Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

December 2024

It’s about half-past seven when Eoin arrives at the pub on the week of his birthday. It must have started raining since Bill had arrived, because Eoin’s usually carefully contained curls are fluffed up into a halo around his head, and there are darker brown speckles across the shoulders of his tan jacket.

He is, Bill thinks, nearly unfairly gorgeous, in a way that seems to strike him anew every time he sees him.

Eoin isn’t looking at him, so Bill indulges himself in the sight a little while longer, watching as Eoin scans the bar, his brows drawing in confusion at the sight of the balloons at the table, seemingly entirely unsuspecting that they might be for him. Just as it looks like he’s about to head over though, the door opens behind him, and there is Paddy, wrapped in a jacket of his own and somehow twice as wet.

Bill has noticed Eoin looking at Paddy plenty over the last few months, of course. It’d be hard not to. He has noticed the two of them growing closer, has watched as Eoin reaches out, and as Paddy (who has friends, certainly, but has always seemed to keep some part of himself closed off, even to them) seems to reach back, and then Bill has – foolishly, perhaps – told himself to ignore it. It’s none of Bill’s business if Eoin has a little bit of a crush. It doesn’t seem as if he’s planning on doing anything about it just yet anyway, and even if he does, Bill is confident that he’ll attempt it far more gracefully than Bill himself had when he tried. He can even begrudgingly admit to himself that he has enough faith in Paddy and the ways in which he’s changed in the last five years that he would handle his rejection more gracefully this time too.

But then Bill watches Eoin’s face split into a grin at the sight of him. Watches Paddy shake his head and spray Eoin with water, and Eoin barely blink. Watches as Paddy pulls off his jacket to reveal the suit underneath, and Eoin’s eyes drag down the length of his body, slow and intense and full of desire.

“Think that’s going somewhere, then?” asks Jock from Bill’s left, and Bill lets out a sigh, unable to tear his eyes from the besotted look on Eoin’s face as Paddy catches the bar rag that Dave tosses him and dries his hair with it.

“Doubt it,” says Bill.

“Reckon you just don’t want to admit Paddy might have a soft side,” says Jock, and Bill scoffs under his breath.

“Oh, aye, that’s it,” he says sarcastically. On the other side of the room, Eoin adjusts his crutches so he can finger comb Paddy’s hair back into place for him, and Bill forces himself to turn and look at Jock instead, feeling vaguely ill. It’ll be a shame to watch Eoin get his heart broken. He hopes Paddy gets it over with soon.

“What does your sneaky arse know this time, then?” asks Jock, glancing from Bill’s face to whatever Paddy and Eoin are doing behind him and back again.

“Nothing,” says Bill. “Only Paddy doesn’t do that.”

“Men? He could,” says Jock with a shrug.

“Not just men,” says Bill flatly.

“And I’m sure you’d be the first one he’d tell if he started seeing someone.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” huffs Bill. “I’m saying he told me that he doesn’t.”

“Why would–” Jock starts, and Bill forces himself not to wince as Jock puts together what exactly Bill had been trying not to tell him, a broad grin spreading across his face. “When the fuck did you–”

“Lower your fucking voice,” hisses Bill. “It was years ago, and it was stupid, and he was a massive fucking cunt about it.”

“Oh, aye, and I’m sure you took it like a proper little angel too,” says Jock, still grinning like the bastard he is.

“Fuck off, McDiarmid.”

“Your charms are truly unmatched, laddie,” says Jock, slinging an arm around Bill’s shoulders as he tilts his chin up. “Happy birthday, Eoin!” he shouts over the top of Bill’s head.

Eoin spends the evening watching Paddy, and Bill spends the evening watching Eoin. There’s an uncomfortable feeling growing in his chest, something that almost feels like guilt, but it’s not until Paddy steps out to smoke and Eoin leans his whole body into Paddy’s orbit on the way out that it reaches a breaking point.

“Fuck,” Bill mutters.

“Really think the lad’ll be getting his heart broken then, hm?” asks Jock, and Bill sighs heavily.

“Aye, probably.”

“Shame there’s no one who can warn him away,” says Jock, and Bill rolls his eyes.

“Alright,” he mutters. “Fine, I’ll just– I’ll be right back.”

He waits as Reg gets up too, then Pat, and he slips out behind them, thankful that at least the rain seems to have stopped.

“You don’t smoke anymore,” says Pat around the unlit cigarette in his mouth when Bill joins them, hand hesitating for a moment as he holds his lighter in front of it.

“Needed some air,” says Bill with a shrug, but he glances up at Paddy when he says it and finds Paddy already looking back. “Can I get a drag of yours?”

Pat flicks his lighter open, and Bill watches as the cherry glows red on his first long inhale before he hands it off to Bill. Their fingers brush, and Bill can feel Paddy’s gaze following that too.

Reg, who stands between Paddy and Pat but whose eyes are focused somewhere far off in the distance, seems to notice none of it.

They smoke mainly in silence, Pat’s few attempts at small talk ruined quickly by the trio of introverts surrounding him. Bill’s just waiting anyway, keeping an eye on how fast they’re smoking, trying to make sure Paddy doesn’t leave before Bill can catch him.

Reg finishes first, heading back inside with a nod, and Pat is right behind him. He pauses, clearly expecting Bill to join him, but Bill waves him off with a muttered “Be there in a second,” and then it’s just the two of them.

There is silence for a second, maybe two, before Bill feels the first raindrops beginning to land on his head.

“Better go ahead and get it out of the way quick then,” says Paddy, dropping his cigarette on the ground and grinding it out under the toe of his boot.

“Don’t lead him on,” says Bill simply, crossing his arms over his chest. “He deserves better than that.

“I’m not doing anything,” says Paddy. 

“Sure you are,” says Bill. “You can’t be that blind, can you?”

Paddy opens his mouth as if to continue, and then pulls his cigarettes from his pocket again instead, placing a fresh one between his lips. He hesitates, then holds the pack out to Bill, who has to take a second of his own to consider before he shakes his head.

Bill waits as Paddy lights his second smoke, thinking of the last time they were out here like this, of watching the way Paddy’s fingers held his cigarette, the way his face moved and his cheeks hollowed out, and how badly, in that moment, he had wanted more.

Whatever attraction to Paddy he had felt back then is long gone. He can still recognise that he’s a handsome man, certainly, but there is no desire left for him. He'd like to say it had left him that very night, after all the horrible things that Paddy had said to him, but it had clung on fiercely for a while after, Bill’s body revelling as it always does in allowing the shame and attraction to exist alongside one another.

He does not know, if he’s being honest, when exactly he stopped wanting Paddy. He only hopes that Eoin is lucky enough that it happens sooner for him.

“He’s a friend,” Paddy says at last, his blatant attempt at playing dumb rather ruined by the fact that Bill at no point has said Eoin’s name.

“He wants to fuck you,” says Bill flatly, and Paddy just rolls his eyes silently. “Are you going to tell him, at least?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” mutters Paddy.

“Man delights not me,” Bill says dryly. “Nor–”

“How about you mind your own fucking business, eh, Fraser?” asks Paddy, stubbing out his half finished cigarette on the wall. 

“He’s twenty-two, Paddy,” says Bill. He pauses, sighs, and tries one more time. “Just… do me a favour, and maybe try not to be a massive fucking cunt when you turn him down like you were with me, yeah?”

“When have you ever known me not to be a cunt?” asks Paddy, and he turns and walks back into the pub before Bill can reply, leaving Bill with nothing but the lingering scent of cigarette smoke and a nearly painful wave of deja vu.

Paddy is already excusing himself by the time Bill catches up with him, and Bill forces himself, no matter how badly he wants to leave it, to give it one last try. For Eoin’s sake, if nothing else. He’s too fucking good for his own good, the lad is, and while Bill is sure it’s going to get him hurt eventually, the least he can do is try to make sure it’s not because of Paddy fucking Mayne.

“Eoin,” he says, stopping beside Eoin’s seat at the table. “A word?”

June 2020

There’s an unfamiliar man sitting at the table next to Paddy when Bill arrives at the pub.

