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Chapter Text

February 2003

He was almost six, just a month until his birthday, the weather turning brighter and the daffodils and primroses coming up in the orchards. Almost six, almost a big boy. Almost, but not quite. The kitchen tiles were cold through his socks. The back door was open and he could hear loud voices coming in from the farmyard. The dogs are both stood stock still, staring out the door. The words didn’t stick, just the volume and the tone. One the baying fox hound, the other the quivering fox. His breaths came in stuttering gasps and the kitchen was wavy and blurred through his watering eyes. He could taste snot dribbling over his lips and swiped at it blindly with the back of his hand. His other hand clutched the arm of his stuffed rabbit toy tightly. Why were they so loud? Why wouldn’t they stop. Couldn’t they hear him? The high, warbling, keening of his crying and the sucking wail of his inhales. Why weren’t they coming to him? To hold him. To stroke his hair and clutch him close and tell him everything is okay. So he was all wrapped up in the smell of tobacco and juniper and almond and pine. They didn’t come. The voices stayed loud.

Arms did wrap round him though. A shoulder he could press his face into was there. Titch. His brother hugged him, put his body between James and the open door like he could block out the sounds with his back. James curled his fingers into the prickly wool of Titch’s jumper and hung on so tight his hands shook. A gentle shushing cut under the shattering noise of their parents arguing. James huddled in closer, could feel the faint shudder of Titch’s ribs that accompanied the wet hiccoughs which skipped in between the hushing. Words that did register with him mumbled close to his ear,

“Come on, lets go out the front an’ play football.”

He was peeled away from Titch’s front, a wet patch of tears and snot staining his brother’s shoulder. Titch’s hand closed around his, leading him out of the kitchen and towards the front door. Titch whistled, a little lispy from a missing tooth, and Bow and Skye turned slowly from their vigil at the door and followed. Titch parked him by the front door,

“Wait ‘ere okay?” His eyes were a little red and his cheeks blotchy.

Titch took a couple of steps back toward the kitchen then stopped, coming back to take James’ hand and settle it in Bow’s long, soft fur. The Rough Collie sat patiently next to James, ears still cocked towards the shouting. Skye pattered after Titch, his black and white, four legged shadow. James wiped his nose again, his face wet and sticky and his lips contorting down at the corners. Soon Titch was back, holding their shoes he must have gotten from the boot room. He helped James into his first, crouching down and sliding them on and then doing up the velcro, before sorting out his own.

Once they’re out in the front garden the voices were quieter, muffled by the space between them but still crawling across from the farmyard. Several child-sized and brightly coloured footballs littered the grass and two mini plastic goals faced each other from either end of the grass. Titch ushered James ahead of him until he was in the middle of the lawn. A neon yellow ball bumped into his feet, habit made him kick it back. The dogs settled in to watch as he and Titch passed the ball back and forth, one or other or both of them haring after it if it went astray. The punt and scuff of their feet and the plastic and the grass hummed in James’ head. The bright yellow of the ball kept his focus entirely and the ringing voices finally dropped away. All the world was simply him, his brother, the dogs, and the ball.

November 2004

He and Titch knelt on kitchen chairs pushed up against the kitchen island so they could reach properly even though he was seven and Titch was ten by then. Dad carried a saucepan of hot milk over from the Aga and set it down on a folded up tea towel. James bounced on his chair, leaning against the island worktop. Dad had let them decide how much chocolate they were going to add and, in the way that only two young boys could, they’d concluded that the only proper amount was the entire two hundred gram bar of Bourneville. He and Titch dropped handfuls of the square lumps they’d broken the bar into while waiting for the milk to heat up into the pan.

“Now,” Dad held up a wooden spoon, smiling wide under his beard, “you can both take a turn stirring, and you need to make sure you only stir in one direction for five whole goes round so you can make a wish.”

Titch scoffed, “you’ve just made that up.”

“Oh, have I?” Dad chuckled, still smiling, “you won’t mind if just James does the stirring then-”

“No,” Titch lurched forwards a little on his chair, “can I. . . can I still do it too please?”

Dad ruffled his hair, the bright blonde fluffing into a tousled cloud, “of course you can. Who’s going first?”

Titch looked at James, took the wooden spoon from Dad and handed it to him, “I’ll ‘old the pan fer you.”

“I can do it myself,” James reached out and held the saucepan handle with one hand and the spoon in the other, “see.”

Titch frowned, pouting slightly, “I were only tryin’ ta ‘elp.”

“I don’t need any help,” he jerked the pan towards himself, some of the milk slopping over the side.

“You’ve spilt it,” an accusatory whinge needled through Titch’s words.

Reddish heat prickled into James’ cheeks. He jutted his bottom jaw out at his brother and the corners of his lips pulled down. Titch was still frowning, a wrinkle creasing the bridge of his nose. James’ opened his mouth to retort but was cut off before he could start.

“Boys,” Dad had an eyebrow raised, he gently took the pan from James’ hold, picked it up and used the tea towel to wipe up the milky puddle, “that’s enough of that now.”

James gripped the spoon a little tighter and looked down. He shuffled his weight from knee to knee. He heard Titch doing the same quietly next to him then,

“Sorry.”

James mumbled, “sorry,” like an echo and held out the spoon to Titch, “you can go first if you want.”

“Nah, it’s. . . it’s okay, an’ you’ve already got the spoon anyway.” His brother smiled, a sort of half curling up of his lips.

James held the pan a lot more carefully this time, stirring slowly and counting the turns up to five out loud. The milk turned darker and darker brown with each rotation. It smelt sweet and cocoa-y and he could sort of see the coils of steam coming off the surface of it. When he got to five he closed his eyes tight shut and made his wish. He’d just started playing with the Taunton youth football club and he was desperate to be picked to play on the first team for matches. He thought it as hard as he could, gave the spoon handle one last squeeze, then opened his eyes. Titch took the spoon when James passed it over. He did his own five stirs, the tip of his tongue poking out from between his teeth. Once he’d finished Dad reached to take hold of the pan again, lifting it up and going to pour some of the hot chocolate out into a mug.

“You have to make a wish too Dad,” James blurted, speaking quickly before any of the milk left the pan.

Titch thrust the spoon toward Dad, “yeah, you ‘ave to do it too.”

“Alright, alright,” he smiled again the whiskery ends of his moustache curving along with his lips.

Dad took the spoon and very solemnly stirred his five stirs and closed his eyes to make his wish. He eased one eye open, keeping the other squashed shut, stuck his tongue out and pulled a face at them. James cackled, leaning back on his chair and clinging to the edge of the countertop to stop himself falling off entirely. Titch snorted, beaming like a sunrise, and pulled a face right back. Dad laughed, big and deep and round. Finally, he poured the hot chocolate into two mugs and Titch and James over-ladened them with squirty whipped cream from a can and mini-marshmallows. Titch squirted some of the cream straight into James’ mouth who spat it everywhere because he was laughing too hard to keep it down. Syke and Bow gladly hoovered up stray bits of cream clinging to the floor and cabinet doors, tails fanning back and forth.

Both boys pulled on coats and wellies and then carefully carried their hot chocolate monstrosities outside. Step by careful step they walked to the little orchard, Dad and the dogs following behind them. James had his now somewhat threadbare stuffed rabbit tucked under his arm. It was dark, the sky melt-water clear and cold. Their breath fogged every time they exhaled and drifted off like ghosts. Dad spread out a blanket in the orchard, in a clear spot between the apple trees where the leafless branches didn’t block the view of the sky. Titch and James huddled down together on the blanket, the dogs coming to lie down beside them when Titch called them and patted the blanket. Dad stayed standing, a few steps away from them, and lit a cigarette. The flame of the lighter and then the cherry-ember of the cigarette end bright in the darkness.

