“Only half.”
“And I have no idea what I’m doing,” Jesse said. “I make mistakes and I forget things and I bring flowers just in case I did something stupid I need to apologise for, and sometimes I make this guy so mad I think he’s going to dump me, and—”
“Oh, Jess, no—”
“And”—Jesse swallowed—“and he introduces me to his ex. This ex who could have modelled underwear and cologne at the same time. And earns a six-figure salary. And took a cooking class run by an actual Italian chef, just to impress this guy that I’m dating, and I felt—I felt so bloody inferior, Ezra. I felt like you never needed me and I was just you settling for what you could find in Brighton. I felt like you were dating a fucking waster and any minute now you’d realise what you gave up at the end of your degree and—”
“Come here,” Ezra whispered, tugging on the hand. Jesse went, settling on the pillows beside him and winding his arms around Ezra’s waist and shoulders, hugging him close. “This is what I mean, Jess. You don’t listen to me. You—”
“Wait,” Jesse murmured. “Let me finish.”
“Okay…”
“Then a drunk driver smashed into the front of your car and I realised just how fucking stupid I’ve been,” Jesse said lowly. “You were—Jesus, Ez, you were in so much pain and so panicky, and you needed me. You wouldn’t let go of me. You begged me not to go, and when I had to go around the car to let the paramedics brace you, you were crying and—I just—nobody else could have helped you but me.”
Ezra petted his hair and hummed softly.
“You needed me,” Jesse repeated, “and I think that’s what I was missing all along. You’re always so independent and caustic and—and you, and I love you for it, because you know, I never wanted some clingy, needy boyfriend because how the hell would that work with my job anyway, but—”
Ezra kissed his forehead and tugged until Jesse shifted enough to let him kiss his cheek. “Of course I need you, you bloody idiot,” he murmured.
“But I didn’t get that,” Jesse said, dropping his arm until both were round Ezra’s waist. He stroked a strip of exposed skin with his thumb. “I felt like an accessory next to Liam. I was just waiting for you to get tired of me. It didn’t—it didn’t sink in how much you needed me, too.”
“Do you need me?”
Jesse shifted to stare at Ezra. “Of course I need you.”
“Why?”
“Because—because I do, Ez,” Jesse struggled. “I mean…I get to come here after work and hug you when I have a bad day and you just—you make it better even if you’re ignoring me and doing your marking or whatever, and you text me when I’m at work, and—I love you, that’s why.”
“And that’s what I mean, sweetheart,” Ezra said. “You’ve not been listening to me. I’ve told you I love you, and when you think about it, you know I love you, but the minute I suggested visiting Mum, it was like you forgot. Like you stopped hearing me.”
“I was scared,” Jesse admitted, and tucked his cheek against the top of Ezra’s shoulder. “I was scared you were going to realise I wasn’t enough.”
“You weren’t listening,” Ezra said. “There are literally thousands of gay guys in this country who earn more than you, and have jobs better suited to actually dating than you, and actually know how to wash their clothes without mixing the darks and lights and turning everything grey, but I don’t love those guys, Jess. If we’re saying you get points for every good quality, then all the good stuff only ever adds up to a hundred, but me being in love with you gives you, like, a thousand.”
Jesse squeezed him tightly and curled closer. Ezra scratched his hair lightly and murmured a low endearment.
“I get it now,” Jesse murmured, and kissed Ezra’s shoulder through his T-shirt. “I do get it, Ez. The way you needed me in the car, and in the hospital when you were still so ill—”
“But you need to get it all the time, Jess, not just when I physically need you,” Ezra coaxed.
“I’m so—”
“Don’t apologise to me. Just listen to me.” Ezra pushed. “You have a real self-esteem problem. And I get where it’s coming from, I’d probably be just as screwed up with your family history, but you’ve got to sort it out. If you don’t, we’re just going to repeat this again and again somewhere down the line. It’ll be some attractive colleague, or Grace scheming again, or even Liam, because God knows the man’s like a terrier with a rat when he thinks he’s onto a winning bet and I doubt he’s going to back off just because I put a flea in his ear about listening to Grace. You have got to sort this out.”
