Entry tags:

dakin/scripps, fic: the history boys

Do You Remember The First Time
Title: Do You Remember The First Time
Author: rebecca_star
Beta: doublefourtime
Rating: 18+
Summary: This is a gift for stjarna1984, who wanted a porny Dakin/Scripps. This sort of is, but it's sort of longer, too.
Part: 1 of 1
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Alan Bennett. Title belongs to Pulp. I thought it was fitting since they're from Sheffield.



The first time they fucked – which was the first time, no matter what everyone thought in the summer when they find out. Timms laughed and said he wasn’t surprised in the slightest, and Lockwood said weren’t they always gay at school anyway, and Dakin elbowed Lockwood in the side and said Scripps always was at least, and everybody laughed and Scripps wondered how exactly Dakin managed to get everybody to laugh at him when he’d just come out to them, if only not in so many words.

Scripps wondered if he found it that bloody easy with everyone, whether he just sat his parents down one day and said, “Mum, Dad, I’ve decided to start taking it up the arse. It’s a laugh, innit?”. Probably did, not like Scripps, who had been working up the courage for weeks and finally found it at Easter at the bottom of a brandy bottle. By that point he could barely speak and he thought he lost both his parents right around the part where he said, “’M in love with a boy. ‘S okay, though… ‘S only Stuart…” Certainly neither of them mentioned it for months, which is also how they dealt with Scripps’ hyper-religiosity. They probably thought it was a phase, and for a long time, Scripps couldn’t honestly say it wasn’t.

*

But anyway, the first time – not the first time they saw each other after school, although that didn’t happen for months either. Scripps had, in all honesty, been too traumatised by that last term to contact anybody. Hector’s death had cast a long shadow over Scripps’ life. Suddenly he was 19 and staring at his own mortality, and it didn’t sit comfortably with him. Dakin had invited Scripps out to celebrate his 19th in the May of that year, but Don had declined. He saw Lockwood over the summer when he was back from basic training for a weekend, but apart from that and a fleeting glimpse of Posner in the Co-op one day, Scripps saw no one from school.

Once at university – finally! Everyone else in their year had gone the year before, while all the Oxbridge students had another term to prepare for that blasted exam. Scripps had come to wonder if that term, plus almost 9 months on the local rag, had done anything to prepare him for life at Oxford. He really didn’t think it had, except it had given him even more of a loathing for authority. Fuck not walking on the grass, was all he could say. But anyway, once there, Scripps had got caught up in daily life. There were lectures and seminars to go to, and books to read, and essays to write, and Scripps even joined the Christian Union at first, more for something to do in an evening than out of any lasting attachment to the Church of England. He realised at the second meeting, when he was talking to a very plain girl with long plaits over a cup of warm orange squash, that he just wasn’t cut out for all this very earnest god-bothering. Praying he could do, in public or private, and he liked to listen to sermons even if he didn’t always agree with them, and well, sometimes he just liked to sing the familiar words and let them wash over him. But Christian Union was entirely different. People there actually meant it.
So Scripps invited himself along with some boys on his floor to a Monday student night at a night club. Scripps hated night clubs but the beer was cheap and the music wasn’t dreadful, so he put up with it. It was there, on the last Monday in October, that Scripps saw Dakin for the first time since the previous winter.

Scripps was just going up a flight of stairs, avoiding some boys who were coming down as he clung to the handrail, slightly the worse for wear, when one of the boys clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Scrippsy!”

Don looked up, eyes flitting over a familiar black leather jacket and familiar black hair before coming to rest on familiar, mocking, brown eyes. “Stuart.”

“Hello, fancy seeing you here.”

It wasn’t that unlikely, Scripps thought. There weren’t that many clubs in Oxford, and they were both students; they were supposed to drink.

The boys Dakin was with went off towards the bar, but Dakin didn’t follow, just stayed one step above Scripps and told them he’d be there in a minute. He was taller than Scripps like this, and Scripps found it disconcerting, especially in his drunken state, to be looking up at Dakin rather than be on the same level.

“How’ve you been?” Dakin asked. “You’re not in any of my lectures, I was surprised.”

Scripps was surprised Dakin even noticed. Scripps would be hard pressed to name even 4 people in those huge lectures. But it was true. Scripps checked and they really weren’t doing the same courses. He shrugged. “I chose mostly medieval stuff.”