He’s handsome, in an unquestionably pretentious sort of way, with little wire rimmed spectacles and slightly overlong dark curls, dressed in a turtleneck and blazer as if he’s at a fancy cocktail bar and not a pub with band stickers and graffiti littering the walls of the toilets.

David is here already as well; normally Bill and Paddy would be the first ones to get here, but Bill’s been making rather a point of showing up later the last few months. He’s not exactly trying to be alone with Paddy any more frequently than he has to, not after how it had ended last time.

Dave is busy making a drink for someone else, so Bill sits in one of the chairs next to David while he waits, rather than the other side by Paddy; he doesn’t care much for David either, but he is, at least in this particular instance, the slightly lesser of two evils.

“Who’s this?” Bill asks, nodding at the new man, and Paddy snorts in amusement even as David tsks in disapproval.

“Don’t be rude, Bill.”

“Ah, no,” says Paddy, “Augustin should’ve known what he was getting into, insisting on coming along as he did.”

“Bill, was it?” asks the dark haired man, accent thick and unquestionably French. He takes in Bill with a look on his face that says very clearly that he knows something about Bill already, and Bill’s willing to bet that it’s something that he would prefer he didn’t. “Augustin Jordan.” He holds out a hand, and it’s not until Bill takes it that he continues. “Paddy’s best friend from university.”

Ah, thinks Bill, glancing from Paddy to Augustin and back. He supposes it was too much to think Paddy wouldn’t have told anyone about that last, horrible conversation, then.

“When have I ever called you that?” huffs Paddy in amusement, bumping Augustin’s shoulder with his own.

“Sometimes,” says Augustin, “when one comes across a man like you, who is delighted by the practise of speaking many words and saying nothing, one does have to fill in the blanks. My drink is empty,” he adds cheerfully. “May I get you something as well, Bill?”

“You don’t have to–” says Bill awkwardly, pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll just… come with you.”

“Excellent,” says Augustin. “If you would, Blair.”

It takes Bill a moment to realise that it’s Paddy that Augustin is speaking to, but Paddy moves at his words with another good-natured grumble so Augustin can climb out of the booth past him. One of his hands lands on Paddy’s shoulder as he does, and Paddy does not shy away from it.

Maybe, Bill thinks, even if Paddy isn’t interested in him specifically, he hadn’t been so offbase with his assumption after all. Maybe his type just happens to have dark curly hair and dress like an academic.

“So,” says Augustin, walking just a touch closer to him than someone might on average – just enough that it leaves Bill questioning if he’s imagining it, “you are… Scottish, yes?”

“What gave me away?” asks Bill flatly, and Augustin laughs lightly.

“Forgive me, I am not always terribly accurate with identifying all your many accents in English. Blair’s I know well, of course, but I have spent very little time with anyone from Scotland.”

“Ah,” says Bill, immediately feeling like a dick. “Right.”

“Did you like it?” asks Augustin. “Growing up there?”

“Not especially,” says Bill, and before Augustin can ask another follow-up question, “Why do you call him Blair?”

“Are you telling me you believed his real name was Paddy?” asks Augustin with an amused little smile.

Honestly Bill hasn't really spent much time thinking about Paddy outside of the context of his friendships with the other pub lads, but he's not about to admit to that, not when he’s sure Augustin knows that Bill had offered to suck his dick not even two months ago. “Could be short for Patrick,” he mumbles with an awkward shrug.

“Alright, lads?” calls Dave with a grin, saving Bill from spiralling.

“I'll have another Manhattan if you please, Dave,” says Augustin. “Bill?”

“I'll do the same,” says Bill, who couldn't name a single ingredient in a Manhattan even with a gun to his head.

Augustin pays before Bill can even reach for his wallet, leaving Bill feeling distinctly wrong-footed. He's not used to men buying things for him without a certain intention behind it, and while he certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that Augustin is queer, he still can't fathom, given the circumstances, why he might be trying to make a move on Bill regardless. Even if Augustin and Paddy aren’t involved, what could possibly make Augustin want to flirt with someone who had been so thoroughly and recently rejected by his supposed best friend?

“How long have you been in London?” Augustin tries again.

“Four years,” says Bill. He pauses, realises he’s supposed to ask a question of his own now, and forces himself to keep going. “What about you?”

“Oh, a week and a half or so,” says Augustin.

“You don’t live here?”

“My God, no,” says Augustin with a light laugh. “It’s a lovely city, of course, and I am always happy to come and spend time here, but Paris will always have my heart.”

“I’ve never been,” says Bill, and the next thing he knows Augustin’s hand is on his shoulder.

“Oh, you must,” he says, as if this touch is completely normal. Maybe to him, it is. Maybe the French are just a particularly physically affectionate people. “I’d be happy to show you around, of course, if you ever do.”

Then again, maybe Augustin really is just flirting. It’s a bit of a questionable choice on his part as far as Bill is concerned, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He gives Augustin another considering once over, tasting his words before he speaks.

“I’ll let you know,” he says slowly, “if I ever need showing around, then.”

Augustin’s smile widens. “Lovely,” he says, and then Dave is setting down two glasses in front of them, and Augustin is picking one up and holding it up to Bill in toast. “To new experiences, then.”

“New experiences,” says Bill, and he stops himself from following it up by asking if Augustin would like to have a new experience right now through nothing but the knowledge that Mike would never forgive him if he found out he’d fucked someone in the toilets here.

The moment is rather ruined anyway when Bill takes a sip of his drink, wrinkling his nose immediately at the acrid tang of it.

Augustin laughs. “Not a fan, are you?”

“You like this?” Bill chokes out.

“It is perhaps… an acquired taste. Shall I get you something else?”

“No, fuck off,” says Bill quickly. “I’ll drink it.”

“Ah,” says Augustin, smile widening. “You are a masochist, then?”

Bill feels hot, right up to the very tips of his ears, but he is, at least, fairly certain now that Augustin is in fact flirting, so he pushes down the embarrassment in favour of flirting back. “Are we still talking about the drink?”

“Only if you’d like to be,” says Augustin lightly. “Shall we?”

“After you,” Bill mutters, and he follows Augustin back to the table.

March, 2025

Bill had sent Augustin the address to the bar on the corner by his building, and he’s already waiting outside when Bill arrives, leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his hand and the collar of his jacket turned up against the wind. He’s just as handsome as Bill remembers, and he takes a moment to look him over before Augustin sees him, appreciating the sharp angles of his hands and face, the way his cheeks hollow out as he sucks in.

Then Bill clears his throat and steps forward, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his own jacket, and Augustin looks up, face splitting into a smile.

“Bill,” he exclaims warmly, stepping forward and pulling Bill into a half embrace, cigarette held off to the side as he brushes lips across Bill’s cheek. “It’s lovely to see you.”

“Didn’t know you were in town,” says Bill, not kissing him back but lazily making the vague impression of a kissing noise next to his cheek.

“Yes, well, it’s been a rather… fraught visit.”

“Sure,” says Bill. “Boyfriend finally moving on and all that.”

Augustin doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t deny it either. “Buy you a drink?” he asks instead, and Bill reaches out for the door to the bar instead of answering.

This bar is a far cry from Oasis, sleek and modern and lit almost exclusively in warm orange neon light strips, but it’s close to home and Bill knows all the bartenders, by face if not by name. He’s never brought anyone in before, and the bartender gives him a curious look but says nothing, already grabbing a glass for his gin and tonic.

“Still have bad taste in liquor?” asks Bill, and Augustin rolls his eyes affectionately but leans forward to address the bartender directly.

“I’ll have a Manhattan, please,” he says, before turning back to Bill. “Still a bit of a cunt then.”

“You liked that I was a bit of a cunt,” says Bill, placing his card down on the bar before Augustin can even reach for his wallet. “Don’t let him pay,” he adds, waving Augustin away.

“Letting me stay with you and you won’t even allow me to pay for your drink,” tsks Augustin. “Careful, Fraser, or people might start finding out you have a good heart.”