“How?”
Ezra sighed. “I want you to see someone.”
“What?”
“A counsellor,” Ezra clarified. “You can organise it free through work. Just give it a go.”
Jesse cringed at the idea of telling a stranger all his secrets and letting them psycho-whatever him. “I don’t want to be psychomanaged,” he said.
“Psychoanalysed.”
“That.”
“I’m not burying this,” Ezra said. “You need to drop that way of thinking, sweetheart, or every time we fight, you’ll think I’ve stopped loving you, or I’m going to dump you, or you’re not worthy of me, or whatever.”
“I’ve learned—”
“You think you’ve learned, but I’m going to recover and the shock of this whole thing will wear off and you’ll fall right back into your old habits and we’ll start all over again.”
Jesse sighed heavily against Ezra’s collarbone.
“I do love you, Jess, but we need to fix this,” Ezra coaxed. “Just give it a try, all right? And while you’re at it, talk to the counsellor about this fear you’re going to turn out like your father.”
“Ez,” Jesse said warningly.
“Listen, I get it that you want to be careful,” Ezra said. “You do have a temper. You get wound up and explode, often over very silly things, but you’re not a violent man.”
“I don’t have to be violent,” Jesse said. “I just—I’m threatening, Ez. I—”
“Really?” Ezra said mildly. “Hm. I’ve never felt threatened by you.”
Jesse rubbed his thumbs over Ezra’s flushed-warm skin and said, “Good,” in a very small voice.
“Jess?” Ezra shifted a little to peer at his face. “I mean it. I mean, come on, that was an ugly row and I’ve no intention of having it again, but you never so much as came near me, never mind—”
“You tense up if I pin you down in bed,” Jesse said in a whisper.
“Now you’re being thick,” Ezra said sharply. “You know that’s nothing to do with you.”
“Ez—”
“It’s not,” Ezra said, scratching at his hair gently. “I was the same with Liam. Worse with Liam. And come on, Liam’s about as threatening as a newborn kitten.”
Jesse snorted with laughter and buried his face in Ezra’s neck to laugh helplessly at the mental image. Ezra sniggered and smiled into his hair, the little kiss he dropped there wide and amused.
“And you know it’s when you surprise me, or I’m too tired to process why I’m stuck,” Ezra murmured gently. “We both know I don’t get edgy when I know what’s coming. Literally,” he added, and Jesse squeezed warningly. “Jesse, I trust you. With my life, also literally. If it was anyone else, I would outright panic at being pinned down by—how much do you weigh now? Fifteen stone?”
“Sixteen,” Jesse said.
“And most of it muscle,” Ezra said agreeably. “Drop sixteen stone on top of me, and I will be less than happy, but sixteen stone of you, Jess—you see what I’m saying?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Just give the counsellor a try,” he coaxed gently. “If it’ll even help a little in sorting out your fears—”
Jesse kissed his neck. “Okay,” he conceded. “I’ll do it for you.”
Ezra pinched his shoulder. “I’d prefer if you did it for yourself, but I’ll take that, I suppose.”<
br />
“If I don’t like it or—”
“How about we agree on a minimum time?” Ezra suggested. “Let’s say you arrange for twelve weeks’ worth? And if it’s not working or you really hate it, then you can pack it in and we’ll think of something else.”
“Ten weeks. Tops.”
“All right.”
Jesse shifted to sit back on his heels, facing Ezra again, and took both hands in his. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Jess, I know, let’s—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I need to say this. I was way out of line that night. Of course you can have dinner with whoever you like, and I realise now how stupid I’ve been thinking you’re just going to up and go back to Liam in a heartbeat, and I am so sorry for the things I said to you, and nothing I said about you was true. Nothing.”
“I’m more worried about the things you said about yourself,” Ezra said lowly.
“And I’ll go to this counsellor for a while and I’ll try and work things out, but right now, I have to apologise for what I said to you,” Jesse insisted. “I was like a little kid throwing a massive tantrum, and I’m so sorry. And when your leg gets broken out of its tomb, I’ll take you out for the best dinner of your entire life.”
