by Alexis Hall
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 he 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.
“So,” he asked, after a moment or two, “what now like?”
“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 pressed 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—let him go. “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 car—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 shop fronts. 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.
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. 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 go out 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, every now and then a gull. It was sort of . . . soothing. And must have sent him off to sleep because the next thing he knew it was 5 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 Shield
s 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.
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 incredibly excuse-making right now. Just another way for him to avoid having to feel bad about himself. No wonder Fen had wanted to stuff his head down the toilet. Okay, so it wouldn’t really have made a difference, and he was pretty glad it hadn’t happened, but it might have stopped everything from feeling so unbalanced. So dependent on Fen to give everything—including forgiveness—while Alfie did nothing.
Of course, 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 multifinish 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 sizeable 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.”
“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 just 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. And 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 un-messed 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 quite how dingy it was. 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.