James sipped his hot chocolate, the cream melting into it and down the sides of his mug and over his fingers. He looked up. Tiny, bright white specks spattered across the black. He tried to spot the patterns and shapes he knew. Bow was lying next to his crossed legs, warm and solid. James ran his free hand through his fur, then petting his ears when Bow lay his head on James’ knee. Skye was lying next to Titch, rolled over on to her back so he could pet her belly. The smell of sugary cocoa, damp grass and tobacco coiled around him. He blinked slowly, cat-ish and his eyelids were reluctant to stay open for very long. Titch pointed towards the horizon line,

“There’s the plough.”

James followed the line from the end of his finger to the familiar pan-shaped collection of stars. Dad hummed, the glow of his cigarette bobbing up and down as he nodded,

“Yep, and what’s the proper name for it?”

“Umm,” Titch stopped pointing and scratched the back of his head, “Ursa Major?”

“Good lad,” Dad stubbed out his cigarette and came and knelt down behind them, his arm sticking between their heads and pointing at the sky, “and then, the same sort shape but smaller and higher up is Ursa Minor.” Then he pointed more directly up and both boys craned their necks to follow, “and the w shape there is Cassiopeia.”

James lent back against Dad, “where am I?” An arm wrapped around him from behind.

“Do you mean Aries?” James nodded and Dad’s pointing finger moved slightly behind them and to the side, “over there I think.” He lowered his arm, putting that one around Titch, “and I’m afraid you can’t see Cancer in England at this time of year.”

James felt Titch shrug, “an’ what about you?”

“Nope, can’t see Scorpio either, we’re both summer constellations.”

James had given up keeping his eyes open. Bow’s fur was still soft under his hand and he could rest his head against Dad and a hot chocolate induced fuzzy, cosy weight pulled at his muscles and bones. He shuffled closer into Dad’s hold,

“What about Mum? Can we see her one?”

The arm around him went very still, a rapid clench and then slow relaxing. Dad took a deep breath, and pressed a kiss to the top of James’ head,

“Yes, you can, it’s Taurus and it’s right next to yours.”

He didn’t remember falling asleep but when he woke up he was in bed.

August 2006

It was still really early in the season for under tens Sunday league, one of their first few matches and he and the striker Jordan Owen made a great team. Playing central midfielder suited James, perfectly placed to either attack or set up a play. Plus, he was probably the quickest person on the team, and able to maintain it for a full match. They’d won, three to one, and the whole team bounced into the changing rooms at the little community centre next to the pitch. Their coach, Jordan’s Dad, had to keep reminding them to keep the cheering down a bit because it wasn’t very polite to the other team. He changed quickly, throwing his kit in his bag and hurrying back outside. Dad was standing with the other parents, talking about whatever it was that grown-ups talked about with each other. Like the weather, or their jobs, or something equally boring. Titch was there too, sitting on a bench and playing the Nintendo DS he’d just gotten for his birthday and his glasses sliding down his nose a bit. His brother didn’t care much about football, bafflingly to James he preferred rugby, but James’ Sunday matches got them both out of having to go to church which was never a bad thing in their book.

James ran up to Dad, thudding into his side like an elbow-y little missile. Dad ruffled his hair, then squeezed James against his side in a sort of hug. He looked down,

“Well done lad, you and Jordan were brilliant.”

James grinned, all teeth and scrunched up nose, “did you see the one I scored?”

“Of course I did,” Dad squeezed him again, “goal of the match, that was.”

“Arthur,” Jordan’s Dad called out, walking towards them with another man James didn’t recognise, “have you got a moment?”

Dad disentangled himself from James, “can you go and sit with Titch.”

James looked between Dad and Jordan’s Dad and the man, then nodded and walked over to the bench Titch was on. He plonked himself down and leaned over to see the DS screen. It wasn’t even a Pokémon game, it was something where you pretended to be a lawyer with spiky hair, and Titch had explained it to him but he hadn’t really payed attention. Regardless, he leaned his head next to his brother’s and asked about four hundred questions, all variations on who’s that? Or what’s going on? Or why can’t you fight them? Titch answered every one with increasingly long and gusty sighs.

“James,” Dad and the man had come over to stand in front of them, “this is Mark and he works at the Bristol Rovers football academy.”

James stared up at Mark, his eyes all wide and his mouth slightly open. Titch paused his game, looking up from the screen as well.

Mark smiled, “hi James, I’ve just been having a chat with your Dad because I thought you did some really impressive stuff in the match today. I asked if it’d be okay for you to come and try out for the academy and your Dad said it is, as long as it’s something you want to do.”

“Yes,” James blurted before Mark had really finished his sentence, “yes please.”

He gripped the edge of the bench seat, his whole body shaking like there was a localised earthquake. Titch snorted and started pretending to be a lawyer again. Dad smiled, smoothing his beard with a hand. James beamed back, all his teeth and the gap where he’d just lost one of his bottom canines on show. Kites were flying in his lungs, soaring on giddy updrafts. He’d been asked to try out for a proper team, to join their academy. They only asked people to do that if they thought they might go on to be a professional player.

“Perfect,” Mark nodded, a held out a hand for him to shake, “I’ve asked your friend Jordan too so you can both come and try out together.”

That evening Dad drove them to the seaside at Watchet and they got fish and chips and ate them sitting on the esplanade to celebrate.

Chapter Text

March 2008

He came home from primary school with a Birthday Boy badge pinned to his jumper and his book bag full of cards from his friends. He was having a party at the Taunton leisure centre at the weekend but today was his actual eleventh birthday. He’d gotten to choose what they were having for tea, and Titch had banned him from the kitchen yesterday evening to make a surprise birthday apple cake that was in no way an actual surprise. They both always, always had an apple cake on their birthdays. He tumbled off the little school bus and let himself into the kitchen where Dad was already kneading bread dough for the pizzas they were having later. His big, calloused hands squashed and pulled the dough back and forth on the kitchen worktop easily. Bow looked up from the dog bed by the Aga, lying in it alone now that Skye had been buried in the orchard just before Christmas. He and Titch had both bawled their eyes out, Dad had had both dogs since before even Titch had been born and the spare spot in the dog bed looked cavernously wide.

He ran upstairs to change out of his school uniform, carefully moving the Birthday Boy badge from his school jumper to his regular one. When he came back downstairs he bounced over to hover by Dad’s elbow and watch. A saucepan of pizza sauce blibbed to itself on the Aga and James knew there was a savoury pick-and-mix display’s worth of potential toppings waiting in the fridge. He helped chop vegetables, and grate cheese, and tasted the sauce before giving it his seal of approval while they waited for the dough to rise and for Titch to get back from secondary school. It was further away and the bus route longer, so it was a good forty minutes after James got back that his brother came through the kitchen door. He dropped his backpack on the floor and threw his blazer over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. The three of them each made a pizza, James’ was almost more pepperoni than dough and Titch arranged the mozzarella on his into a wonky Batman symbol. Dad pretended not to notice when the boys slipped bits of cheese and bell pepper to Bow.

After pizza Titch cleared away the plates and James pretended to cover his eyes, peeking through his fingers as his brother retrieved the old Quality Street tin he’d hidden behind some cereal boxes. He brought it over to the table and set it down with a pompously theatrical, off-key mock fanfare. James laughed until he snorted which made him laugh harder and snort again. A wheezy chuckle shot out of Titch, his shoulders shaking so much he struggled to get the lid off the tin. Dad rolled his eyes, the ends of his moustache curling up with the tilt of his smile. Eventually the apple cake was unveiled and hefty slices were cut for each of them.