Dakin laughed. “You would, Scrippsy.”

Scripps nodded. “S’pose.”

“Anyway, better get on,” Dakin said. “See you soon.”

“Bye,” Scripps said, and he carried on up the stairs.

*

The following week Scripps’ friends didn’t want to go out but one was persuaded, so he and Scripps walked into town together.

Scripps was absolutely only there in case Dakin showed up again. He never had seen the point in lying to yourself, and this was no different. He wanted Stuart to be there, he really did. He just had to be patient.

His patience was rewarded after 10pm, when Dakin came in with the same boys as the previous week. By that time Scripps was three sheets to the wind. He watched Dakin across the room, as free, easy and cocksure as ever. How did he do it? Was it just because of how good-looking he was? Scripps didn’t think it could be. Scripps didn’t consider himself that bad looking, and yet he didn’t have half the confidence Dakin did. It was one of life’s eternal mysteries.

After 15 minutes of brooding, Scripps realised he was desperate for a piss, so he excused himself from his friend and headed off to the loos.

He was pissing like a racehorse when the door opened again. Scripps didn’t look (never would, not in the bogs, had a bit more class than that, thank you very much) but turned when Dakin spoke.

“Can’t take your eyes off me, ay?”

“What?” Scripps studiously avoided looking down. He wasn’t even sure Dakin had unzipped, but he wasn’t about to check.

“I’ve seen you. Eyes on me ever since I came in.”

Scripps zipped up, and turned towards the sink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah you do.”

“No, I don’t.” Scripps turned on the tap and ran his fingers underneath.

“Always fancied you a bit,” Dakin said.

Scripps banged into the sink in surprise as he turned. “What?”

Dakin shrugged. “Did, though.”

“Bollocks.”

“Don’t believe me? Fine, don’t. It’s true, though.”

Scripps folded his arms across his chest. “Rubbish.”

“Oh, accept it, for fuck’s sake. You’re not half as bad as you think you are.”

Scripps said nothing, just narrowed his eyes at Dakin.

“Saw you in the paper over the summer. Donald Scripps, man about town. Very nice.”

“Thanks.” Scripps was actually quite proud of some of the bits he’d written. “What did you end up doing?”

“Foreman at a flooring factory. Boring as fuck but it paid alright.”

“Great.”

“You seen anyone else?”

“No.”

“Not even Posner?” Dakin’s surprise couldn’t be hidden.

“He writes every week, but no, I’ve not seen him.” Posner did write every week, and mostly Scripps wrote back, but sometimes it didn’t seem to matter whether he did or didn’t. Posner’s letter arrived anyway in Scripps’ pigeonhole, all the way from the other side of town, and that was exactly the way Scripps liked it.

“Oh,” Dakin said.

“What?”

“You always seemed the type to keep in touch with people from school. You know, the nostalgic type.”

“Oh yeah? And what type are you?”

“The I-have-current-friends-thank-you type,” Dakin said.

Scripps felt like slapping him. “Well, nice seeing you, anyway.”

Dakin caught his arm. “Now now, Scrippsy. We were discussing how you’ve had your eyes on me since I came in and how I always fancied you a bit, and you were about to tell me how you always fancied me, too–”

“I was not–” Scripps retorted.

“You would have, eventually–” Before Dakin could say more the outer door to the toilets opened, and Scripps found himself pulled into the first cubicle, pressed against the cool chipboard of the side.

He opened his mouth to speak but before he could Dakin slapped a hand across his mouth and shook his head. They could hear two people in the room, sounding loud and drunk. They were definitely just pissing, but then a third person came in and they started to chat.

And Dakin started touching Scripps. Scripps stared at him, unsure as to why exactly Dakin’s fingers were on his crotch. Dakin’s eyes betrayed nothing but his fingers fumbled with Scripps’ jeans and then his fingers were on Scripps’ flesh. Scripps made a noise deep in his throat in surprise, but Dakin’s warm fingers over his mouth stopped it escaping. Dakin’s fingers moved faster around him, and it felt good – so good, in fact, much better than your own hand, better than he could’ve imagined – but Scripps tried to think of anything but the sensation to try to delay the inevitable. His great-aunt Ida, football (something he’s never found to be the orgasmic experience that some of his friends have), and a documentary he’d recently seen on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Thinking like that helped, it definitely helped, but all too soon Scripps felt a familiar light-headedness and his hips bucked involuntarily against Dakin. He was muttering something, gibberish probably, but Dakin’s hand muffled it anyway against his lips.