“The drink I owe you for last time,” says Bill, taking his card back from the bartender and collecting their glasses. “And I never said I’d let you stay with me.”

“It’s nearly midnight,” says Augustin. “If you send me away now I’ll have no choice but to find a park bench to sleep on. Who knows what could happen to me, alone in the dark, the cold. I could freeze to death.”

Bill rolls his eyes, leading them toward one of the tables in the corner. “It’s twelve degrees out,” he says, “you’d be fine.”

“But what about my youthful whimsy, Bill? What about my joie de vivre? Will that survive too?”

“Fuck’s sake you’re dramatic,” grumbles Bill as he sits down. “You’re sleeping on the sofa.”

“You are a true hero,” says Augustin, setting his glass down on the table but staying on his feet. “I’m buying us shots.”

“Grand,” says Bill, who’s already three drinks in.

June 2020

The drink may taste terrible, but there’s no denying that it’s nothing but pure liquor, and Bill’s already feeling a bit soft around the edges when Pat and Jim arrive, far later than usual, both sporting a truly impressive set of circles under their eyes. They have four children between them at home, all under the age of three, so Bill’s honestly just amazed they’ve been consistently making it out in the last year at all.

“How are the twins, then?” asks David, and Jim fixes him with a withering stare.

“Well, they’re walking now,” he says. “Also, there’s two of them.”

Bill snorts into his glass. Jim is usually far better at hiding his distaste for David than this, which means he must really not be getting any sleep. Bill knows he probably ought to feel a little worse about how funny he finds it, but considering the amount of overlap between his feelings about David Stirling and Jim’s, he’s not quite able to muster it.

David only takes it in stride though.

“Ah, yes,” he says, as if he is an expert on the behaviour of infants. “I’ve heard that twins tend to do that.”

“Do they?” asks Paddy in mock surprise. “Fascinating insight there, Stirling.”

“Irish cunt,” says David cheerfully.

“Posh wanker,” Paddy shoots back.

“We can’t stay long,” says Pat, shrugging out of his jacket and claiming the seat next to Bill. “Alfredo’s at home with May and Alessia, but– well, you know. I don’t know you,” he adds, finding himself face to face with Augustin.

“Good lord, can no one here introduce themselves like a real adult?” mutters David into his pint.

“Augustin Jordan,” says Augustin, holding out a hand. “An old friend of Paddy’s.”

“Pat Riley,” says Pat with a grin. “How old are we talking here? You have baby pictures? Acne and braces and all that?”

Augustin snorts in amusement. “Something like that, yes,” he says, then jolts slightly in a way that makes Bill fairly sure that Paddy has kicked him under the table, “which regrettably I do not have access to at the moment,” he continues quickly.

“Boring,” grumbles Pat.

“Mind your fucking business, Riley,” snaps Paddy.

“Stop being so mysterious and I’ll stop being nosy, Mayne,” Pat shoots back with a grin. “Tell us an embarrassing story, at least.”

“In our second year at university I once watched him recite the entirety of Lewis Carroll’s The Jabberwocky while soaked to the bone standing in our campus’ courtyard fountain.”

“Drunk?” asks Pat.

“Fully sober,” says Augustin. “In the middle of the afternoon, no less.”

“Why?” asks Pat.

“Why the fuck not?” asks Paddy. “How’s May holding up?” he adds to Jim, who’s been staring off into space, clearly taking in none of the conversation around him.

“Hm?” he asks, blinking several times. “Ah. She’s getting there. Still not feeling her best, but the meds seem to be helping. Alfredo’s been a big help, bless him, especially now it looks like Nico’s about to start walking too.” He blinks again, seeming to register Augustin’s presence for the first time. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he says, holding out a hand. “Jim Almonds.”

Augustin’s mouth twitches, but he holds back a full smile. “Augustin Jordan,” he says. “Enchanté.”

“Paddy’s friend from uni, yeah?” asks Jim. “Great to put a face to the name.”

“How do you know that?” asks Pat.

Jim smiles and shrugs. “I pay attention.”

If it were anyone else, in any other situation, the entire table would have jumped on that one mercilessly. As it is, it’s just David who opens his mouth, only to shut it again when Bill elbows him hard in the side. Now is not the time, and besides, Bill must stay, as always, tacitly in league with Jim against their common enemy.

Jock arrives shortly after, and Reg a few minutes later, and somehow Bill finds the table being rearranged, Reg sliding in next to Paddy to talk to him about something, and Augustin moving to the chair directly beside Bill’s.

“How are you enjoying your cocktail?” he asks, leaning over far enough that Bill can feel his breath warm against his ear.

“Think I might stick to what I know next time,” Bill says, and Augustin laughs.

“Understandable,” he says. “Though you never know if you’ll like something new until you try.”

March 2025

Bill is drunk when they leave the bar, though Augustin doesn’t seem far behind, nearly stumbling when they step out the door and catching himself with a hand on Bill’s elbow.

“Thought French people were supposed to be good at holding their liquor,” says Bill, who’s not actually sure he’s heard that said specifically, though it feels right in the moment.

“Perhaps you just make me nervous,” teases Augustin, fluttering his eyelashes coquettishly for a moment, only to immediately break character with a crooked grin. His hair is falling down over his forehead, and Bill can’t help but reach up and push it back.

Between one second and the next, Augustin is pushing him back, holding him firm against the brick wall of the bar, and kissing him hard.

Bill groans into it, hands coming up to grab Augustin by the jacket and press their bodies further together. He really hadn’t been expecting the night to go this way, even after he received Augustin’s text, but he can’t say he’s upset that it has. They’d had fun, all those years ago, even after their somewhat rocky start, and if Pat hadn’t succeeded at getting Elliot out of Bill’s system, then maybe Augustin can.

Augustin breaks the kiss to press his lips to Bill’s ear, and his words make Bill shiver.

“Any chance of putting that bed of yours to use before I’m banished to the sofa?”

“Aye,” Bill gasps, pressing a leg between Augustin’s. “I think we can–”

Between them, Bill’s phone buzzes in his jacket pocket. Then again. Augustin pulls away.

“Would you like to get that?”

“It’s nothing,” says Bill. His phone buzzes a third time, then a fourth, and he knows Augustin is still close enough to feel it too.

“It’s fine,” says Augustin, stepping back entirely. “Go on.”

Bill sighs, ready to tell Jock to fuck off with whatever stoned nonsense he’d be sending at this time of night, only to find that it’s not Jock texting him.

guess where my friend daphne dragged me tonight, Elliot has sent under his unreplied request for photos of Withers, along with a picture of the club they’d gone to on New Year’s. Then another picture of the alley they'd met in, with the caption what could’ve been…. ;)

A fifth message comes in as Bill is looking, which simply says, what are u up to tonight?

“Ah,” says Augustin, and it’s only then that Bill realises he’s smiling.

“What?” asks Bill, forcing his face back into something more neutral.

“Is it serious?”

“Is– I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The man that you’re seeing,” says Augustin, nodding at Bill’s phone. 

“I’m not seeing him,” Bill says quickly, typing out busy tonight, and hitting send before shoving his phone back in his pocket. No one tonight, it seems, can manage to wrap their head around the fact that Bill might be able to enjoy sleeping with someone and talking to him without it having to mean more than that. “Can we get back to you pinning me to the wall now, or–?”

“Ah, but this is much more interesting,” says Augustin, tugging out his cigarettes, fully ruining Bill’s hopes of not talking about it, thank you very much. “Am I meant to believe that the famously single Bill Fraser has developed – God forbid – feelings?”

“There’s no feelings, fuck’s sake,” huffs Bill. “Give me one too.”

“Fine,” says Augustin, holding up his cigarette case just out of Bill’s reach. “If you tell me his name.”

“Don’t forget whose sofa you’re sleeping on tonight,” Bill huffs.

Augustin shrugs. “It’s only twelve degrees out,” he says, putting a cigarette to his lips and lighting it. “I won’t freeze.”

Bill rolls his eyes. “His name is Elliot,” he says, already regretting it. “And we’re just fucking.”