Overfull, and utterly unrepentant about it, James was steered out of the kitchen by Titch. His brother’s hands were covering his eyes, properly this time, and he was being gently propelled forward to the chanting tune of,

“We’re going ta make ‘im walk the plank, make ‘im walk the plank, we’re going ta make ‘im walk the plank, an’ ‘e’ll drown in the sea.”

They went down the hall and processed awkwardly up the stairs, shuffling down the landing and, based on James’ internal geography, into his bedroom. Titch stopped him, and he and Dad counted down from three. Titch uncovered James’ eyes when they got to zero. In one corner of his room an area had been fenced off into a pen. Inside was a wooden house, a litter tray, bowls for food and a water bottle. Slowly exploring the space was a rabbit, mostly white with black markings on it’s nose, circling it’s eyes, entirely black ears, a black stripe down the middle of it’s back and a smattering chain of black spots on either side of it’s body. James stared wide-eyed up at Dad. A big hand reached out and ruffled his hair,

“He’s all yours lad.”

James opened his mouth, too many words wanting to come out and all getting stuck so that none of them emerged. He’d had a beloved rabbit stuffed toy when he was younger, and always liked watching the wild ones that came into the orchards. He and Titch had been able to creep quite close to some of them before, crawling through the grass as silently as they could, not to try and touch them, he knew that wasn’t safe, but just to be nearer. It never seemed to work so well when he tried without Titch there though. He looked back at the rabbit,

“Thank you,” he hadn’t meant to whisper but it came out softly anyway.

Dad smiled and shrugged, “thank Titch, it was his idea.”

James looked at his brother, Titch had gone faintly pink around the ears. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck,

“Well, I knew you loiked ‘em an’, yeah. . .”

James hurled himself at Titch, hugging him hard enough that all the breath wheezed out of him. Titch patted him on the back then rolled his eyes, grinning, and fought out of James’ squashing grip,

“Get off snotty dangler.”

“Butthead,” James’ smile was sunshine wide and he stuck his tongue out at Titch.

He hugged Dad next, burying his face in Dad’s jumper and breathing in the tobacco-y, almond-y, sort of fruity smell. Dad smoothed his hair down,

“What are you going to call him?”

James, smooshed his lips all to one side, looking down at the rabbit, “Panda.”

January 2009

Titch sat with his arms folded, looking down at his lap. The slip of paper with his initial GCSE module results lay on the kitchen table. They’d just finished dinner and Dad had asked to see them, his eyebrows had lowered as he’d scanned down the little list of letters. As far as James could tell from peering at them as best he could, Titch had done pretty alright. Dad, however, tapped a finger on the table top,

“Not exactly matching up with your predicted grades are they.”

“Yeah, but they’re only-”

Dad cut him off, “they’re not only anything Titch, they’re your GCSEs and you need to take them seriously.”

“I did,” Titch’s voice had pitched up, a whinge of incredulity, “I am.”

“No, I know you, if you were trying you’d have done much better than this.”

James bit his lip, he stared at the tabletop, tracing the woodgrain with his eyes. His palms were starting to get a bit clammy even though no one was paying any attention to him at all. Bow whined quietly from his bed by the Aga.

“”Ow do you know if I’m tryin’ or not, ent loike you ever ‘elped me revise or anythin’.”

Dad took a deep breath through his teeth, “I’m your Dad, I know you better than you do.”

“Bollocks,” Titch jutted his jaw forwards.

Dad glowered, “don’t you use that tone with me.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s not loike yer actually even my Dad,” Titch spat across the kitchen.

Dad’s face went paper white and then blotchy red patches the same colour as his hair burst across his cheeks. James looked between them both, he had his jaw clamped so tight his teeth hurt and his heart buzzed in his chest, making his bones shiver and shake. Dad pointed at the kitchen door with the violence of a beheading,

“Go to your room.”

“It’s not fair-”

“Christopher William you will go to your room.”

Titch stomped out of the kitchen, Bow got up to follow but stopped short when the door slammed in front of his nose. Titch’s footsteps clomped up the stairs, each one a drumbeat of displeasure. James flinched at the sound of his brother’s bedroom door slamming as well. Dad was breathing heavily, his lips pressed tight together. He stood up from the kitchen table abruptly, his chair skittering screechily across the tiles. He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter off the kitchen island and went outside into the farmyard, whistling for Bow to follow. James’ pulse was still going a mile a minute and his muscles were corded rope. What did that even mean? That Dad wasn’t actually Titch’s Dad. He uncurled his fisted hands and stood up, walking leaden-footed over to the kettle. He filled it and put it on, pulling two mugs out of the cupboard. Once he’d made two cups of tea he carried them carefully upstairs and used his foot to knock on Titch’s bedroom door.

“What?” It came clipped and angular through the wood.

“It’s. . .it’s me. . .”

The door opened. Titch’s hair was sticking up at off-kilter angles and his eyes were red and watery. He sniffed, looking at James and then down at the mugs of tea, then shuffled out of the way of the door. James came in slowly, his breath hitching at every creak of the floorboards under the carpet. He put the mugs down on the bedside table,

“I, umm, I made some tea.”

Titch collapsed down so he was sitting on his bed, resting his feet on the edge of the frame and dropping his forehead on to his knees. He mumbled into his jeans,

“Thanks pal.”

Titch sounded crackly and wafer-thin, as if the acid he’d spoken with earlier had left him gutted. James’ hands twitched fitfully, he half reached out and then pulled back. Titch’s shoulders were shaking, but jerkily and in fits and starts in a fight with himself he was slowly losing. James’ tongue was too big in his mouth and his skin prickled and he ought to be doing something. Titch would do something if the situation was flipped. What would Titch do? James scuttled out of the room, down the landing and into his own. He stepped into Panda’s pen and very carefully picked him up. Panda wuffled in James’ arms, his whiskers tickling against James’ neck. Back in Titch’s room James sat next to his brother on the bed, holding out Panda when Titch looked up at him. Titch took the rabbit, setting him gently in his lap and petting his ears.

“I’m sorry you got yelled at,” James picked up his tea, holding the mug in both hands for the warmth.

Titch rubbed his eyes the back of one of his hands, “ent yer fault, I should’ve done better in those modules.”

James would have been over the moon if he’d gotten the results Titch had for the GCSE module exams he’d done before Christmas. There hadn’t been anything lower than a C and it wasn’t as if these were even the final results, just part of what’d make up the overall grade. But then, Titch was the smart one of the two of them. Titch picked up his tea, gulping some down despite it still being pretty hot. James pouted,

“But you did do well, you got an A* in biology.”

Titch shrugged, “just a C in physics though.”

“That’s because physics is stupid, who cares what a force is anyway.” In James’ opinion as long as gravity did it’s thing what did it matter if you understood it.

Titch bumped their shoulders together, lightly so they didn’t spill tea or jostle Panda. He pulled the corners of his mouth into something that might have been a smile. His eyes were still red and some of his eyelashes had clumped together where they’d gotten wet. James’ fidgeted a bit, shifting from side to side,

“Why,” he chewed his lip, “why did you say that Dad wasn’t actually your Dad?”

Titch took another gulp of tea, swallowing and looking away, “’cause he ent. . . it’s why Mum left.”

James frowned, “but I don’t understand, you’re my brother.”

“We’ve still got the same Mum but. . . but my Dad is someone else. It’s. . .” Titch sniffed, “it’s one o’ reasons we don’t look much aloike.”