“Mm.” Ezra eyed the window. “I suppose I could do with some new flowers to brighten the place up.”
Jesse grinned and kissed him, short and sharp and hopeful.
“Done,” he said. “New flowers tomorrow.”
“Red ones,” Ezra demanded imperiously.
“Red ones,” Jesse agreed.
“And right now, you could make it up to me a bit more.”
“How?”
“Put a film on and hug me?”
Jesse braced his hands either side of Ezra’s hips to kiss him soundly, his nerves soothed when Ezra cupped his face, and smiled when Ezra broke it to press their foreheads together and murmur something Jesse couldn’t quite hear.
“Love you,” Jesse said.
“Love you too,” Ezra whispered, and Jesse knew it was true.
* * * *
Jesse woke sharply when something landed on the end of the sofa-bed.
Ezra had dozed off halfway through the film, had had another nightmare that Jesse cut off in the middle and had clung and cried in startled terror for a good few minutes before managing to collect himself and tearfully demand help to shower. The second nightmare had been worse than the first, and he’d seemed…unsteady, maybe, emotionally speaking, while Jesse helped him cover the cast and wash. He’d insisted on hobbling into the kitchen on his crutches to help with dinner, even though Jesse banished him to the table to play with the kitten and refused to let him help.
Said kitten was now sitting on Jesse’s toes and eyeing him through the gloom.
Jesse had left a lamp on, hoping the light would soothe Ezra’s overactive mind a little bit, and Kitsa’s eyes glittered an eerie green. Tiny claws plucked the sheets, and she stalked up Jesse’s body to butt her head against his chin and purr.
“Hello,” he whispered, tickling her side, and glanced at the DVD player. Half past one. Bloody cats.
Ezra was quiet. He’d not insisted again that Jesse stay, but after the second nightmare, Jesse hadn’t felt comfortable leaving, so he’d crept into the other side of the sofa-bed at half ten and curled an arm over Ezra’s chest, still wary of the ribs that had long since healed. He’d moved since, and they weren’t touching at all now.
Yet through the gloom, Jesse could see the frown on Ezra’s sleeping face.
“Out the way, moggy,” he mumbled, lifting the kitten off his chest and dropping her on the floor. She meowed pathetically. “Nope, sorry.”
He turned on his side to mould himself up against Ezra’s left. His left leg was stretched out as if it was still in the cast, Ezra’s brain having apparently not caught up with the news that it was actually a leg again and not an unwieldy club attached to his knee. Jesse brushed his toes against the ankle and slid an arm over Ezra’s waist.
“M’here, sweetheart,” he murmured, kissing his shoulder and squeezing very lightly, hoping to not wake him. Ezra murmured, shifted his shoulders and the frown smoothed away slowly. “That’s better.”
The next few weeks were going to be unpleasant, Jesse knew. He’d have to arrange counselling around work and looking after Ezra around his shifts and Ezra was going to be by turns grumpy as fuck—he was an awful patient, Jesse had learned—and upset and tearful as the nightmares worked their way out of his system. He’d started physiotherapy for his leg last week, and it had left him exhausted, frustrated and emotionally wrung out.
He was going to need Jesse.
He was always going to need Jesse, really, and Jesse stroked his thumb across Ezra’s lower ribs and watched his face relaxing and listened to a soft murmur that was possibly his name. Even when this was all over, he’d be able to hold on to that. Ezra had needed him, in the car and afterwards, and there was nobody else who could have done it. Nobody else who could have got him through it.
Nobody else who had Ezra, wholly and completely, and Jesse dared to press forward to kiss his ear. Nobody else who would have been enough.
Jesse was enough.
Jesse was more than enough.
Epilogue
September arrived as a baking thing, hot and airy and floating two inches off the ground. The road shimmered in the sunlight and an arid, smoky sort of breeze teased Jesse’s hair and felt thick in his lungs. It looked like autumn, with the dried-out leaves dying in the gutters and clouds skidding waywardly across the deep blue abyss of a sky, but never settling. By the heat, summer wasn’t quite ready to let go just yet.