“Did you smile like that when I texted you, then?” asks Augustin, handing Bill the lit cigarette from between his lips and getting another for himself.

“Of course not,” says Bill. “But that’s because you’re insufferable.”

As if Elliot isn’t a bit insufferable too, he reminds himself. If Elliot’s type is mean, Bill’s starting to think that his might be annoying.

As if he can hear Bill’s thoughts, Augustin says, “Ah, you like that I’m insufferable though.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” says Bill. “Come on now, we may as well get back to my flat.”

June 2020

It’s maybe an hour and a half before the pub clears out again, Jim and Pat first, then Reg, then Jock, leaving only Bill, Paddy, David, and Augustin grouped around one end of the table, none of them in the seats they had started in.

“Well, we ought to get going if we’d like to get an early start on it tomorrow,” says David (who Bill is fairly certain has had about twice as many drinks as anyone else at the table), slapping his hands upon his knees.

“Ah, and will we be getting an early start on it tomorrow, then?” asks Paddy, “or will you be having a bit of a hungover lie-in and then come prancing out into the living room at half-past mid-afternoon suggesting we all go for a wee brunch?”

“A wee brunch is essential to the process, Paddy,” huffs David. “We must build fortitude for the task ahead.”

“And is that what all of the whiskeys were for as well?” asks Paddy.

David scoffs loudly. “As if I haven’t seen you take down twice as many the night before events far more important,” he sniffs, every bit a bird that’s had its feathers ruffled mid-display. 

“Oh, alright,” says Paddy, clearly just humouring him. “You’ll be alright to get to your hotel?” he adds, turning to Augustin as he gets to his feet.

“I will be just fine,” says Augustin. “This city of yours isn’t as mysterious as you seem to think it is, you know. And besides, Bill will help me if I get lost, won’t you?”

Suddenly there are three pairs of eyes locked onto Bill, and he doesn’t know what he’d been about to say, but the words die in his throat from the targeted attention alone. “Uh,” he says. “Sure.”

“Fantastic,” says Augustin. “Off you two go then. I will see you in the morning.”

Paddy and David obey, much to Bill’s surprise, and then it’s just the two of them left, Augustin sitting close at Bill’s right.

“Well,” says Augustin. “What shall we do with the rest of our evening, then?”

“I thought you had to get an early start tomorrow,” says Bill.

“Oh, please,” says Augustin, waving a hand airily. “David will not rouse himself before midday at the earliest, no matter how heartily he claims the contrary. Blair will curse, and bang pots and pans outside his bedroom door, but none of it will work, and I have no interest in being there for any of it when I have already witnessed this multiple times this week.”

“They’re moving, right?”

“They are,” says Augustin. “Jock is moving in with that lovely girlfriend of his, and I somehow have been called abroad to make sure that Blair and David do not murder each other in the process of moving into their new flat.”

“How selfless of you,” says Bill, who has a feeling that Augustin had been more than happy to insert himself directly into the middle of the chaos. “Especially considering they’ll probably end up killing each other after you leave anyway, just the two of them trying to live together.”

“Oh, without a doubt, yes,” says Augustin. “But then, of course, the responsibility of disposing of their bodies falls to the leasing company and not to poor Jock, who has enough to worry about already.”

“I see you’ve really put some thought into this,” says Bill. “Does Paddy know you’re too good for him?”

“I do try to remind him whenever I can,” says Augustin. “Shall I get us another round of drinks?”

“Fuck it, why not,” says Bill. “But get me a gin and tonic this time.”

March 2025

“So, how long has it been going on?” asks Augustin once the door to the flat is closed behind them, not even giving Bill a chance to distract him first.

“How long has what been going on?” asks Bill, reaching down to untie his shoes. 

Withers comes trotting over to say hello, and Bill does his best to avoid Augustin’s eyes by kneeling down properly to scratch him behind the ears, but he can feel them heavy on his back all the same.

“Elliot,” says Augustin, as if that ought to be obvious. It had, of course, been obvious, but Bill keeps playing dumb anyway.

“Like I said,” he says, glancing up at Augustin with a faint glare, “nothing’s ‘going on.’ He's a man that I’ve fucked a few times. That’s it.”

“A man that you’ve fucked a few times who has your phone number,” says Augustin, kneeling down beside Bill under the guise of greeting Withers too. “Something which I had to steal out of Blair’s nightmare of a flip phone, for the record.”

“Why did you text me, by the way?” asks Bill, letting Augustin take over ear scratching duty so he can finish tugging off his shoes and straighten up. “I thought you had a girl in every port, or however the saying goes.”

“Perhaps I wanted to see you again,” says Augustin with a shrug, glancing up at him. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Bill crosses his arms, leaning back against the front door and taking in the sight of him. For all that Augustin’s been trying to get something out of him, Bill’s starting to get the distinct sense that he’s hiding something too. “It’s been five years,” he says, watching the way Augustin’s shoulders tense. “I’m sure you’ve been in town between then and now.”

“So what if I have?” asks Augustin, pushing himself back to his feet. His moment of defensiveness barely lasts as long as his sentence though, the sudden movement clearly a bit too much for him after how much he’s had to drink. Within moments he is letting out a heavy sigh, leaning against the wall with his shoulder, reaching up to remove his glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose. “Can we sit down, please?”

“Take your shoes off first,” says Bill, but he ducks into the kitchen without pushing any further.

Augustin dutifully tugs his shoes off as Bill washes his hands, refills Withers’ food dish, washes his hands again. It’s second nature by now, especially when he’s tipsy, letting the muscle memory kick in as he does his little homecoming tasks and listens to the sound of Augustin settling down on the sofa with a low sigh. They’ve both probably had enough, Bill thinks, but he pulls two bottles of cider out of the fridge anyway, and moves to join Augustin in the living room in silence. He sits at the far end of the sofa, folding his limbs awkwardly up and under him. The simmering undercurrent of sexual tension from earlier is thoroughly broken by now, and without the warm, sexy lighting of the bar, or the harsh contrast of black and white from the street lamps, the magical, almost otherworldly aura that had surrounded Augustin earlier seems to have dimmed as well.

He is still handsome, of course, nothing could take that away, but he looks oddly defeated, now that Bill looks at him more closely, his facade of cheer and charisma rather faded away in the harshness of the overhead, his hair limp, his shirt wrinkled.

“Is this about Paddy and Eoin?” asks Bill, never one to tiptoe around a subject, and Augustin’s shoulders seem to slump even further.

“No,” says Augustin, a little too quickly for Bill to quite believe him. “No, no, it’s– merde, I am sorry. I did not intend to–”

He had seemed so put together the last time they met, Bill thinks, so perfectly, effortlessly presentable, that it is almost unsettling to see him like this, so lost and unmoored. Even now, five years after the fact, Bill can still see him so clearly back at that table at Oasis, in his hotel room later that night, magnificently drunk and shining like the sun.

There is no shine to him now.

“I believe I may have thought…” Augustin murmurs, peeling at the label on his bottle with one thumbnail, eyes vaguely unfocused. He lets out a huff of breath that’s not quite a laugh. “It’s stupid, of course.”

Bill isn’t used to being confessor to someone, not like this. Jock tells him about his dating life of course, and Pat and Jim have told him bits and pieces about their parenting struggles, but he does not remember the last time someone really bared their soul to him the way he thinks that Augustin is about to. 

He does not know what to do, how to respond. And so he just sits, silently, and waits for him to go on.

Augustin tilts his head up, eyes wide and startlingly blue. “You have seen them together, yes?”

“I’ve– aye, I’ve seen them together,” says Bill.

“And you think… they are good for each other?”

Bill sighs, leaning back against the sofa cushions, lifting his bottle to his lips and taking a long pull as he tries to figure out what to say. Who the fuck is he to try to determine if two people are good for each other? Are Johnny and Reg “good” for each other? Are Pat and Jim? Or David and Eve or Jock and Mirren or any other combination of two people in the strange nest of relationships that Bill has found himself caught up in? What does that even mean, to be good for someone? To be good to them? To treat them well?

