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It’s for the best, Sam tells himself while the rest of the pub watch the beauty contest on the small television set. It’s for the best, that Felix leaves. He’d been becoming too reliant, anyway. It had been too good, too steady, and all too real, knowing someone as reliable and easy to talk to as Felix. He looks down at his half drunk beer, can feel Sister Boniface watching him. What really takes the mick, he thinks, what might make him laugh if he wasn’t so damn upset about it, is that now he can’t even enjoy the women on the tv screen. He’s not interested in the slightest; can’t even pretend to be.
Sister Boniface nudges his arm, a gentle tap against his shirt sleeve and he glances across at her, forces a smile. As he looks away she leans forward with a whisper: “He’ll visit, you know.”
Sam shrugs, pushes his thumb around the rim of his glass. His insides twist, his face feels hot. She doesn’t get it . She doesn’t get the way he feels about it, like a very piece of him has been physically ripped away. He feels sick . And, in fairness, he doesn’t get what it means anymore than Sister Boniface possibly could. It’s not even conducting investigations without Felix next to him, it’s waking up at Mrs Clam's and not sharing good mornings over breakfast with him, it's making a joke without Felix rolling his eyes beside him.
He tries to bundle it up. The pageant finishes. He doesn't remember who won, he realises, as the Sister turns off the television. When he makes the toast to Felix he thinks he’s swallowed it all down. Buried it.
And then Felix walks through the door like it’s nothing.
“How can you do that to me,” Sam growls into the back of Felix’s shoulder as they stumble into the house. It’s way past curfew, on any normal day, but it seems Mrs Clam relented just this once because the door had opened with a turn of Sam’s key. “Threatening to leave me like that.”
Felix chuckles, low in his throat, and he slips out of Sam’s grasp to shrug off his suit jacket. Sam watches, and his eyes slink down Felix’s white shirt as his arm stretches for the coat peg. There’s not one crease in the fabric, it fits tightly to Felix’s shoulder blades. It’s the alcohol making Sam look, or making him think to look. A little joke, a trick his mind’s playing on him. And also just that he’s glad Felix is back. Back back back.
He follows Felix up the stairs, trying to stifle a laugh because they’re supposed to be quiet. On the landing, between their two bedrooms Sam launches himself into Felix’s arms again, holding him close into a hug and squeezing his eyes shut.
“Sam…” But Felix keeps his arms around him, pressing his forehead into Sam’s shoulder, and in those moments on the top of the landing, Sam feels understood.
Awkwardly, Felix gives him a little, light tap on the back and starts pulling away. All Sam can do is oblige, step back. He looks at Felix, his eyes wide, moving about Sam’s face like he’s desperately trying to read him, and Sam looks at Felix’s lips and something swells inside of him. It’s a stupid need and a stupid ache so Sam forces a smile.
“Goodnight, Felix,” he says, and turns on his heel and steps into his bedroom.
In the room, door clicking shut, his hands tremble as he wrestles with the tie, in his haste accidentally tightening it before loosening it correctly. He likes women , he hastily reminds himself. And in fact even that is a stretch, because half the time he looks at women it is only because people expect him to. Just for show. Usually he needs more, some meaningful connection before he feels any true desire, which is why the little cat and mouse dance he thought he’d been doing with Ruth Penny was so new and exhilarating to him. Yes, his thing with Ruth , not Felix.
He could swear his shirt buttons have gotten smaller, or his fingers bigger, because they are painstakingly fiddly all of a sudden. And his mind can’t focus on them if he tries. Because alright, he did kiss Sid Carter when they were teenagers. Technically twice, but it was all part of the same incident, hiding in the shed at the bottom of Mr Walton’s garden, pressed close together. Sid leant in and kissed him quickly, just because he could. And he pulled back grinning, this bright, almost smug look and Sam only kissed him again just to wipe the look from his stupid face.
And sure Sid’s attraction extends to men. Sid’s attractions aren’t limited to arbitrary things like gender, or marital status or societal class (his words, sort of). But that doesn’t mean Sam’s the same. He isn’t. He really isn’t because Sid can like anyone and Sam… Sam really needs something meaningful first.
For women.
But when he’s finally undressed, and he’s clambering into his bed, his chest is still weighed down with something. A twisting, self-denying lie. And he doesn’t think of Ruth, he thinks of Felix, Felix and his bright smiles, Felix with his forehead against Sam’s clothes, Felix, and Sam’s need to be as close to him as possible. And he doesn’t know what to do with himself.