The chatting boys left the toilets just as Scripps came all over Dakin’s hand. Dakin wrinkled his nose in disgust and let go of Scripps to rip some pieces of loo roll off the roll next to Scripps.

“Did you have to?”

Scripps shrugged, belligerently non-apologetic. “What was that all about?”

“Giving you what you needed, Scrippsy.” Dakin dropped the paper into the toilet, slid open the cubicle door and walked out. Just as he was at the toilet door he turned and smiled. “Same time next week?”

“Get fucked,” Scripps said, but they both knew he was lying.

Dakin laughed and turned and left.

That wasn’t the first time, though. Scripps does not count a handjob as fucking. Dakin does, though, if only because he says it was “the first time I actually thought of me and you as something that could work.”

When he says this, Scripps just frowns at him, because he’s never sure if he’s being fed a line or not.

But anyway, first time or not, it was definitely nice. Better than nice. Scripps wants to be a journalist and he can’t think of a better word than nice?

*

Scripps went out the next week, but Dakin wasn’t there. Not at 8pm, or 10pm, or midnight.

Scripps got completely and utterly rat-arsed instead, and can’t actually remember getting back to his room.

He said, didn’t he? Dakin definitely said that they would do it again. Or maybe it was a joke. Or maybe something (someone) better came along.

Maybe Dakin got knocked off his bike and had his wrist in plaster. Maybe Scripps should have been giving him the benefit of the doubt.

The next Monday, Scripps spent the entire day debating with himself over whether to go out or not, but eventually declined the invitation. He really did have a lot of reading to do. Look, he was even doing it. He was categorically not just moving piles of paper around his room.

And he categorically did not give a flying fuck about Stuart bloody Dakin.

*

The next night, which was a Tuesday, Scripps ate with two friends and then went back to his room, forgoing film night in the Junior Common Room. He walked back over the cold quad and let himself in at the corner of his building with the old brass key. His room was fairly warm, thankfully. It was dark outside and Scripps pulled the curtains closed. Then he sat down on the end of his bed and pulled his notes and book towards him. Anti-Semitism in the Medieval Period. Fascinating.

Forty minutes later there was a crick in Scripps’ neck and he stretches it out and then cracks his knuckles. He’d got five pages of notes but he couldn’t say he’d taken any of it in.

He went downstairs to make a cup of tea and set it down on the bedside table to cool. He sat back down on the bed but before he had a chance to get back to work there was a knock on the door.

When Scripps opened it, Dakin was leaning against the wall opposite. “You weren’t there last night,” he said accusingly.

“You weren’t there last week!” Scripps said, hating himself for caring as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

Dakin pouted. There was no other way to describe it. He pouted.

“What do you want anyway?” Scripps asked.

Dakin stepped forward and came into the room, and shrugged his jacket off.

Scripps took a step backwards and banged against his bedside table, upsetting the cup of tea. He didn’t notice.

Dakin dropped the jacket and pulled his t-shirt over his head and dropped that too. Scripps stared at him and wondered if he was hallucinating. Just as Dakin’s hands reached for his belt buckle he said, “You, of course.”

Scripps thought he’d misheard for a second, and he looked carefully at Dakin’s bowed head as he concentrated on the buckle. Then Dakin looked up, brown eyes clouded with lust, and Scripps closed the gap between them. Then Dakin pushed him, round the bedside table, and Scripps was never sure whether he was pushed or whether he did it voluntarily but the next moment they were fumbling at each other on the bed, chest to chest, thigh to thigh.

Clothes came off in record time, flung wherever. Scripps’ t-shirt got lodged down the side of the mattress and was lost until he was moving out of the room the following June.

Once naked, panic set in. Scripps hadn’t actually been naked with anyone before, and he worried he was making a fool of himself, or doing things wrong, or something. Dakin naked was just like he had imagined, if he had ever imagined it before.

Oh, of course he had.

Dakin knelt above him, looking down the length of his body. Scripps fought the urge to move or shy away. It was unnerving, to be scrutinised in such a way. He watched the top of Dakin’s head, wondering what was coming next.