And then, of course, how is he meant to tell Augustin all the ways in which he and Eoin resemble each other? How everything that had attracted Bill to Augustin that first night has been there and present in Eoin all this time too, albeit in a different, perhaps softer way? The height, the dark curls, their style of dress, the easy smile and unapologetic charisma and the way of speaking that makes everyone else want to be quiet and listen? How is Bill meant to tell Augustin, who had never quite got over that shock of first love, that Paddy has finally found someone new, and that Augustin had only barely failed to make the cut? 

“They make each other smile,” he says at last. “I’ve… never seen Paddy smile like he does with Eoin.”

“Ah,” murmurs Augustin. “Yes, that seems… I am happy for them, you know.”

“Aye, you look pretty fucking happy for them,” scoffs Bill, and Augustin lets out a humourless chuckle.

“I always thought…” he murmurs, eyes fixed on his bottle again, “that if Blair were ever to… to change his mind, I suppose. That it would be for me.”

Bill pauses, licks his lips, waits for something profound to come to him, and when it doesn’t, he pushes along anyway.

“I think I’m meant to say something a wee bit more sympathetic than ‘life’s a bitch,’” he tells Augustin, inexperienced in offering this kind of gentleness but trying his hardest all the same. “But unfortunately that’s all that’s coming to mind.”

Augustin laughs again, a proper one this time, and when he finally looks up from the bottle, there’s a hint of amusement back in his eyes. “Yes, well, you do have a point,” he says. “To the bitch,” he adds, raising his bottle in the air and waiting for Bill to knock it with the base of his own.

“Aye, to the bitch,” he says.

They take a long swallow each, and a memory that’s been dancing at the edges of Bill’s mind for the last several minutes finally pushes itself to the forefront.

“You know something funny?” he says. “Last time, at the pub, you told me we had three options.”

“Did I?” asks Augustin, brow furrowing as he tries to remember.

“You did,” says Bill with a wry smile. “I picked the third one, if I’m remembering right, which was going back to your hotel room and taking each others’ clothes off.”

“Ah, that does sound like one of mine,” says Augustin. “What were the other two, then?”

“Well,” says Bill, “I think this might be the second.”

June 2020

Augustin, he tells Bill, is studying to get his PhD in philosophy, something that feels so absurdly on brand that Bill can’t help but laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” asks Augustin, brow furrowing, and Bill just shakes his head. He’s extremely pleasantly tipsy, and Augustin is sitting close enough that Bill can feel the heat radiating off of his body, and he can’t deny that it simply feels good to have someone so unquestionably beautiful and charismatic focused so fully on him. It reminds him, in some odd way, of his time with Dudley, and the thought doesn’t even ache as much as it used to.

“Nothing,” says Bill. “That just makes sense.”

“Ah, you are making fun of me,” says Augustin, but there’s an amused smile on his lips anyway. “You are lucky you’re so beautiful when you laugh.”

Whatever Bill had been about to say in return dies in his throat, his already alcohol flushed cheeks growing hotter under Augustin’s attention.

“I–” he chokes out. “That’s… You don’t have to say all that.”

“I know I don’t,” says Augustin. “However, it is true, and so I think it deserves to be said anyway.” He pauses, and then he leans forward, hand landing on Bill’s knee, lips not quite pressed to his ear but close enough all the same. “Besides,” he murmurs, “I think you liked it.”

Bill shivers.

“What if I did?” he asks, barely daring to turn his head, only moving far enough to catch sight of Augustin’s eyes, and the way they’re fixed on Bill’s lips.

“Then I’d probably also tell you how pretty your mouth is in particular,” says Augustin, flicking his eyes up to Bill’s for a split second, then back down. “Perhaps, even, that I’ve been thinking about how it might feel on me all night.” 

He pulls away then, leaning back in the booth, and reaches for his cocktail glass.

“But only if you liked it,” he adds cheerfully, as if he had said nothing out of the ordinary, as if Bill isn’t three quarters of the way to hard just from the last thirty seconds of interaction and the thought of getting his mouth on Augustin’s cock.

Augustin throws back the last swallow of his drink, smile still dancing around the corners of his lips, then returns the glass to the table and picks up the toothpick in it between long fingers.

The dark cherry on the end of it drips once, then twice into the empty glass, both of them hypnotised by it for a moment before Augustin speaks again.

“Cherry?” he asks, holding it out to Bill, and fine, Bill thinks, two can play at this game.

He leans down, darting his tongue out first, sliding it over the cherry before he closes his teeth around it and slides it back off of the tiny pick, holding Augustin’s gaze all the while, watching his eyes darken.

“So,” says Bill, licking the cherry juice from his bottom lip before he echoes Augustin’s words from earlier back to him, “what are we doing with the rest of our night?”

Augustin’s smile widens.

“The way that I see it,” he says, twirling the little pick between his fingers, glancing at Bill and then away, as if just to make sure that he is watching, “we have three options.”

“Do we now?”

“We do,” says Augustin. “The first – not so interesting – we have another round, then we say goodnight, go our separate ways, the evening fades away into memory with no lasting impact.” He drops the pick into the glass, and begins to trail the very tip of one finger around the rim of it as he keeps speaking, and Bill can feel Augustin’s eyes on him even as he finds himself unable to tear his own gaze away from Augustin’s fingers. “Our second option – and this one is much more interesting, I think – we stay here until closing, we get extraordinarily drunk, we tell each other things we would only say because we know there's every chance we may never see each other again.”

He pauses, and Bill looks up just in time to watch him lick his lips – slowly, thoughtfully.

 Bill already knows what he's about to say, he wants to hear it out loud all the same.

“And what's our third option, then?” he asks.

“Our third option,” says Augustin, leaning forward, lips so close to Bill’s ear that he can feel the heat of them this time, hand landing back on Bill’s thigh, several inches higher than it had been before, “is that we leave now, you accompany me back to my hotel room, we take each others’ clothes off, and we see where things go from there.”

“I like that one,” says Bill, and Augustin’s answering laugh is soft and pleased.

“Yes,” he hums. “As do I.”

March 2025

“Your turn then,” says Augustin, setting his now empty cider bottle on the coffee table and leaning back, stretching a leg out to nudge the side of Bill’s thigh with his toes. 

“My turn?”

“I return to Paris tomorrow,” says Augustin. He has his arm slung over the back of the sofa, and he leans over, resting his cheek on his bicep, squishing up his face and knocking his glasses a little askew. The thought strikes Bill that he might actually like Augustin better like this, walls down, confident facade put away for the evening. “There is every chance that it will be another five years before we see each other again. I’ve told you my troubles. Tell me one of yours.”

“What is there to tell?” asks Bill with a shrug. “I’m in therapy, I take the little pills the doctor gives me. Haven’t threatened to off myself in nearly a year. By my standards, I think that’s pretty fucking great.”

“Congratulations,” says Augustin, sounding far less congratulatory than one ought to upon being told that someone is no longer actively suicidal. “Tell me about Elliot.”

“Fuck’s sake, you really don’t want to let that one go, do you?”

“I am curious,” says Augustin. “I want to know about the man that makes you smile like you did earlier.”

“He made a joke, I thought it was funny,” says Bill flatly. “There’s nothing more to it than that.”

“Humour me,” says Augustin, and finally Bill sighs and relents.

“We met in January,” he says, leaving the story as free of details as possible. “We fucked, we ran into each other again at a party last week.”

“You fucked again.”

“Yes, we fucked again.”

“And you want to keep fucking him.”

“He’s good in bed,” says Bill. “Nothing wrong with wanting something more consistent.”

“Of course not,” says Augustin. “Though I do recall you being very specific in telling me that that’s not something you’re interested in.”

“Times change,” says Bill. Elliot’s not, after all, the only person he’s slept with more than once since the first time he and Augustin met. He’s seen Pat at least a handful of times in the last three months alone, and until last summer, he’d kept his Monday nights free for the same man for almost two years.

“Perhaps so,” says Augustin. “Am I to believe, perhaps, that you may actually be settling down a little in your old age, then?”