Work had been busy, spontaneous fires and water rescues all over the place, as stray cigarettes lit up the dried-out countryside and people who ought to have known better swam in risky places to get away from the soaring temperatures. But work had also been regular, everything peaking in the middle of the day and tailing away in the evening.
Thus, Jesse walked home at eight-thirty, damp from the station shower and rapidly drying in the still-fierce heat. The sky was paler now, but still a long way from twilight, and his boots sucked greedily at the tarmac of the road, as if they too were thirsty.
“Hello, girl,” he said, when he reached Ezra’s gate and Kitsa leapt up onto the fence to rub her head against his elbow and meow plaintively. “If you want inside, use your cat-flap. Stupid cat,” he crooned, rubbing her ears and fishing out his keys. He’d had one cut for the front door, sick of the side gate. “No?” he asked, when she stayed on the fence and didn’t follow him to the door. “Fine, then, fuck you.”
The house was even warmer than the street. Jesse shed his boots and yelled a greeting, judging the echo expertly and following the change in sound. The back door was open, and a head of wild blond hair was visible over the back of the deckchair.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, bending over the chair to offer a kiss. Ezra smiled into it, his face pleasantly hot from his basking, the notebook he’d been flicking through dropping to the heavy textbook in his lap. “Still determined on going back next week?”
“Absolutely,” Ezra said. “And those brats are going to regret ever thinking a substitute means they don’t have to learn.”
Frankly, Jesse didn’t give a shit about the kids. The last fortnight had been devastatingly hot, and it had done Ezra a world of good. The waxy pallor to his features had faded under a crop of freckles, and he’d stolen some of Jesse’s dumbbells to idly lift while he lounged in the sun. He didn’t look ill anymore. He didn’t look frail anymore, despite the crutch and the cast, and the tiredness that still plagued him. Mostly due to the extra energy he needed to walk anywhere and the gruelling physiotherapy sessions five days a week.
“Well, put your stuff away,” he said, teasing the flyaway hair. “It’s dinner time. Want to hobble round the chippie with me?”
“But the suuuuun,” Ezra whined, tilting his head right back until he was a
lmost looking at Jesse upside-down. Jesse took the hint, and kissed his forehead, nose, chin and finally mouth. “Mm. Well, all right then.”
“Up to it?”
“Watch me, flame-boy.”
The most painful part was watching Ezra get up. Once he was up, he was relatively steady, if still easily tired and occasionally in a degree of pain. But getting up was an exhausting, laborious process—and to top it off, Jesse had been banned by the physiotherapist from helping.
‘He has to manage on his own,’ Tracy had said sternly. ‘Now he can do it, you’re not needed.’
Ezra’s right leg was still a ruin entombed in a cast, and the left weak and wobbly. The ankle was stiff and prone to cramps. The knee was next to useless and the subject of most of the physiotherapy sessions. Tracy still wasn’t sure whether Ezra would ever regain proper use of it, and nobody knew anything at all about the outcome for the right leg once the plaster could be broken open. But Jesse didn’t much care. He was still operating under thankfulness that Ezra was alive and hadn’t got shot of him after that fight.
“All right,” Ezra said, once he’d struggled out of the chair. “Let’s do this.”
“Sure?” Jesse said, locking the back door behind them as Ezra hobbled into the house.
“Stop fussing,” Ezra said, but there was no bite to it, and Jesse leaned in to kiss him as they reached the front door. “Mm. All right, keep fussing, whatever.”
“Knew you’d see it my way,” Jesse said.
The walk round to the takeaway usually took five minutes. It was just the other side of the main road and a cut through an alley that ran between the houses. With Ezra’s limp, it took closer to fifteen, and the faint traces of sweat were darkening his hair at his temples by the time Jesse pushed the door open and held it for him.
“Doing okay?” Jesse asked when Ezra lowered himself with difficulty into one of the plastic chairs.
“Mm.”
“Ez—”
“I’m fine,” Ezra said, and grimaced. “Could do with a couple of painkillers when we get back, though.”
“Tracy go hard on you? Usual, please, Mo,” Jesse asked as the takeaway owner’s teenage son stuck his head out of the kitchen.
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