mailing list to learn about new releases, special offers, and bonus content—right in your inbox!

SIGN UP NOW