“Do you know who it is?”

Titch shook his head, wet tracks dribbled down his cheeks again. Someone tapped on the still open bedroom door. Dad stood there, leaning on the door frame. He looked at James,

“Can you give us a minute?”

James nodded, getting off the bed and sidling passed Dad in the doorway. He looked over his shoulder at Titch who gave him another brittle smile.

Chapter Text

October 2010

James was the faster of the two of them but he couldn’t get up to full speed when they were haring around the kitchen island and slipping on the tiled floor in their socks. He skidded past the space where the dog bed used to be next to the Aga. Titch wasn’t far behind him, laughing in whoops and bursts. James’ breaths came in a mix of pants and bubbling chuckles. He skittered through a lap of the kitchen table, jumping over where they’d abandoned their school backpacks. Titch tried to head him off by going the other way around the table but you didn’t get to be central attacking midfielder for the Bristol Rovers under eighteens without being quick on your feet. James jackknifed, changing direction easily and tearing off to loop the kitchen island again. Titch laugh-hooted after him,

“Bloody well, come ‘ere.”

“Never,” he threw his hands in the air and made a break for the kitchen door.

James sprinted down the hallway, skidding into the living room by grabbing the doorframe and using it to swing himself into the room. He got about three feet through the door before something alarmingly solid collided with him, arms wrapped around the top of his legs and he pitched forwards. James might be quicker, and they were more or less the same height by now, but Titch played a very creditable fly-half for the school rugby team and he absolutely knew how to make someone hit the deck. James didn’t go down that hard, if anything Titch probably stopped him from stacking it as badly as he could have. He was pinned to the floor and started wriggling like a hooked fish. He managed to roll over so he was on his back rather than his stomach but Titch was more or less putting his whole weight on James to hold him down. Titch’s open-palmed hand started descending slowly, inexorably, towards James’ face.

“Slow ‘and,”

James squawked, grabbing Titch’s wrist with both hands. His ribs burned from laughing and tears dribbled from the corners of his eyes. His brother’s eyes were all acid-bright-blue in the light as he failed to fend off an oceanic grin by biting his lip. James tried to hold back the slowly advancing hand, pushing against it until his biceps and shoulders ached. He was faster, but Titch was still stronger. Titch’s palm covered his face, James thrashed his head about but it wouldn’t budge. He was gasping in air between crushing, giddy, sky-high wheezes of laughter.

“Slow ‘and,” Titch hollered in triumph and rolled to side, flopping next to James on the carpet.

James kicked him very half-heartedly in the leg. Titch kicked him back, more just a prod with his toes than anything else,

“What do you want fer tea tonoight pal?”

James scrunched his face up, “what have we got in?”

“Well, I reckon we’ve got the stuff fer toad-in-the-’ole.”

“Sick,” James wafted his arms at the ceiling in a one man Mexican-wave, “wait, have we got gravy?”

Titch made a squelchy noise as he thought about it, “it’ll just be Bisto but yes.”

“Hell yeah,” James looked sideways, watched Titch roll his eyes and smile wonkily.

They pulled themselves up from the floor, walking back to the kitchen until James jumped on his brothers back and Titch gave him a piggyback as they went to clandestinely liberate some herbs from one of the greenhouses before making a start on cooking.

May 2011

A handful of village kids were messing around on the green, a tangle of bikes lying on the grass and jumpers pulled off to use for makeshift goal posts. James had brought the football, filling his scant free time away from school and training by electing to punt a ball round even more. Not that any of them were taking three-a-side on the village green hugely seriously. He loped after the ball, their ill-defined pitch barely long enough to merit going any faster, deftly skimming it along in front of him. The other team’s sort of goalie pelted out of the goal towards him, James hammered the ball between her legs in a truly spectacular nutmeg. He’d over-egged it more than a little, the ball hurtled between the two wadded up jumpers and skittered over the lumpy grass before disappearing into the trees of wood that stood between the green and one edge of the farm.

“Ah bollocks,” he threw his hands in the air, “I’ll go get it.”

He jogged over to the trees, the ball thankfully scudding into the wood away from where Margaery’s camp and the little standing stone it was centred around. He tried to avoid Margaery as much as he could, being around her made his skin ripple with a faint buzzing and his fingernails itch. When they were younger, other children in the village played a game where they’d try and sneak up to her cabin, knock on the door and run away again. He and Titch had never joined in. Dad had told them over and over, since they were very little, that Margaery was a witch and should be treated the same way you would a wild swan. Fascinating, serene even, from a distance but could and would break your arm if you got too close. James had taken that to heart.

He slid passed the hawthorns, blackthorns, and hazels, into the dappled shade of the wood. It’d been standing for at least as long as the village, and the village was in the Domesday Book. The bluebells and wild garlic were in flower, and the red campion just starting to come in, so he was up to his ankles in a sea of blue, white, and bright pink under the canopy of the oaks, ash, alder, and occasional yew. It would have been stunning if it wasn’t making it really hard to spot the football. He scanned the undergrowth, face scrunched up as if gurning made concentrating easier.

“This what you’re after?”

He started, his heart and stomach leaping in opposite directions. Margaery was stood beside him, in the same cable-knit jumper, Barbour jacket, corduroy trousers and wellies she’d been wearing for at least as long as James had been alive. She was balancing the football on one open-palmed hand. Some rooks croaked from above them in the canopy.

He nodded to her, “Old Lady Margaery-” then winced as she rapped her knuckles on the top of his head.

She always did it to any of the kids who called her old. Some of them, like Titch, cottoned on pretty quick and just called her Lady Margaery, but the old managed to still slip out of James’ mouth every time. No matter how much his brain knew not to, it just happened.

“I’m not old kid,” she smiled, her teeth showing, it didn’t reach her earthy brown eyes, “I’m sixty-two.”

Sixty-two sounded pretty old to James. It was older than Dad and Dad had said that Margaery had been in her sixties when even he was a boy. Maybe being a witch meant you had to be sixty-two forever. Had she been born sixty-two? Or did she start out as a baby and grow up until she got to sixty-two and then stopped? Oddly, both options seemed equally unimaginable. He rubbed the top of his head,

“Sorry.”

She rolled her eyes, “answer me a question and I’ll give you your ball back.”

“Sure,” James prayed it wasn’t going to involve mental maths.

“Have you heard from your Mother lately?”

He shifted his weight, his fingers curling in to his palms, and swallowed dryly. They didn’t talk about Mum at home, anything that even came close to her just made Dad loudly announce he was going for smoke and stump off. James only even sort of remembered what she looked like because everyone said Titch looked so much like her. He fidgeted with his fingers, flexing and relaxing them in ripples. Margaery stared at him, the football held in one hand still and the other propped on her hip. He looked at the ground,

“No. . . she. . .” he chewed his lip, “we’ve not heard from her since she left.”

An almighty sigh wafted out of Margaery. She shook her head slightly, and pressed her lips tight together. James looked away again, his teeth gritted and his hands balled into fists. Because they hadn’t. Not a single thing. No phone calls. No letters. No visits. Nothing. The absence burnt, running hot and sharp up the back of his neck. His eyebrows thundered down together and he glared at Margaery,

“Happy now?” He jabbed the words at her.

She held the ball out for him, “not really.”

He took it, clutching it close to his chest. What did that mean? Why ask if she wasn’t going to like the answer. She wafted a hand at him,

“Off you go, get out of my wood.”

James back up a couple of steps, then turned and jogged back towards the green. The rooks cackled after him. He looked over his shoulder, Margaery wasn’t there anymore.