“I’m twenty-nine,” says Bill, rolling his eyes. “Maybe I just like knowing if the sex is going to be good before I’m in the middle of it.”

“Aha,” says Augustin. “So that’s why you texted me back, then.”

“I texted you back because I didn’t have anything better to do tonight,” says Bill. “And  besides,” he adds, because he doesn’t like the knowing look that Augustin is giving him, “I think there’s been too much talk of Paddy for me to even think about getting hard now.”

Augustin’s mouth stretches into the kind of smile that tells Bill that he’s not going to like whatever he’s about to say.

“That wasn’t a problem for you last time,” he says, and Bill, not for the first time in his life and certainly not for the last, holds no joy at being proved right.

June 2020

Augustin navigates the tube like a native, and Bill follows at his shoulder as he leads them into a part of the city that Bill isn’t terribly familiar with. They make casual small talk as they go, Augustin’s hand occasionally brushing the small of Bill’s back or his elbow but never taking things further than that. He seems to sense Bill’s hesitation at too much public tenderness, particularly now that they are outside of the safety of the pub, and Bill is thankful for it.

“Why aren’t you staying with Paddy?” Bill asks as they’re stepping off the train into the station, tipsy enough that the thought of it has only just occurred to him.

Augustin lets out a soft, amused noise. “Would you want to be sleeping in that flat at the moment?”

“Ah,” says Bill.

“I was there for the first few nights, while they were still only finishing packing,” Augustin adds, placing his hand on Bill’s back again to lead him toward a particular exit. “Once the proper moving began I told him I would find my own accommodations.”

“Probably for the best,” mutters Bill. “I’d’ve sucked you off on Paddy’s sofa if I had to, but it wouldn’t be my first choice.”

Augustin lets out a choked laugh, as if it had left his body before he’d been able to prepare for it, and his body drifts closer to Bill’s, just this side of dangerous. The streets are empty though, and the inside of his elbow is soft and warm where it brushes against the back of Bill’s arm, the single taste of skin to skin contact sending sparks through his body, so Bill lets it happen.

“Wouldn’t it?” Augustin murmurs back, turning his head, keeping his voice low, even though there’s no one next to them to overhear. “You wouldn’t want him to see what he is missing?”

Bill nearly stumbles over his own feet as the image washes over him: Augustin, legs spread, leaning back with a cocktail glass in his hand; Bill, kneeling at his feet doing what he does best; Paddy, standing some unknown distance away, eyes fixed on the two of them and dark with hunger. The picture stops there, Bill unable to fill in the details, never having been to Paddy’s flat.  He wants to ask Augustin what color the sofa is, where it is in the room, where Paddy might stand to watch them. He wants to not be growing hard again already just from thinking about it.

“You two are fucking, then?” he asks instead, and Augustin lets out a soft laugh, but when Bill glances over at him there’s something tense in the lines of his face.

“No,” he says. “No, no, we are– It was discussed, years ago. But I cannot say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“You still want to, though.”

“It’s this one here,” says Augustin, hand pressing more firmly against Bill’s back as he steers him toward the hotel, so Bill drops it for the moment. He lets Augustin guide him up to the room, the kind of place that’s designed to look vintage in the most modern way possible.

“Another drink?” asks Augustin the moment the door is shut behind them.

March 2025

Augustin gets them more ciders from the fridge, and by the time they finish those they’re both drunk enough that Bill doesn’t think either of them would even be capable of sex anymore, even if they did attempt it.

There’s no chance of it anyway, not now. For a moment there Bill had thought maybe things could be salvaged, but sometime within the last twenty minutes Augustin has properly sprawled across the sofa, one foot in Bill’s lap, glasses still tangled up somewhere in his hair. Bill has merely melted down further, head falling backward into the corner.

“I am not in love with him, you know,” says Augustin, staring up at the ceiling.

“Right,” says Bill.

“I’m not,” Augustin repeats. “I am only…” He pauses, lets out a heavy sigh. “God, but I hate your language. It is so… ugly.”

Bill forces his head up, watching as Augustin’s drunk brain tries to keep up with his thoughts in English.

“Sometimes,” he says slowly. “I believe it is easier to get over someone when you know that there was, at least at one time, a time when they loved you back.” He pauses, still staring up at the ceiling, and then he continues, seemingly speaking more now to himself than to Bill, though the words reach Bill all the same, as clear and painful as if Augustin had screamed them. “Sometimes,” he murmurs, “I think the requiting is needed to know if you were ever really in love at all.”

Augustin shifts then then way that only drunk people can, melancholy giving way to frustration all at once.

“And of course it is me that he would come to for help,” he adds bitterly, while Bill is still trying to replace the air that had just been knocked out of his lungs. “Who else would understand?”

“Understand what?” Bill murmurs, and Augustin turns to Bill as if he’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Nothing,” he says. “I am drunk.”

“Aye,” Bill says with a weak huff of laughter. “Me too.”

“Perhaps the third option was the better choice after all,” says Augustin.

“Aye,” Bill hums again. “Maybe it was.”

June 2020

Sometime between the half and fully empty marks on Bill’s glass, their drinks end up abandoned entirely. Bill finds himself instead sprawled out across the hotel bed, Augustin pressing him down into it, the kiss slow and messy and tasting strongly of liquor. He’s drunk enough that he loses track of everything else, inhibitions lowered, sighing without shame and nipping at Augustin’s bottom lip as he grinds up against Augustin’s hipbone.

Clothes are shed slowly, Augustin’s turtleneck and undershirt tossed somewhere behind them, Bill’s shirt unbuttoned and half crumpled, stuck between him and the mattress.

“Would you like to fuck me?” murmurs Augustin, leaning down to press his lips to Bill’s ear, and Bill tries his hardest not to tease against him.

“Oh,” says Bill. “I don’t really… I just prefer things the other way, usually. If that’s alright.”

“Ah,” says Augustin, pulling away to smile down at Bill. “But of course, I am happy either way. I simply find it easier most times to allow people comfort in their… assumptions.”

“Assumptions?” asks Bill. He knows there are stereotypes, of course, but he can’t say he really sees how Augustin fits into them, at least not far enough to consider it by default.

“Well, yes, because–” He pauses, something coming over his face that might be embarrassment. “Mon Dieu, I am sorry, I haven’t– I am rather drunk, you know, but– well, I did mean to say something sooner.”

Bill is starting to get the distinct sense that he’s missed something, and it’s a rather hard thing to process when Augustin is still straddling him, sitting back so his arse presses against Bill’s cock.

“Augustin,” Bill says, reaching up and catching Augustin by the wrists, trying to keep his voice steady as the combination of overwhelming confusion and far too much gin threatens to give way to real panic. “Can I get a full sentence, maybe?”

“Of course, yes,” Augustin says quickly, climbing out of Bill’s lap at last and settling down beside him on the mattress. “I’m transgender, Bill. I didn’t think you would mind, since– you know.”

“You’re…” Bill says, turning the word over in his head as he props himself up on his elbows. He’s heard it before, maybe – from Pat, he thinks – but he’s not actually sure he knows what it means, and he can't for the life of him figure out why Augustin seems to think – as far as Bill can tell – that Paddy would've told him he was one, when Bill didn't even know Augustin existed before tonight. “What is that?”

“Ah,” says Augustin, corner of his lip twitching. “So you don’t… Well, that does make more sense.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing,” says Augustin. “It is…” He pauses, clearly thinking over his words, and when he speaks again it is slow and measured. “When I was a baby, the doctor told my parents that I was a little girl. And then when I grew old enough to know what that meant, I informed them that the doctors were wrong, so we went back and did what we could to fix it.”

“I… see,” says Bill, who’s not, in fact, fully sure that he sees, but wouldn’t even know what sort of follow up question to begin with. “So what does that mean for– for this?”

“Well,” says Augustin, “to put it simply, it means that I don’t have a cock.”

“Oh,” says Bill. “Alright.” He pauses, wondering what exactly he ought to say now, and all he can come up with is: “So you can’t fuck me then?”

Augustin laughs, taking some of the awkward tension in the room with it.

