Pansies

by Alexis Hall

  “You . . . It . . . What?”

  “She’s got a kerb weight of like a thousand kilograms. No room for air bags.”

  “Or traction control.”

  “Or antilock 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, man.”

  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 that was 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 want to 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.”

  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.”

  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.”

  “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.”

  “Yeah.”

  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?

&nb
sp; “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 their 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.”

  “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 savage, 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 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.

  Fen in the moonlight, spread beneath him, suspended between giving and taking.

  Remembering what Fen had 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?”

  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, “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 Be
ll?”

  “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.”

  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 was starting to understand he might need it.

  Fen, huddled beside him, seemed so fucking miserable. 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 barely understood himself. 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.