March 2012

He and Jordan leaned against the wall in the English corridor, waiting to be let in for third period. A group of girls swept passed, Chloe Wright and her little posse. Chloe was exceptionally pretty, long dark hair and a sort of Disney princess air. Graceful and put-together in a way that boarded on cookie-cutter-ish. She smiled at him as she walked by, she’d been doing that a lot lately,

“Hi James,” she waved, a quick flick of the fingers.

“Hi Chloe,” he waved back.

Jordan elbowed him as soon as the girls had gone by, “dude.”

“What?”

Jordan raised both his eyebrows so high they almost met his hairline. The back of James’ neck got hot. In an act of blissful serendipity their English teacher called the class in to the room. It kept happening though, Chloe and her friends would crop up where he and his friends were. Chloe would smile or say hi or wave or all of the above. He smiled or said hi or waved back, his cheeks and ears turning pinker under Jordan, Ethan and Ali’s pointed looks. It wasn’t fair that he was ginger, it meant he was fairly pale and the splash of warmth across his face stood out far too easily.

Towards the end of the month one of Chloe’s friends came up to Jordan at lunch. They whispered to each other, a lot of hand gestures going back and forth. James shrugged, turning back to Ethan and Ali to try and defend his character creation choices in Skyrim. He didn’t care if it was basic to play a Nord and choose the Warrior standing stone, it was objectively the best option. Ethan could take his Altmer Mage and do one. A couple of days later the same friend of Chloe’s came back with reinforcements and, giggling, swept up Jordan and Ethan and Ali in a pretty effective jovial kidnapping. James frowned as his mates disappeared inside the little group of girls.

“Hi James,” Chloe stood next to him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

His tie felt a bit too tight, “hi Chloe.”

“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a bit?” Her hair was done in one of those fancy plaits that he’d never been able to work out how girls knew how to do.

“Umm,” he swallowed, “sure.”

She took hold of his hand. Was he sweaty? How did fingers work? His whole face had turned the same colour as his hair, making him almost monotone from the neck upwards. Chloe led him away from their friends, not far but round a corner to where it was quiet and no one else was there. She turned to face him but didn’t let go of his hand. James’ arm hung there, motionless, like it was a doll’s rather than a human’s. She smiled at him, looking up from under her lashes. He blinked at her, eyes wider than usual.

“I’m sure you know what I’m going to say,” she laughed, light and breathy, “but I really like you and,” when Chloe blushed it was delicately, petally pink and not tomato-red like his, “would. . . would you go out with me?”

“Sure,” someone said.

He had. He’d said it. The word only parsing through his brain after it’d come out of his mouth. Chloe beamed at him, she stepped closer so they were basically chest to chest and leaned in in further. She kissed him. He closed his eyes, kissed her back and prayed he was doing it right. Her lipgloss was sort of sticky and was probably meant to taste like strawberries but was really kind of generically red flavoured. One of his hands was still in hers but what was he meant to do with the other one? She’d rested hers on his shoulder, by the lapel of his blazer. He hovered his free hand next to her waist, fingers flexing fitfully, then committed and let it settle just above her hip. She didn’t stop kissing him so it must have been okay.

April 2012

Someone knocked on his bedroom door. James hit a button on his Xbox 360 controller to pause his game,

“Yeah?”

Titch called from the other side of the door, “it’s me, can I come in?”

“Sure,” James shuffled on his bed, moving up towards the pillows a bit more to make room.

Titch pushed the door open and came in. His lips were pressed together and he was holding a Boots bag in one hand. James frowned at him, cocking his head to one side slightly. Panda hopped over to snuffle around Titch’s feet, he bent down, scooping the rabbit up in his free hand. His brother looked up at the ceiling, took an almighty breath, set his shoulders and came to sit on the bed next to James. Titch plopped Panda into James’ lap and hissed another long breath in between his teeth,

“Roight, so, I’m only doin’ this ‘cause Dad sure as ‘ell ent goin’ to ‘cause ‘e never did with me an’ . . . an’ well, it’s goin’ ta be awkward as fuck but it’s better if it ‘appens.” Titch’s neck and cheeks and ears were turning steadily red. “So, now you an’ Chloe are datin’ there’s. . . there’s a chance you moight need these at some point.”

He handed the Boots bag to James, who opened it and peered inside. Condoms. It was a box of condoms. A gurgling strangled noise withered in Jame’s throat and he looked up at Titch with moonishly wide eyes,

“Oh. . .”

Titch snorted, “yeah, oh.” He rubbed a hand over his face, “look just promise me you’ll use one if, y’know, yer in a situation where that’d be sensible. Do you know ‘ow ta put one on? ‘Cause it’s foine if you don’t, I can. . . I can explain-”

“I do,” it came out higher pitched than James’ voice had been for a while, “we, umm, we had to do it in PSHE at school.”

“Good, roight,” Titch leant his head back against the wall behind them, “next thing, yer smart enough to ‘ave worked this out anyways, but porn is a lie, an’ that’s not actually ‘ow sex works. Well,” Titch pointedly kept his gaze on the ceiling, “I mean, physiologically that is ‘ow it works but it’s, loike. . .”

“An act, it’s. . .,” James stroked Panda’s ears, starting fixedly at his hands as his face went beet red, “it’s for the camera right?”

“Yeah, very much that.” Titch put his hand on James’ shoulder, “look at me fer a mo.” James squeezed his eyes shut for a breath and then looked up. Titch was blushing furiously but his gaze was steady, “this is the most important bit roight, if somethin’ ‘appens an’ yer ever in trouble, fer whatever reason, you can always, always come ta me.” He squeezed James’ shoulder, “I will never, ever be mad at you fer askin’ fer my ‘elp, okay?”

James swallowed, “I know.”

He did know. Knew it like he knew how to breathe and see and speak. Because when hadn’t that been the case? When hadn’t his brother been anything other than there. The earliest thing James could remember that’s definitely a memory, and not one of those things that he wasn’t sure that he remembered-remembered or just knew because he was told, was Titch holding his hand and leading him out to the front garden to play football. For all this conversation had made his skin feel like it was inverting, something much bigger than embarrassment pressed against his bones. It buzzed from Titch’s hand on his shoulder. It smelt green, and spiced and vanilla. Home. His brother. Home.

“Good,” Titch pulled him into a side-on hug. “Now, let’s agree to pretend this never ‘appened.”

James laughed, hard enough that Panda shuffled off his lap to the stability of the bed. Titch grinned, gave him one last squeeze, punched him on the shoulder and then heaved himself off the bed. He paused halfway out the door,

“Christ knows ‘ow you managed ta get a girlfriend though, maybe I should tell ‘er about the time you shot soup out yer nose so she knows she should reconsider.”

James made a guttural, throaty noise and threw a pillow at him but Titch closed the door too quickly for it to hit him. He could hear his brother’s laugh, loud and bright, as he went all the way down the landing and stairs.

Chapter Text

June 2012

It was a great personal offence, in his opinion, that the break in the football season coincided with when the tomatoes were ready for harvesting. He always got out of having to help with the aubergines and the apples because by and large he’d have training or matches at the weekends. Not in June though, so despite it being Saturday, he was standing in front of one of the greenhouses along with Titch, the part-time farm assistants and a bunch of temporary workers. Dad was reading out who’d be working in which greenhouse and at least James and Titch were in the same one. When Dad read out one of the temporary workers’ names as being assigned to that greenhouse too Titch’s head turned jerkily towards a guy with a deep brown tan and sun-bleached highlights in his hair. His brother’s ears had gone a bit pink and as quickly as he’d looked over, he looked away at the floor.

