“You could have called.”
“I did call.”
“When Beth got engaged.”
“We’ve been busy. Two weddings in a month, it’s a busy time!”
Mike mentally filed the excuse away for the inevitable outburst the next time they had big news and failed to tell her.
“So,” she pressed. “How are things at home? Between you and—” She lowered her voice, as if Mike wasn’t literally standing right there with an arm around Stephen’s waist. “—Michael.”
“Mike,” said Mike.
“Great,” Stephen said stiffly.
“Are you still teaching?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you find it a little constricting? You were always so clever…”
“No.”
Once he would have argued with her. Now he just seemed to be grinding his teeth. Mike wasn’t sure if it was progress or not.
“I’m sure you could reapply to Oxford, you know.”
“I’m sure I don’t want to.”
“You would have done so well.”
“I’m doing well now.”
“Are you?”
It was unusually blunt. Mike eyed the wine glass in her hand, and wondered how many had preceded it.
“Yes.” Stephen’s posture was straighter than an American football player. “We bought a house. Mike got promoted to head of his department. We’re talking about starting a family.”
Doing a lot more than talking about it.
“A family?”
“Yes. You know. Kids.”
“Kids,” she echoed faintly, as though he’d said ‘cunts.’ Her hand actually drifted up to her necklace in a vague, pearl-clutching motion.
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Another pause. Mike counted in his head. Three. Two. One.
“With Michael?”
There it was.
“Mike,” said Mike.
“Of course with Mike,” Stephen said in a voice tighter than a nun’s twat. “Who else?”
“Well.” She paused. Then she said, “Well,” again.
“Shouldn’t be doing that,” Alicia interjected peaceably. “Children. Messy, dirty, expensive things. Get a cat.”
“We have a cat, Aunt Alicia.”
“Get another cat.”
“No chance, bloody thing nearly killed me on the stairs last week,” Mike grumbled.
Aunt Alicia laughed. Damn Black looked like she’d swallowed a lemon coated in razor blades and salt. Stephen smiled beatifically at Mike, holding out the empty pint glass, and asked for a bucket of wine. Mike sensed the imminent bitching that was about to happen between mother and son, and gratefully escaped. He couldn’t manage a bucket—free bar or no free bar, the guy wasn’t willing to put it in a vase—but he got two glasses and tipped one into the other to top it off before turning back, red almost brimming over. Stephen took it with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, rather obviously intended to wind his mother up, and Mike merrily helped the war effort along by rather obviously palming his arse. Shame he’d skipped out on the kilt, really.
“I don’t understand,” the Dame was saying. “How could you possibly—”
“Plenty of ways to have a child, Mother.”
Her lips thinned. “I meant, in your situation.”
Stephen sipped his wine and blandly repeated: “Plenty of ways to have a child.” Paused. “Mother.”
Christ, Mike wanted to shag him when that dickhead mode was turned on somebody else for a change.
“Ah, there you are, Mary.”
The fun was over. The temperature in the room dropped five degrees. Mike could have sworn the wine didn’t have ice cubes in it when he’d got it.
Bloody did now.
David Black—or Bastard Black, as Mike had rechristened him on the morning of their wedding—was the spitting image of his son. He had the wrong colouring, but it was as if someone had simply taken a photograph of Stephen and changed the light settings. The jaw, the nose, the shape of the eyes, even the slight ears and the way their eyebrows quirked up at the corners when annoyed or feeling particularly sarcastic, were all the same. Mike had to grudgingly admit that his git of a father-in-law was good-looking.
Far cry from good, though.
“Stephen was just telling me that he and Michael—”
“Mike,” said Mike.
“—are thinking of starting a family.”
Damn Black was too proper to cause a scene. Her speciality was in backhanded compliments, gossiping behind one’s back, and sending passive-aggressive text messages.
Her husband was a different kettle of kippers.
“No.”
Stephen’s eyebrow rose. “Excuse me?”
“I said no,” Bastard Black repeated. “Raise a child in that run-down little hovel of yours, with that?”