“Oh, no,” he says. “Certainly I can still fuck you. I’ll only need a little assistance.”

“Assistance?” asks Bill, lost again just like that, but Augustin just keeps smiling, pushing himself to his feet and crossing the room to his suitcase. 

“The nice thing about not having a cock of my own,” he says as he rummages through it, back to Bill, “is that when it comes to this, I can pick any size I like.”

He turns at last, a bundle of leather and buckles in one hand, and in the other, something that Bill has only ever heard talked about but knows, just from a glance, what it must be, long and slightly curved and flesh coloured.

“Something tells me you’d prefer the largest though,” says Augustin, smile widening at whatever seems to be happening on Bill’s face (though Bill couldn’t for the life of him say what it was) and Bill feels the wave of arousal down to the very tips of his fingers.

March 2025

Augustin passes out soon after, and Bill just barely manages to get him situated well enough to get a pillow under his head before he gives up. He’ll be regretting a lot of his choices in the morning, Bill is sure, but he looks comfortable enough now, especially once Bill rescues his glasses from off the top of his head and drapes a blanket over what of his body he can.

He takes his time in the shower after, letting himself sober up a little as he moves himself through his bedtime routine, and by the time he’s chugged a glass of water, thrown back some preemptive painkillers, and finally climbed into bed, it’s just past three in the morning.

He closes his eyes, sucks in a long, slow breath, but instead of relaxing him, all it does is finally push something, long simmering under the surface, right to the forefront of his mind.

Paddy’s voice, soft and bitter: Just doing me a favour, eh? Since no one else would want to?

I didn’t think you would mind, since– you know, Augustin had said when they'd met the first time, and then never elaborated. 

Then again tonight: of course it is me that he would come to for help. Who else would understand?

Bill remembers Paddy when they first met, young and angry and clearly unsure of himself beneath all his masculine bravado, leaving Bill unable for the life of him to figure out what it was about him that drew him in so immediately. It was not that Paddy presented outwardly as queer, Bill had thought, but there was an energy there that he understood regardless, a glimpse back at himself at twenty, twenty-one years old, freshly rediscovered and ready to bite and snap at anyone who tried to question it. He had turned it over and over back then, asking again and again what he was missing, and now, five years after the fact, everything falls so neatly into place that Bill can't believe he'd never seen it before.

He wishes, instantly, that he'd never figured it out at all.

He won't say anything. Of course he won't. He may be a nosy bitch, but he's never outed anyone before and he certainly doesn't plan to start now. Eoin must know already anyway, he thinks, if Paddy had kicked Augustin out to have him over, or Paddy is telling him right now. Some strange part of Bill thinks he's actually proud of Paddy for opening up like that, and the thought makes him so instantly uncomfortable that he forces himself to roll over, reaching out for his phone where he'd left it abandoned on his nightstand, desperate for anything to distract himself from that.

There is, at least, a distraction waiting for him.

Sometime around eleven, Elliot had left a thumbs down reaction on Bill’s message that he was busy. There's nothing for several hours after, but then one more photo had come in, timestamped about an hour earlier. It’s dim, clearly taken with the lights off, but there’s just enough of a light source somewhere that Bill can still make it out.

It’s a selfie, if it can be called that, of Elliot, sprawled out across his mattress. His face is only visible from the nose down, a cheeky smile pulling at his lips, and the rest of it is all bare chest, stretching down past his navel, angled just right so Bill can see the line of his hipbone, the hint of hair at the very edge of the frame, the very obvious lack of underwear.

wish you were here, says the message under it, and even as drunk and exhausted as he is, Bill’s traitorous body begins to stir at the sight of it.

He hesitates, thumb hovering over the photo for far too long, before finally he presses down, likes the message, and tosses his phone aside before he can take it back. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands into them, and lets out a long sigh. At least, as he breathes slowly and tries to clear his mind of the whirlwind of thoughts of any and all of the men who've been haunting him tonight, he’s had enough to drink that he'll be able to find sleep soon anyway.

June 2020

Augustin lights a cigarette after, right there in the hotel room, and Bill thinks vaguely that he ought to scold him, but finds that he doesn’t have the energy.

He reaches out instead, and Augustin passes it off to him with a smile, watching as Bill lifts it to his lips and takes a long, slow drag.

“Feeling alright?” murmurs Augustin, and Bill lets out a soft huff of laughter.

“Aye, I think I’ll live,” he says, handing the smoke back and propping an arm up behind his head. His voice comes out hoarse, throat still sore from the rough and brutal way Augustin had fucked his face with the strap-on, slamming into the back of his throat with each thrust as he held Bill by the hair. It had been strange, at first, getting used to the taste and feel of silicone on his tongue, but quickly it had been overtaken by a new, dizzying realisation.

Since Augustin could not actually feel it, then that meant Bill was on his knees just to give Augustin the pleasure of seeing him like that. Augustin received no physical sensation, but still he kept Bill there, simply as proof that he could – that Bill would do this for Augustin for no reason other than because Augustin wished it of him. When Augustin praised him for his obedience, when he held Bill there until he began to gag and had to jerk away, it really was for nothing but Augustin’s own amusement.

Bill thinks that in that moment, if he had been allowed to touch himself rather than keeping his hands crossed behind his back as Augustin had instructed, he would have spent in his trousers just like that.

“You were a masterpiece,” hums Augustin, reaching out to brush Bill’s hair off his forehead. “It is a shame I leave town on Monday, I would’ve liked to see how you look in ropes.”

Bill’s never been tied up before, not more than a pair of handcuffs or a tie holding him to the headboard of a bed, but he can’t deny that the thought is rather appealing.

Even so: “I don’t really do this more than once anyway,” says Bill, shifting away slightly from Augustin’s hand.

“A shame…” Augustin echoes again. “May I ask why not?”

“It gets… complicated,” says Bill with a shrug. “Messy. I don’t like mess.”

“Sometimes, certainly,” says Augustin. “And sometimes you can find love. That is the beauty of life, the uncertainty.”

Bill snorts softly. “Sure,” he says.

“You do not believe in it?” asks Augustin.

“Uncertainty? Or the beauty of life?”

“Love.”

“For other people, sure,” Bill says, trying to figure out how to end this conversation.

“You have never been in love then,” says Augustin.

“No,” says Bill flatly. “And I don’t plan on it. I’m doing perfectly fine without it, in fact.”

“Are you?”

“You’re terrible at pillow talk,” says Bill.

“You are the one who chose to go to bed with a philosopher,” says Augustin lightly.

“You’ve been in love then?” asks Bill, resigning himself to the conversation but reaching out to take Augustin’s cigarette from him again as a consolation prize.

“I have.”

“But it ended.”

“Who said that it ended?”

“Well, you are here in bed with me,” says Bill dryly.

Augustin laughs softly. “I have been in love many times,” he says. “In many places. Back home, here in London, in Rome and Amsterdam and once in Prague. For a moment, a night, a month. For several years. Some have ended, yes. Some have even been very painful. But I am glad, all the same, that they happened.”

“Sounds messy,” says Bill, and Augustin lets out a soft laugh.

“There is no love without mess,” he says. 

“And Paddy,” Bill says, before he can stop himself. “How does he fit into all of that?”

Augustin turns to look at him, something pained in his eyes.

He does not speak at first though. He studies Bill’s face, jaw tensing for a moment, then relaxing, before he speaks again.

“There is no love without the danger of being hurt, either,” he murmurs at last.

“Then why risk it?”

The corner of Augustin’s mouth twitches into a tiny smile. “Ah, but you know this one firsthand, don’t you?” he asks amusedly. “Sometimes, with pain, comes the most exquisite pleasure.”

April 2020

Bill wouldn’t say that he’s drunk necessarily, but he’s certainly drunker than he has been in front of this particular group of people. He’s been offered more than a few celebratory pints in honour of his successfully finishing his first week at his new job, and he finds himself far less uncomfortable being the centre of attention than he normally does.

They’re just all so touchy, these pub lads, so quick to throw an arm around shoulders or offer a friendly pat on the back, and even after the last six or so months spent around them he still hasn’t quite adjusted to it. Sometimes, he realises though, he’s starting not to mind it so much.