James sighed and traipsed into the greenhouse, everyone spread out and worked methodically up the rows of plants. He snipped the ripe fruits off each plant and dropped them carefully in a bucket. Every time the bucket got full he’d go and empty it into a much larger container down at the front of the greenhouse. He was on one side of a row of plants and Titch was on the other, he aimed to keep pace with his brother, mostly because Titch was one of the most efficient pickers and so keeping up with him meant they’d be done faster. James wiped sweat off his forehead with his forearm. He was on his own on his side of the row but someone had come up to work directly next to Titch. It was the guy who’s name had made Titch more or less spasm earlier. They started talking quietly to one another. It’s not like James was trying to listen but once he’d tuned into what they were saying he couldn’t tune out again.

“So, do you usually help out with the harvesting?” The guy had an accent, French maybe or Spanish, something around there.

Titch’s voice was oddly breathy, “yeah, it’s, umm, part o’ learnin’ ‘ow ta run things.”

“Okay, cool,” there was a soft chuckle, “just wanted to make sure so I know if I should come back here next year too, wanted to know if I’d get to see you again.”

James’ hands stopped, a bunch of tomatoes in one and a pair of secateurs mid-snip in the other. He stared wide-eyed and unfocussed at the plant in front of him. Was this guy flirting with his brother? He heard Titch splutter quietly, a shaky breath and maybe a laugh.

“Well now you ‘ave to come back, ‘cause I think I’d loike ta see you again too.”

Oh good Christ, Titch was flirting back. Was he . . . was he into guys? Was that why Titch insisted I Am Number Four was a good film when it patently wasn’t? Because honestly, unless you fancied Alex Pettyfer, James couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would like it.

“My name’s Javier, by the way.”

“Well Javier it’s. . .it’s good ta get ta know you better.”

James shook himself slightly, and went back to work but slower, letting Titch and Javier pull ahead of him on their side of the row. He vaguely kept an eye on them for the rest of the day though, always finding them in the same place. Titch and Javier often seemed to gravitate towards each other, there were lunch breaks where both of them were, conspicuously to him, absent and some evenings when Titch was out but didn’t really say where he was going or when he’d be back. So, quite possibly and as far as James could tell, his brother wasn’t entirely straight.

July 2012

It was the arse end of the school year and the Year Elevens had already finished all their exams and were on their extended summer holiday. James’ year were still very much having to go in but at least they’d been told they could stop wearing their blazers given the sweltering heat. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up and had taken his tie off as well while he, Jordan, Ethan and Ali kicked a football around during lunch. Chloe and her friends sat nearby, chatting. Most of the school were out on the field, eating or dicking about or sun bathing. A group of Theatre Club kids that James sort of knew, but not well, were sitting in the shade of some trees nearby, occasionally when the ball rolled over their way one of them would roll it back for them. A splittingly loud voice called out to him,

“Yo, James, pass us the ball,” Harrison Daly and his cluster of fuckheads were slouching over.

James rolled his eyes and just passed the ball to Ali, who knocked it on to Ethan, who sent it to Jordan and then it came back to James. He tapped it back to Jordan, the ball scudded over the grass until, about half way between them, someone bombed in and punted it full force off course. It rocketed into the group of Theatre Club kids, smacking with a reverberating thump off a guy called Ash Parker’s head. Harrison threw his hands in the air,

“He shoots, he scores.”

The fuckheads all laughed like he’d said something witty. Ash stood up, the ball clenched between his hands and a spreading red mark from the impact splashed over his cheek. James and his mates trotted over, Ali already calling out to ask if Ash was okay. One of Ash’s friends had stood up too, a blonde girl, Roberta Mosse, her jaw tight,

“Fuck off Harrison.”

“Ah come on, he’s a bender, he likes balls in his face.”

Ash actually was gay, the only out kid in the entire school, and he got a lot of shit for it. His face went very white under the red of the mark. His jaw wobbled and he opened his mouth as if to say something but no words came out. James’ hands clenched into fists. The slur dropped like a concrete brick in his stomach. It wasn’t fair. His pulse thumped. No one deserved to be spoken to like that. He stomped towards Harrison. How fucking dare someone say something like that about someone like his brother. He gripped Harrison by the shoulder, ratchetted his right arm back and swung. His fist smacked into Harrisons jaw. Bright pain crunched through James’ knuckles. People started yelling. He could hear Chloe’s voice. Harrison punched him in the stomach. They fell to the floor. A fist slammed into his mouth, splitting his lip. James wrestled until he was pinning Harrison to the grass, he kept punching,

“Don’t you,” his fist hit Harrison’s cheek, “fucking dare,” and again, “say shit,” and again, “like that,” someone pulled him off, “again you homophobic cunt.” He was yelling.

Both of them were hauled off to the head teacher’s office and even though everyone who’d seen what happened backed James up, he was still internally suspended for a week. It was very quiet over the dinner table that evening. Dad waited until they’d finished eating before he broke the silence,

“Well then James Zachery, would you care to explain what on Earth you thought you were doing this afternoon,” he leaned back in his chair, fixing James with a suspiciously level look.

James stared at the table top, he wet his lips and the cut stung a bit, “he was bullying a kid for being gay and. . .” he took a deep breath, “that’s really out of order,” he flicked his eyes up to Titch and then away again, “because there’s nothing wrong with being gay.”

“So you hit him?” Dad sighed “James, there’s a difference between standing up for someone and getting in a fight.”

“But Harrison punted a football into Ash’s head.”

Dad folded his arms, “and you punching Harrison over it makes you no better than him.”

“But-”

“That’s enough James,” Dad got up from the table and fished his cigarette packet out of his pocket, “no more fights, ever, and I expect you to do your and Titch’s chores for the next two weeks, that’s the end of it.”

He went out the back door, leaving James and Titch still sitting at the kitchen table. James hurled himself to his feet, hot red splotches covering his cheeks and nose. He grabbed his plate and cutlery, took it over to the dishwasher and shoved it in. His insides were too hot. He leaned against the worktop, hands gripping the edge so tight his bruised knuckles burned. He was better than Harrison. He’d been defending someone and that had to make a difference. It had to. An arm settled around his shoulders, Titch stood next to him and squeezed. James looked up at his brother. Titch was smiling, just a little, and his eyes were a bit soft and misty,

“I’m proud of you pal.” Titch let go, “I’m puttin’ the kettle on, do you want a cup o’ tea?”

James nodded and ducked his head, a much gentler warmth ebbing in to drive out the anger-heat from before. What he’d done had made a difference.

September 2012

He’d known it was coming. The same way that he’d known Chloe breaking up with him was coming when she did it in August. Clearly the shine of dating him was thoroughly worn off by the reality that a lot of his time outside of school was taken up by football. Still knowing something is coming and it actually arriving were fairly different things. Titch had gotten his A Level results in August, A*, B, B, comfortably enough to get into his first choice uni. So it’d been on the cards that he’d be leaving for Staffordshire come September for an entire month. It’d been a possibility for even longer than that. But still, watching Titch and Dad load up his brother’s things into the Land Rover had turned the floor through ninety degrees. He was watching it all happen on the skew-wiff, his hands bunched in the pockets of his shorts. It was early still, and not warm enough yet to really be wearing shorts, but summer weather was still sticking around and it’d be sweltering by noon.