Dakin moved and licked Scripps’ stomach: once, twice, near his navel, and then his nose was in Scripps’ pubic hair and his tongue was swirling around the head of Scripps’ dick.

“You don’t have to–” Scripps began.

“Shut up,” Dakin said, pulling off just long enough to say it. Then he took Scripps deep into his mouth, deeper than Scripps would’ve thought possible.

Scripps tried to resist the urge to buck his hips and took a deep breath. “Seriously, you don’t have to–”

“Shut the fuck up, will you? I’m going to suck you off and then I’m going to fuck you, if you’ll just let me get on with it.”

“Okay,” Scripps breathed. “Okay.”

He kept his hands underneath him as Dakin sucked at him. His fingers scrabbled at the sheet and he couldn’t help but buck his hips, especially given that Dakin was stroking his balls and the base of his dick. Scripps watched the ceiling intently, counting off in increments of ten, willing himself to not come too soon.

He counted to twenty-five before he lost it entirely. Better than last time, anyway.

Dakin didn’t pull off in time, and Scripps could tell from the disgusted look on his face that a mouth full of cum wasn’t welcome.

He didn’t apologise, though, not even when Dakin got up, opened the window and spat violently out of it. Scripps just lay on the bed, watched Dakin and felt his sweat turn cool on his stomach.

Dakin came back over to the bed and knelt between Scripps’ legs. “Turn over.”

“What?”

“So I can fuck you.”

“Such a turn of phrase, Stuart. Nothing like making a man feel wanted.”

“Fuck off, do you want this or don’t you?”

Scripps did. Really, he did. It’s just that there was a ball of terror in his stomach, petrified that it would hurt too much, that he wouldn’t like it, or that it would undo everything that he thought about himself and his sexuality. It had taken long enough to get here. He didn’t want to fuck it up.

He leaned forward to move and went to kiss Dakin as he did so. Dakin moved quickly away, though, rocking back.

“I don’t kiss,” he said, matter of factly.

Scripps frowned but didn’t push it. He was terrified that at any minute Dakin would stop this, would stand up and burst into laughter. He couldn’t quite get over thinking that this was all a huge joke at his expense, and that sooner or later he would end up naked and humiliated.

He turned over anyway, the knot in his stomach tightening. Dakin ran a finger down his back and over the curve of his bum. Scripps moved reflexively when the finger touched the small of his back, and Dakin laughed shortly, a shade of anxiety evident in his tone. Scripps wondered if he hadn’t done this before. Or maybe he’d only had it done to him. Maybe that was the way it worked. Scripps didn’t really know enough to be sure, but he’d never thought he’d end up here, like this, with Dakin.

Not that it really mattered anyway because – oh fuck – Dakin was actually inside him.

Jesus. It hurt, probably more than he’d been expecting. To being with, he couldn’t see the point of it. There was just pain, no pleasure, so where was the gratification in that? But then Dakin got deeper in and Scripps saw stars dance in front of his eyes.

When Dakin came it was with very little sound, no fanfare and an almost militaristic efficiency. Scripps stayed still, still unwilling to fuck things up. He felt bruised, battered, spent almost.

Dakin didn’t stick around for long. He dispensed of the condom carefully in Scripps’ bin, shrugged his clothes back on and slid his leather jacket over his shoulders.

Scripps watched him from a seated position on the bed, still a little shaken. He tried to think of something sensible to say but couldn’t. It seemed easier to say nothing.

Dakin stood in the open door watching him, eyes slightly wild. “See you,” he said eventually.

“Yeah,” Scripps said. “See you.”

*

For a while, it just became something that had happened, something Scripps had done, had enjoyed even, but nothing serious. It was just a thing.

He didn’t go out again. The boys on his floor lost the taste for it as the nights drew in and the work got harder. There was an essay to complete every week, so once one was over it was already time to think about the next. It didn’t leave much time for socialising. The most Scripps saw of his floormates was at meals.

Three weeks before Christmas Scripps was walking alone through town on the way to WHSmiths, looking for a cards to send his parents and a couple of pens, when he saw Dakin and a group of others at the other side of a pedestrianised street. The groups was mostly boys but included a couple of girls too, one of which Stuart had his arm around. When he noticed Scripps he stopped, smiled, and winked at him.