“So,” says David, sliding into the booth beside Bill, greeting him with a hearty pat on the back, “how is my dearest brother treating you?”

Sometimes, though, the person touching him is David Stirling.

“Fine,” says Bill, because he’s not about to tell David that he likes his brother much better than him already, actually.

“Not boring you to death yet, working with him and Jock?” asks David with a self-satisfied little grin.

“Fuck off, Stirling,” calls Jock calmly from the other side of the table, and Bill barely stifles a snort of amusement into his mostly empty pint glass.

“Lewes, old boy–” David begins, clearly gearing up for another of his grand speeches, and Bill simply tunes him out from there, thankful to have his attention off of him so quickly. It’s hot in the pub, he realises all at once, and he pushes himself to his feet, grabbing his jacket as he heads for the door.

“Bill,” calls out Pat, catching him by the arm as he walks by. “Not leaving without saying goodbye, are you?”

“Just getting some air,” says Bill.

“You’d better be,” says Pat. “I still owe you one.”

Bill waves him off and finally manages to get outside and into the cool air.

The days are warming up now that they’re a few weeks into April, but the nights still hold a bite to them, and Bill shrugs his jacket on, glancing over as he gets a whiff of cigarette smoke.

“Alright?” he mumbles, heading over to join Paddy against the wall, a bit too drunk to stop his gaze from lingering.

He’s handsome, Paddy, in a way that Bill doesn’t normally find himself going for. Younger, for one – Bill thinks he’s twenty-two, but he looks even younger, a hint of babyfat lingering on his jaw, the occasional spot still flaring up on his cheeks and chin, his stubble coming in patchy on the days when he doesn’t shave. He’s more masculine than Bill’s usual type too – not in body type necessarily,  but in demeanor – gruff and rough around the edges, clothes old and faded and often a size too large. There’s something unquestionably magnetic about him though, something that has drawn Bill’s eyes since the moment he met him, a softness under the facade, the hint of an artist under the bravado.

“Can I have one?” Bill asks, nodding at the cigarette, and Paddy pulls the back from his pocket wordlessly, holding it out to Bill with his lighter.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” says Paddy, once Bill’s cigarette is lit and the pack has been returned to his pocket. “I’m impressed.”

“It’s just a job,” says Bill with a shrug. “I’m not even qualified for it, really, only Jock put in a good word.”

“Not that bit,” says Paddy. “I’m impressed by anyone who can work for my dear flatmate’s brother for a full week and not attempt murder at least once.”

“He’s not so bad,” says Bill with a shrug. “I’m impressed you can live with David without trying to kill him, so.”

“Ah, trust me, it has been considered,” says Paddy. “Regrettably, it is only thanks to his family and their absurd wealth that we can afford the place to begin with, so I have, at least until now, kept the dogs of war at bay.”

“Very sensible of you,” says Bill.

“Let it be said that I am many things,” says Paddy. “But do not ever let it be said that I am that.”

“My apologies,” says Bill dryly.

It’s fascinating, the way that Paddy speaks, as if every word is a performance, to be delivered upon a stage rather than on a dingy London side street. Bill can’t decide if he finds it more irritating or attractive. 

They fall back into silence after that, but Bill continues studying Paddy, and the shadows on his face from the streetlight. He is calm now, quiet, but Bill can’t help but think of several weeks earlier, when he had first seen him properly lose control.

He hadn’t heard what the other man said to Paddy. He only knew that between one moment and the next, Bill was glancing up at the bar, and then Paddy was snarling, and fists were flying, and there was a kind of pure animal rage on Paddy’s face that could only have come from somewhere deep, deep inside him.

The fight was broken up quickly, the offending patron kicked out and Paddy provided with a bag of ice and a disappointed frown, and as Bill watched him – the ice held to his eye with one hand, the other slowly flexing at his side – all he’d been able to wonder was if that’s what Paddy looked like when he was fucking too.

The words slip out before he can stop himself.

“Probably be able to move out of Mike’s, with the new salary. Get a place on my own.”

“Aye, that’ll be nice,” says Paddy, clearly only half listening.

“You could come by sometime.”

Paddy turns, staring at Bill for a moment, processing his words, and then he just says, “Why?”

Bill shrugs awkwardly. “For a drink,” he says. “I could suck you off, maybe,” he adds, because it’s not as if he hasn’t been thinking it.

Paddy freezes, mouth slightly open, nearly spent cigarette halfway to his lips, eyes fixed on Bill as if he’s grown an extra head. Surely, Bill had thought, being so close with Jim and Pat as Paddy is, even if Bill’s suspicions were wrong, it would end in awkwardness rather than violence.

As it is though, Paddy’s face is unreadable, and Bill doesn’t particularly fancy the idea of getting punched tonight.

“Only if you wanted,” he forces himself to continue when the silence gets to be too much, like it’s nothing more than a casual favour that he’s offering, as if fear isn’t clawing its way up his throat.

“I don’t…” says Paddy, and Bill is surprised to find he sounds awkward, actually, rather than angry. “I am not…” He looks away at last, lifting his cigarette back to his lips, making it clear he does not plan to finish either of his aborted sentences.

“That's fine,” says Bill, who is fairly sure he's doing nothing but digging himself deeper into a hole, but whose body will not let him stop without making sure he's made himself clear. He's been with straight men before, men who’ve turned to him out of convenience and nothing else, and he'd got them there all the same. “I wouldn’t tell anyone, though, if you did want– I just know it’s easier, sometimes, to know that there’s… a sure thing. When you need one. You wouldn’t have to touch me back or anything.”

Paddy snorts softly but unmistakably derisively. “Oh aye,” he mutters. “Just doing me a favour, eh? Since no one else would want to?”

Any embarrassment Bill had been feeling at the situation shifts, just like that, into irritation.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Do I, now?” says Paddy, flicking his cigarette butt into the street, seemingly refusing to make eye contact at all now that he’s looked away. “Tell me, then,” he adds, as if he’s casually changing the subject, as if the thought has only just occurred to him. “How many of the other lads here have you told that you’re a sure thing? Am I at the top of the list? Or did you simply grow tired of Riley panting after you like a bitch in heat all the time and decide you wanted to try something different?”

Bill feels as if he’s been slapped, a vague ringing in his ears as he stares at Paddy and Paddy doesn’t look back.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he snaps, and Paddy laughs, soft and low, staring out at the street as he runs his hands back over his hair.

“Oh, aye, it’s my problem, isn’t it, that I don’t find being condescended to does much to set the mood,” he says, a grin on his lips that reaches nowhere near his eyes. “Man delights not me,” he murmurs to himself. “Nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.”

“You’re a prick,” says Bill, who is pretty far from smiling, actually, and Paddy laughs again.

“So it’s been said,” he murmurs. “Are we finished here, then?”

“Aye,” says Bill. “I’d say we’re pretty fucking finished.”

Things seem to be winding down when Bill storms back inside, chest still buzzing, face flushed. He thinks someone says his name, but his attention is focused on Pat, still lounging in a chair at the corner of the table, not (for once) actively in conversation with anyone. Dave sits beside him, but he’s talking with Rob and Chalky, and if they’re here, and with Dave sitting  then Mike must be behind the bar, that means that the house is empty.

Bill has a hand on the back of Pat’s shoulder and is leaning down to place his lips to his ear before Pat has even noticed him approaching.

“Do you need to be home anytime soon?” Bill murmurs, keeping his voice low enough not to be overheard.

Pat starts slightly, turning his head to look at Bill. He glances up at Bill’s eyes, then down at his lips, then darts his tongue out to lick his own, mere centimetres from Bill’s as they are.

“I’ve probably got a few hours,” he replies. “Why?”

Bill moves his hand, sliding it across to the middle of Pat’s shoulders above the back of the chair, and he lets it stay there.

“I think you should walk me home,” he says. “I’m not done celebrating yet.”

He watches as Pat processes his words, throat flexing as he swallows.

“I’ll just get my coat,” Pat says.