They were all going up to help Titch move in to his halls on the Harper Adams campus. A three and a bit hour drive. One hundred and seventy miles. And then he and Dad were just going to leave Titch there, on his own, with only people he didn’t know. James’ socked feet were very cold on the tiles of the boot room door as he stared out into the farmyard. The last few boxes and bags and things went in back of the Landy. Dad shut the door on it all. He and Titch stood, still, just looking at the packed up stuff through the back window. Then Dad sighed, turning back towards James and the house, his jaw was tight as he patted his pockets. He pulled out his cigarettes,

“James, can you fetch me a lighter?”

James rummaged in the pockets of one of Dad’s coats that was hung up by the boot room door. He found a plastic, disposable Bic lighter in the inside pocket and held it out. Dad took it, sparking up, taking a drag and exhaling a long stream of smoke into the morning air. He knew they’d be leaving as soon as Dad finished smoking. He put his shoes on, taking longer than he really needed to to tie the laces, like somehow a loose shoelace would stop them from all having to get in the Land Rover. Would stop them from driving up the M5. Would do anything other than mean he was wearing a sloppy feeling shoe. So they did all climb into the Landy, squeezing across the three front seats, James automatically putting himself in the awkward middle one because as the youngest that’s just where he’d always gone. They stopped around Gloucester for a break and then after long enough that his bum and brain had gone numb but too soon for his heart to have given up feeling as well, they got to Harper Adams.

A fairly steady stream of overladen cars were pulling in to the campus, vomiting out families and new students and suitcases. James waited in the car while Dad and Titch went to find out where they had to go, and to pick up Titch’s student ID and keys. He fiddled with his fingers. He was going to be moving to Bristol this time next year, after he’d finished his GCSEs, into academy accommodation. Both he and Jordan were moving into the Professional Development phase and that meant they’d be full time at the academy, the programme blending their training with studying a BTEC in Coaching and Sports Development. He’d be away from the farm during the week, coming home only on weekends. And Titch would be here. So who would Dad have? He pressed his fingernails into the palms of his hands.

The Land Rover doors clunked open and Dad and Titch got back in, Titch held a print out of the campus map and directed Dad to his halls block. The three of them played reverse tetris to unload the car and carry everything up to Titch’s room. It was okay, a reasonable size and en-suite but entirely impersonal. Watching Titch’s stuff slowly fill up the space was like seeing bikers sing opera. No reason why it shouldn’t happen but jarring nonetheless. Eventually, there wasn’t anything else left to carry. Dad squeezed them both on the shoulder, one hand for each son,

“So,” he swallowed thickly, “why don’t we go and find somewhere for lunch?”

Titch nodded, “sounds good ta me.”

He pulled his phone out his pocket and found a good looking pub in a village a short drive away. It was good, cosy-country-pub décor and very solid pub food that James couldn’t seem to taste properly, Dad even let him have a half-pint of Neck Oil. He ate as slowly as he could, chewing everything to pasty mush before swallowing. Dad and Titch talked, cellophane thin discussions about how great a time Titch would have. Then they were done, and heading back to the campus and walking Titch back up to his room. James’ brain was on lag, all his senses only sending information along his nerves ten seconds after the input had actually happened. He and Dad hovered in the hallway outside Titch’s door. His brother stood on the threshold, eyes pinched behind his glasses. Titch sighed, then pulled him in for a hug, squeezing him tight and James had to swallow thickly. He had a couple of inches on his brother now and the realisation sat like a vacuum in his stomach. All his insides got pulled into some great big, cold void and jumbled around weightless. He bit the inside of his cheek, bunching his hands in the back of Titch’s t-shirt. A solid hand patted him on the back, between his shoulder blades,

“It’s oright pal, I’ll be ‘ome fer Christmas,” Titch leaned back, holding him at arms length, a tiny, thin smile on his face, “an’ anyways, now you won’t ‘ave to foight anyone fer who gets ta use the bathroom first.”

James mangled some sort of curving of his lips, “yeah, and there won’t be anyone eating all the good cereal anymore either.”

They both laughed, scratchy and faltering. Dad ruffled James’ hair, his eyebrows were pulled low and he was smiling the same way Titch had, as if it were a plaster put on to try and cover an amputated limb. Something spiky and angular had stuck in James’ throat, it ached when he swallowed and rasped when he breathed. Titch let go of him, leaning against the doorframe of his room. Dad put an arm around James’ shoulders,

“Well I. . . I suppose we ought to get going if want to avoid the traffic.”

“Safe droive,” Titch’s smile came out more like a wince.

Dad clapped him on the shoulder, squeezing and letting his hand sit there for a moment. He sighed, in through the nose and out through the mouth,

“See you at Christmas.”

James had the inside of his cheek between his teeth, squeezing hard. He waved, small and jerky, because the whole of the English language had deserted him. He turned away, down the hallway, like he was moving through molasses. He’d gotten about ten aching steps when his brother called out after them,

“James,” he turned to look over his shoulder at Titch, “text me when you get ‘ome okay.”

“Of course,” he nodded, almost too hard.

He and Dad left, walking back out to the Land Rover and climbing in. The empty space in the back made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He turned the radio on, the music and inane DJ chatter filling the space and pushing out the howling absence. He wound the window down a bit, the breeze tangling his hair into off-kilter shapes, and stared out of it. The campus dribbled away like water down a drain. Everyone left. Mum. Skye. Bow. Chloe. Titch. One way or another everyone left. He rested his forehead against the glass, crushing his eyes tight shut.

Chapter Text

December 2012

James bounced on the balls of his feet, staring at the ticket barriers between him and the platforms at Taunton station. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his coat and he’d hunched his shoulders up a bit so his scarf covered his face all the way up to his nose. Dad was waiting in the Land Rover, or more likely leaning on the bonnet of the Land Rover whilst he smoked, but James wanted to meet Titch as soon as possible after he’d gotten off his train. A clog of people swelled behind the barriers, tangling themselves up with their bags or each other, as a train must have just disgorged itself. He peered through the crowd, a lightning-strike smile sparking behind his scarf when he caught a glimpse of mid-summer-blonde hair. Titch had big, over-ear headphones on and an over-stuffed looking duffle bag thrown over one shoulder. He spotted James as he came through the barrier, slipping his headphones off to rest around his neck. Titch pulled him into a tight hug, the pair of them all copper and gold.

“Oright pal?”

“Yeah,” James shrugged, still grinning, as they let go, “not bad.”

Not bad in the same way that a sailor lost at sea would feel not bad upon finally coming home. Not bad as if he hadn’t been quietly counting down the days. Not bad as though the farmhouse hadn’t rung with echoes and ghosts of the third body that used to help fill it up for the past three months. Titch followed him out to the station and into the car park. Dad was indeed propped against the side of the Landy, the dregs of a cigarette between his lips. He stood up properly, stubbing out the cigarette and slinging an arm around Titch’s shoulders when he got close enough,

“How was the train?”

“Foine, ‘ad ta stand up fer a bit but could’ve been worse.”

They all bundled in the front of the Land Rover, Dad taking Titch’s bag and putting it in the back. Titch put a hand on James’ shoulder as he went to squash into the middle seat,

“Yer taller than me now, probably best I go in the middle.”

James hovered by the open door, letting Titch sidle passed him. He bit his lip and ducked his head, pulling his shoulders in as if he might somehow get smaller. He’d had fifteen years of looking up at his brother, looking down at him may as well have been looking at the dark side of the moon. He wasn’t supposed to know what it was like. He sat in Titch’s seat, because it was always going to be Titch’s seat to him, and swung the door shut with a metallic clunk.