*

There was a letter from Pos in Scripps’ pigeonhole, a letter from his mother, and a small note folded in four.

“Missed you,” it said, in Dakin’s stupid, boyish script. “Come and see me tonight (Weds) at 7.”

There was no signature. Dakin knew he’d know his handwriting.

The complacent fuck.

*

It was 7.15 by the time Scripps arrived outside Dakin’s building. He’d had to ask around to find which building it was exactly within Dakin’s college. He even knew now which room was Dakin’s: second flood, next to the last room on the left.

So why was he standing outside looking up at the bright windows, instead of going inside?

More to the point, why was he here anyway? Was it just for sex? Had Dakin invited him for sex? What did “missed you” mean anyway? Dakin had had his arm casually around a girl last time Scripps had seen him, so he can’t have been missed that badly.

Unless it was just about the sex.

Scripps decided to stop thinking about it and go inside. If nothing else, it’d be warmer in there.

Dakin’s building smelt the same as Scripps’ – too many bodies in a small space, damp socks drying on radiators, burnt toast and that all-pervading smell of institutions rather than homes. Scripps pulled his gloves off and headed upstairs.

Dakin was in a room on the right hand side of his corridor, with two others. The door was propped open and music and the smell of hash came out of it. Scripps could hear Dakin’s laughter as he walked down. He stopped in the doorway, feeling unwelcome, certain Dakin would dismiss him out of hand.

“Well, well, well,” Dakin said. “Look who it is.” He stood up. “Excuse me, gentlemen, must go tend to the home fires, you know?”

Neither boy seemed to really care, or even look at Scripps too much. Dakin walked across the corridor to his room, opened the door and snapped his light on. Scripps followed him, took in the minimal décor of the room – shabbier than Scripps’, not that it mattered – and then looked at him under the brightness of the overheard light.

“You came,” Dakin said.

“You told me to.”

“Didn’t expect you, though.”

“Why not?”

“Dunno.” Dakin shrugged and it was a vulnerable gesture that made Scripps’ stomach feel funny.

He leaned forward quickly and kissed Dakin before he lost his nerve. Dakin responded for a split second before pulling away.

“I said I didn’t kiss,” he said, frowning.

“Yeah,” Scripps said, unbuttoning his coat with nimble fingers. He dropped it to the floor behind him and took hold of Dakin’s face to kiss him again, firmly, but without inflicting pain. “But I do,” he said.

*

“So if that was the first and second time,” Dakin starts.

They’re in Manchester. It’s nearly twenty years since their first time, which is what prompted this conversation in the first place.

“Yes?”

“Well, when did you know it was for real?”

“What, like love?”

“Yeah.” Stuart’s making tea and toast in their kitchen – their kitchen! – and he’s not looking at Scripps.

“Later. Christmas. Yeah, Christmas.”

Stuart looks up then, considering. Scripps isn’t sure if that means it’s a surprise or not.

*

They had to be careful. Of course they had to be careful. Scripps didn’t know anyone gay except Posner, and he didn’t count. He had never used that word about himself before this, but Dakin got under his skin too quickly.

Scripps had no idea what Dakin saw himself as. Probably better not to ask.

(Years later, when they were old and lived in Leeds and had other gay friends and a dog, it was popular to ‘identify’ as this, that or the other. That suited Scripps fine but Dakin still never said then, just smiled smugly and said he had all he wanted so what was the point in talking about it?)

It was nearly the end of term. For six out of the last fifteen evenings Scripps had gone over to Dakin’s or Dakin had come over to his and they’d had sex. Twice Dakin had slept over all night, and as lovely as that was, to huddle together under the scratchy blankets in the cold morning and laugh into each other’s eyes, it did bring a whole host of other problems as it meant Dakin had to creep out of the block and hope to not be seen.

Posner came over one afternoon, bringing flavoured tea and shortbread, and they sat together near Scripps’ window and chatted until it was well after nine. It was the first time Scripps had seen him in months, and things started off stilted as they got used to each other again, naming new friends and professors they had in common, but eventually they were chatting like nothing had changed.

Like as if Scripps wasn’t fucking the person Posner had been in love with for years.

Like as if that didn’t matter at all.

It made him feel like a shit.