His gesture at Mike was like being slapped with a wet salmon. Mike’s jaw sagged.
“With no money and a useless—”
Useless?
“—great lump for a father? They won’t be any grandchildren of m—”
He never finished the word.
Because Mike decked him.
Someone shrieked. The crunch of a nose popping wetly under his knuckles was like being nine again and scrapping in the schoolyard. Satisfying. Rewarding. And let some old bastard who hadn’t had the balls to have a decent fight a day in his life get up after being punched by almost twenty stone of a steel city lad.
Mike stepped back, and shook out his fist.
“How dare you!” Mary spluttered, flying to her felled husband’s side. “How dare you!”
Mike turned on his heel, and marched out.
Sod them. Sod the absolute bloody lot of them. Calling their house, his house, a hovel. Trying to tell him who he could and couldn’t have a baby with. Calling him useless—him! The first in his family to ever go to university. Hell, the first to ever go to sixth form, never mind university. And he’d got a doctorate out of it! He had a card in his living room from a teenager who he’d helped, who’d been distraught and he’d helped make things better. And he’d be a bloody brilliant father and everybody knew it, better than that stuck-up, money-grubbing, tight-fisted piece of—
Cold air hit his face, and fingers caught at his arm.
Familiar ones.
“Hey.”
Stephen’s voice was gentle, and Mike shook the hand off, only to take it in his own and squeeze.
“Come on,” he said. “I lost the coin toss. Direct me to that curry house of your’n.”
“I need more wine.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Spilled mine on Father.”
Mike smirked.
“Accidentally.”
“Of course.”
“I accidentally threw it out of my hand and into his face.”
“Clumsy berk.”
“It runs in the family.”
“It does not.”
“Bloody does, Aunt Alicia did it, too.”
Mike laughed properly then, and caught Stephen at the car to shove him against the bodywork and kiss him.
“Bugger the lot of them,” he said fiercely. “They don’t want to be a part of our new family, they can shove it.”
Stephen grinned. “Can I bugger you instead?”
“Yeah, alright.”
Chapter 2: Amy
Typically, for the first week of the summer holidays, it pissed it down.
Despite that, it was also unreasonably hot and humid. All the windows and doors were open during the day, and Molly sulked on windowsills, offended by all the sodding water.
Mike liked the peace, though, especially after that mess of a trip north of the border. Takeaway every night. A good lie-in every morning while Stephen went on his ridiculous runs. And the days in front of the telly, feet up, working through their lesson plans in perfect silence, punctuated only by, “Fancy a cuppa?” and, “Pass us that pen.”
Plus it was
a week of Stephen wearing his reading glasses, which Mike had to admit were a good look on him. Very Tenth Doctor.
After the barb that Bastard Black had thrown their way, Mike had expected to have to put up with Stephen the Sod, but it seemed to have rolled off. The nearest Stephen showed to a reaction was insisting on a cheeseburger from their feel-good takeaway place on the first night back from Scotland. And it was a nice surprise—two years ago, when they’d first decided they were ready to have children, Stephen would have gone nuclear. Four years ago, when they got married, he’d have cried.
Now, he just demanded his cheeseburger, and they said no more about the whole sorry affair.
So despite the grim start to their summer, the following week was simply…nice. Mike hadn’t been married four years to underestimate nice. Regular brews, good food, and quiet company was heaven after a hectic school term, and he soaked it up happily. No domestics, no drama, nothing. Just him and Stephen, and a good bit of telly.
By the time Friday rolled around, he felt ready for it.
Sort of.
On Friday afternoon, Amy Burke was getting married. She was a chemistry teacher at Mike’s school, and his partner in crime when it came to grossing the kids out. Working with Amy was a riot—next year, they were going to be dissolving mice in various solutions, just to give the GCSE students nightmares—and Mike was looking forward to the wedding. She was marrying Darren Donohue, one of the bull-chested PE teachers who usually spent his summers lifting weights with his throat, judging by the fact his neck and head were the same width. It wouldn’t be the stuffy affair the Blacks liked to put on, not with Donohue for a groom and Burke for a bride. It would be genuinely fun. And another free bar helped, too.
There was only one problem.
On Friday morning, Stephen had his appointment at the clinic.
It couldn’t really be moved. There was only a small time window for the treatment to be done, and Friday was the last chance. And even if it was a private clinic, they had a busy appointments diary just like any other medical facility. The Friday morning slot was the only one they had, and it had been booked months in advance—long before Amy’s invites had gone out.
Then when her invites had finally arrived, weeks late, Mike genuinely hadn’t expected them both to be invited to the day part of the whole affair, so the clash had been more than a little unfortunate. He’d been immediately up for cancelling on the ceremony and just going to the evening do, but Stephen had put his bloody foot down and told him not to be an idiot.
“It’s not the first time, for God’s sake,” he’d said.
“I should be there.”
“I don’t need you there.”
The unspoken addition, that Stephen didn’t even want Mike in the room, didn’t need to be voiced. He didn’t like the appointments, and even Mike waiting outside in the car for him had been an uneasy compromise. But for Mike, it felt wrong not to go.
And not going because he was at a wedding? That felt even stranger.
So when he pulled up outside the clinic, Stephen in a T-shirt and jogging bottoms and Mike in his best suit, Mike wanted to say, “I’m coming in.” He wanted to say, “Hang the sodding wedding, this is more important.” He wanted to say, “I’ll wait and take you home after.”
Instead, he said, “You sure?”
Stephen threw him a baleful look. “I’m sure.”
“I could just go to the evening—”
“Don’t be daft, she’s your friend.” Stephen popped open the door. “Go on, go and enjoy yourself. I’ll come up for the party if I feel alright.”
“Wait, I can run you home after—”
Stephen rolled his eyes. “Jez is coming to pick me up. I’m helping him with their garden fence this afternoon.”
Mike mentally translated that as Stephen was going to do some stupidly manly stuff with Jez until he didn’t feel so odd about being the only bloke in a clinic full of women.
“Alright,” Mike said, subsiding a little. “Text me when you’re done, though.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sod fine, bloody do it.”
“Alright, alright!”
“And don’t overdo it.”
“Yes, Ma. Good God.”
“Oi!”
“Twassock.”
“Love you, too, you knob!” Mike shouted after him. Stephen just threw him the bird over his shoulder, then pushed through the clinic doors and disappeared.
Mike sighed, and put the car into gear. Nothing he could do, he told himself. The appointment would happen the same way it always happened, and they’d not find out if it had worked for a fortnight anyway. And for that fortnight, Stephen would be tight-lipped about how he felt and what he was thinking. Anything relating to the whole saga would be resolutely out-of-bounds. Mike might as well do as he was told, and enjoy himself.
But the clinic was expensive, and two treatment failures had taken their toll. This, Mike decided, would be the last time they tried.
“Last chance,” he murmured, then peeled out of the car park, and joined the traffic to head for Hillsborough.
Usually, when Mike said Hillsborough, he meant the general area. It was a not especially nice, though not especially foul either, area of Sheffield that was home to a huge park, an ugly tram stop and a collection of uglier shops, squashed into a sprawling plethora of shabby houses. And, of course, a football team. And usually, going to Hillsborough—for Mike—meant going to the supermarket after work, or running Stephen up to the park for one of his running club events.
This time, for once, he meant the stadium itself.
Amy was a big football fan, a devout Owls enthusiast, and relentlessly and mercilessly teased any member of the school, student or staff, who dared to support anyone else. Especially if they were so moronic as to support the rival team, Sheffield United. Her old man had been a former chairman of the club, and her brother had played for them for a little while before even Sheffield-level sport had decided he really wasn’t all that good.
So it was a surprise to nobody that the wedding reception was being held at the Wednesday home ground.