As Posner left he stopped in the doorway. “Oh, by the way. My parents are coming for me on Sunday, there’s a space in the car if you want it?”

Scripps smiled, grateful for the invitation. “Thank you, but my mum’s already sent me train tickets.”

“Okay, no problem, just thought I’d offer.”

“Thanks, it’s appreciated.”

“I’ll come over before Christmas.”

“At home?”

Posner nodded.

“Alright. See you then.”

“See you,” Posner said, and he set off down the corridor, footsteps getting quieter.

Seeing him had made Scripps realise a) that he didn’t want to lie to one of his closest friends and b) that Dakin meant more to him than he’d thought.

On Sunday, when he and Dakin ended up on the same train by accident rather than by design, Scripps swapped his ticket with the person sitting next to Dakin and sat there instead. He bundled his coat up on his lap and pulled Dakin’s hand into both of his, hoping that no one would notice.

No one seemed to, all the way to Sheffield.

*

Posner took it better than Scripps had expected. Dakin had wanted to be there but Scripps said it was something he had to do by himself.

They were in a tea shop in town, and Posner had just poured them both a cup of tea and was halfway through his first forkful of black forest gateau, which seemed to be quite the rage at the time, when Scripps announced to the empty chair opposite that he’d been seeing Stuart.

Posner nearly choked on cake crumbs. Scripps had to bang him on the back.

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Fuck me.”

An old lady at the next table glared at Pos. He stuck his tongue out at her when she turned around.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry?”

“Well, you know.”

“Oh come on, I’m not so ridiculous as to be stupid. I liked him but he didn’t like me. That’s all.”

Scripps shrugged. “Even so.”

“Do you love him?”

“I think so?” Scripps heard the question in his voice and hated himself for it, but it was confusing. They hadn’t said it to each other, and still Scripps expected the hammer to fall at any moment and expose this all as lies or an elaborate joke, so it felt strange to be talking about his feelings with someone else.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Stuart. No, alright. It was exactly that. He didn’t trust him but that didn’t mean he wasn’t falling in love with him.

It was that paradox that confused him most of all.

*

In late February Posner came over, again with tea and biscuits.

“Are you going to live with him?”

“What? Stuart? When?”

“Next year.” Posner stood in front of the window looking fierce.

They could live in college in their second and third year if they wanted, but Scripps had always fancied the idea of renting a little terrace somewhere and making it more of a home than these faceless boxes.

“No,” Scripps said. “He’s staying in.”

“So me and you could live together?”

“Of course. But he’d be over a lot, you know?”

“Don, I’m a big boy now. I think I can cope.”

In the event they ended up renting a house with two others, and although Dakin was quite often there Posner never seemed to mind. In fact, they got quite friendly through a systematic mockery of Scripps.

Scripps never could seem to mind, though.

*

Once Scripps’ parents got over the shock of finding out he was sleeping with someone he’d been at school with, they seemed to accept Dakin. He wasn’t allowed to stay over, and they were careful to not to touch each other when anyone else was around anyway, but basically, it was okay.

“That always surprised me,” Dakin says. “I thought they’d hate it.”

“Me too,” Scripps says. He leans across and takes a bite out of Stuart’s toast.

Stuart tuts at him. “So if you loved me then…?”

“When?”

“At Christmas. That Christmas.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And your parents were alright with it by the summer.”

“Yes?”

“And even Pos managed to like it after a while…”

“What’s your point?”

“I want to know, why the fuck did we break up after uni?”

Scripps sighs. “Haven’t we been over this?”

“Not recently.”

“This isn’t a purging of the past, Stuart.”

“Well,” Dakin says, kissing him. “Maybe it should be.”

*

They moved up to London together after university. Posner stayed behind to do an MA. Lockwood went into training straight away. Scripps didn’t know what happened to any of the others, although he’d sometimes see Akhtar’s name in the Guardian’s Education supplement. Dakin went to UCL to train as a lawyer. Scripps went straight to Fleet Street, horrendously unprepared for life there. They moved in together in a tiny flat in Bayswater which was neither pretty nor practical.

They broke up eight months later. It was one thing, it wasn’t anything, it was everything.

It was Scripps’ idea. So he moved out. Left Dakin in their flat, moved south and tried to forget him.

It was all about love, really. Dakin said he loved Scripps. Scripps knew he loved Dakin. He just couldn’t say it.

He was still waiting for Dakin to turn around and say it was a joke. He couldn’t trust. He could love, but he couldn’t trust, and by saying it, he would be trusting.

They had sex one last time before Scripps moved out, although at the time they didn’t know it’d be the last time. It was angry and sad and nothing at all like either of them had come to expect.

*

“I’ve moved out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’ve moved out.”

“Why?”

Scripps sighed and turned around. He was on the payphone in the hall in his new flat, talking to Posner who was on a similar payphone in Oxford. “I’m not sure.”

“Was it your decision or his?”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes, if you want sympathy.”

“Well, mine, then. Mine.”

“Right. Why?”

Scripps looked up at the rotting ceiling. “Because I…” He couldn’t say it. How ridiculous did it sound, to tell your friend that you couldn’t tell your boyfriend of over two years that you loved him? Very. “I do love him.”

“I know.”

“I just hope he does,” Scripps said sadly.

*

They lived apart for twenty months, in the end. Not that they didn’t see each other in that time, but every time they did it ended in yelling and tears, from both of them. Scripps knows that Dakin tried to find solace in other men, that a large number of them even looked a bit like him. Scripps also knows that he tried to find solace at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and it’s a line he’s trod carefully ever since.

He wrote a letter, thinking that it would be easier that way, thinking that because he spent his whole life writing and putting things to paper, that somehow it would help him find the right words to say to Stuart.

It took him nearly two weeks before he was happy with it. In the end he sent all the drafts too, thinking that they would show the depths to which he’d been to get his point across.

The final letter just said: “I do love you. I’m sorry.”

Two days after he sent it he was at home, not that it felt like home, that place never did. It felt more like university halls had: just somewhere to put your stuff before you moved on to the next place. But he was there, anyway, trying to force himself to eat what he’d cooked and not just throw it away and rely on distilled spirits for nutrition, when the buzzer downstairs buzzed. He shoved his plate on the side in the kitchen and picked up his keys to walk down to open the door. The entry buzzer was temperamental; it was much easier to just walk and open it instead.

Dakin was standing in the entryway, arms folded over his stomach. He still had that bloody jacket on (“I’ve still got it now!” he says belligerently, “You just won’t ever let me wear it!”) and he looked. Well. Sad. Older. Weary. World-weary. Maybe he was just Scripps-weary.

“Hi,” Scripps said.

“Hello. I got your letter.”

“Oh.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I said, didn’t I?”

“Well, no. Never did, that’s the problem.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Dakin looked away, eyes across the street, watching who-knew-what in the semi-darkness. “Can I come in?”

“Yes, of course.” Scripps held the door open and followed Dakin up the stairs. Dakin had been here before, only once, but he had. He didn’t fit in this place. Scripps would’ve never lived here if it hadn’t been for them splitting up, and just the simple act of watching Stuart walk upstairs made his heart hurt. He opened the door to his flat and held that door open too.

“It’s crap in here,” Dakin said, looking around at the pathetic worn chair and the kitchenette, which was in need of a good scrubbing.

“I know.”

“Come home?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes?”

It was the way he phrased it as a question. Gone was the cocky, self-confident boy of their early relationship and in his place stood a more self-aware man. A man who did love and was loved. Was most definitely loved.

Scripps had a lot of making up to do. He closed the gap between them and slid his arms around Dakin and kissed him gently. He slid his hands under the soft leather of Dakin’s jacket and pushed it off, let it drop to the floor, then slid his hands under the thin fabric of Dakin’s t-shirt.

They left a trail of clothes on the way to the bedroom.

*

Manchester is the fifth city they’ve lived in and been happy in. Oxford was first, while still at university. Then London. Then London stopped working for them, so they moved to Edinburgh. Edinburgh was nice but expensive. Then came Leeds, which was too close to home but worked for a while. Now there’s Manchester.

And in Manchester, there’s a house. Not a flat but an actual house: a white plastered Georgian terrace. With a garden. A house that they own.

Dakin opens the back door to let the dog out. Scripps watches him, sees the grey in his hair but nothing else to really mark the passage of time since they first fucked.

Scripps reaches over and steals the last few bites of Stuart’s toast. He won’t mind, Scripps is sure.