The actual ceremony was at a pretty little church around the corner, courtesy of Darren’s Irish roots demanding at least a show of religious fervour, but Mike parked at the stadium anyway and walked the rest of the way. It was cool and grey, the rain threatening a little, and Mike squinted up at the sky as he rounded the corner and approached the church. It was already busy. If needed, somebody would have a brolly he could duck under.
“Mike!”
Ah, and so the socialising began. He stretched his face into a smile, and accepted Sue Lipscombe’s hug with good grace.
“No other half?” she asked, peering round him like he might be hiding Stephen behind his bulk.
“Doctor’s appointment,” he said mildly. “He might be coming up later, though.”
She tutted. “Everything alright?”
“Oh, yes, he’s fine. Routine thing.”
The only one of his current colleagues to have ever met Stephen was the bride herself. The rest, Mike was semi-sure, weren’t wholly convinced that Stephen was real. And the interest in his love life was something Mike really wasn’t used to.
His last teaching position had been in the same school as Stephen, so even the densest of the children could have worked out that, as Dr Parry and Mr Parry both wore wedding rings and arrived in the same car every day, they were probably married. Some of the parents hadn’t liked it, but the pupils had been more interested in Mike’s collection of organs-in-jars, and Stephen’s real antique rifle. The staff hadn’t really cared one way or another. Married ones weren’t interesting until one of them had an affair.
But then Mike had left to go to the academy, and Stephen had stormed out of a meeting with the headmaster after parents had complained about the queer teacher running the swimming club and taken up his current position in a fit of anger, and things had changed. Stephen’s new school didn’t ha
ve the first clue who he was or where he’d come from, and Stephen had kept it like that. They hadn’t asked, he hadn’t told, and he was getting along famously.
But Mike’s new colleagues were gossips.
Grade A gossips.
The moment the female contingent of staff had found out that his wedding ring belonged to a husband and not a wife, they had swarmed around him like flies to a carcass, supremely and mystifyingly interested. The rest of it, Mike knew, was really his own fault and had come on the heels of Emma Mayhew’s coming out. The head of the science department had asked him to start an LGBT group for any other pupils like Emma that they might have, and Mike had been reluctant.
“I’m not sure it’s really appropriate for me to do it,” he’d said.
“Why not?”
“Well, I’m not LGBT.”
And apparently, that was the most curious thing he could have possibly said. Which, after nine years with Stephen, and many more years with a lesbian stepsister, he knew perfectly well, and ought to have avoided saying. Open mouth, insert foot.
Ever since, many of his colleagues had been eager to get a glimpse of Stephen—and the more they’d asked, the less Mike had wanted to say, out of sheer stubbornness. And the less he’d said, the more the rumours had spread.
Resulting in half the staff convinced Stephen didn’t exist at all, the other half convinced there was something terribly wrong with him, and Amy Burke, wearing a smug smile and knowing there was nothing sinister at work at all.
Mike rather suspected the talk of the evening might be his husband, not Amy’s.
“He is coming later, though?” Sue pressed.
“Yes.”
“It’ll be nice to finally meet him, that’s all.”
Mike shrugged. “He’s a busy man. Doesn’t come out to play much.”
“Oh, what does he do?”
He immediately wanted to dodge the question, for no other reason than to thwart her questioning. “This and that.”
He was rescued by the great boom of someone else’s voice—”Mike! There you are!”—and having his hand shaken until the shoulder ached by Derek Burns from the maths department.
“Derek, hi, nice to see you…”
He did the rounds, everyone gathering and gossiping like they’d been apart all summer, not a fortnight, and Mike managed to shuffle into the PE crowd and talk rugby for a little bit before Darren’s sickly green expression got greener, and the ushers began shuffling people to seats. The best man—Darren’s brother but without steroids, judging by the same soft Irish accent and mess of spiky black hair—had to physically haul the groom into the right place. Mike squeezed into a seat between a couple of the lab assistants, both of whom asked after Stephen’s whereabouts, and was enormously grateful for the silence that fell as the vicar stood up at the very front of the church.
Married Ones Page 4