A handful of days later he was trying to help Dad frost proof the greenhouses, dragged out of bed early on a Saturday because his football academy was on Christmas break and he didn’t have training. Titch was up and out even earlier, off making some emergency pre-Christmas deliveries to the pubs and restaurants they supplied. James kept fumbling with the tools, his fingers too numb to manage the fine motor movement. He made a guttural, scoffing sigh as he dropped something for about the tenth time that morning. He sat back on his heels as the greenhouse door slid open and Titch stepped in. Dad looked up from where he was working,

“Everything go alright?”

Titch nodded, “all foine, an’ Daisy sent me back with a Christmas puddin’.”

James wiggled his fingers, blowing on them to try and get any amount of warmth back in them. Titch came over and knelt down beside him,

“Let us give you an ‘and.” His brother took over, working with the same simple efficiency he always did. “I got chattin’ to Johnny fer a bit as well, ‘e said that the Catford’s ent goin’ ta be holdin’ a wassail at their orchards this year ‘cause Terry ent well.”

Dad hummed, “so I heard, it’s a shame but understandable.”

“Why don’t,” Titch paused in working, fiddling with the wad of lagging in his hands, “why don’t we ‘old one ‘ere instead?”

“No.”

James glanced over at Dad, he was still looking at the section of greenhouse frame he was insulating, but his lips were pressed tight together underneath his beard. The line of his shoulders was rigidly straight in a way that made James hold his breath for a moment. Titch frowned,

“Why not? Just fer this year, so people can still enjoy one without Terry ‘avin’ to overstretch ‘imself.”

Dad sighed, “we’ve never done one before, I wouldn’t know where to start with it.”

“I can do it,” Titch squashed the wadding even harder, “I don’t mind poppin’ round to see Terry an’ askin’ what needs ta ‘appen and then organisin’ it all, and I’m sure Johnny’d ‘elp too.”

Dad finally looked up at them, his jaw still taut. He stared at Titch, his chest moving with his breaths in such a regular up and down that he must have been forcibly pacing it. James looked from one to the other. Titch’s eyes were so wide and gas-flame blue, he was leaning forwards ever so slightly, coiled up with something and ready to snap like an elastic band. Dad’s eyebrows were gently pulled together, his eyes looked washed-out compared to his son’s, the weak blue of a cold winter sky. He sighed again, his shoulders falling, and shook his head before looking up at the sky through the glass roof panes of the greenhouse.

“Fine, but you’re the one organising it all.”

Titch smiled with all the warmth that James couldn’t find in his hands, “thank you.”

January 201 3

Twelfth night rolled on in and James had spent the day helping his brother build a bonfire out in the big orchard, putting it carefully somewhere unlikely to damage the trees. They hung little battery-powered candle lanterns from the apple tree branches. The kitchen smelled incredible as they made the wassail in huge pans they’d borrowed from Daisy and the Hoss-stinger’s kitchen. People started arriving after it had gotten dark. The bonfire was lit and mugs of wassail were passed around. James studiously avoided Margaery, giving her a wide berth at all times. Once everyone had arrived, Titch shinned up the oldest tree in the orchard, easily moving up the branches despite only having one free hand until he was perched in the boughs. Sure it was dark, and that made it hard to tell for certain, but James would swear blind his brother hadn’t spilt a single drop of wassail on the way up. The bonfire and lantern light licked across and shone off his hair, his eyes seeming phosphorescent blue in the dark. Haloed and hallowed and standing amongst the spindly shadows of the apple branches Titch’s soft tenor flooded the air just like the spices from the wassail,

“Apple tree, apple tree, we all come ta wassail thee, bear this year an’ next year ta bloom an’ ta blow, ‘at fulls, cap fulls, three cornered sack fulls, ‘ip, ‘ip, ‘ip, ‘urrah, ‘oller boys, ‘oller ‘urrah.”

He poured the mug of wassail down the tree as the crowd crowd hip, hip, hip, hurrahed back to him, everyone’s mug raised in the air. James hollered loudest, one hand cupped around his mouth. The bonfire flickered and popped, sparks rising high into the night. A tawny owl hooted from the wood, another called back in a reedy echo. Titch’s smile was wider than the Milky Way. He was half ghostly silver from the moon and half burnished gold from the fire. The light rested on him like a mantel, the stars behind him spun a crown over his head, and the night bowed to him on his apple-wood throne. James clanked his mug against Jordan’s, both of them gulping huge mouthfuls of the sweet, spiced cider. His cheeks were rosy red, hot to the touch, and a foggy hum laid over his brain that cast a soft tilt over everything. Titch swung himself out of the apple tree, descending with breakneck grace and rapidity. The boozey squint in James’ mind almost made it look like tree’s boughs and trunk moved and bent to give Titch a route down.

Someone, much less able to carry a tune than Titch, careened into a helter-skelter rendition of I Am A Cider Drinker. More and more voices tumbled in and Titch’s soaring whoop of laughter sung over everything, he took the fresh mug of wassail handed to him and downed it. James and Jordan hurtled in at the first chorus as Titch, loose and wild, belted along too. A bunch of the lads his brother had hung out with at school clustered around Titch, hoisting him on to their shoulders and carrying him in a lap of the apple tree. Cider Drinker morphed into The Blackbird and then The Combine Harvester. Voices rose to meet the stars and the stars reached down to tangle their fingers into the sound. Fire inside and out, one real flames and the other entirely liquid, kept James warm even as his breaths turned misty white on the freezing air.

He meandered through the tide of people, leaving Jordan for a moment to go and find somewhere secluded to piss. Just out of the span of the firelight, familiar voices buzzed through his hazy focus. He stopped, squinting through the dark, finding two human shapes amidst the shadows of the apple trees. Dad and Titch. James held out a hand to brace himself against a tree trunk, the orchard grass wavering under his feet slightly, and listened.

“What the hell was all that?” Dad’s voice rippled low and jagged.

“All what?” Titch’s still carried some of the wing and soar from earlier.

A hissed out breath, “all that shit up the tree.”

“Wassailin’, sort o’ the point o’ why everyone’s ‘ere, remember?” His brother’s shadow shifted, arms moving to gesture towards the bonfire and the crowd.

“Look, I don’t know what you thought you were playing at but-”

“It’s just a bit o’ fun,” Titch cut in.

“It’s fucking stupid is what it is and it’s never going to happen again, do I make myself clear.” It was almost so hissed and low that James’ wobbly brain couldn’t parse the words.

There wasn’t a breath of wind but the branches of the apple trees clattered and the grass swayed, “foine.”

Titch’s shadowy shape stumped away, shoulders high and hands jammed in his pockets, back towards the bonfire and the voices and the light. A much tinier flame flared in the darkness, Dad sparked up a cigarette, the cherry of the lit end glowing bright as he took a drag. James squeezed his eyes shut, then slowly blinked them open again. They used to climb in the apple trees all the time when they were younger. Why did Dad care about it now? James stumbled slightly off, turning away from Dad and heading further into the orchard until he deemed himself far enough away from everyone to safely piss.

April 2013

He was sitting on the sofa, flicking through channels on the TV trying to find anything worth watching. It was proving difficult. Dad came into the sitting room, an uncrumpled bit of paper in his hand. His lips were pressed tight together under his moustache and something faintly stormy in the level jut of his shoulders. James flicked through the TV channels a bit faster.

“James,” Dad strode over to stand next to where he was sitting, “why was this in the recycling?”

He glanced at it, “because it’s paper we don’t need anymore?”

“Now, to me, this looks an awful lot like a letter from school about how you need to go to catch-up revision sessions so you don’t fail your GCSEs.” Dad’s voice was flat, in the same way that birds stop singing before bad weather.

James dropped the TV remote, his palms unhelpfully clammy, “yeah, but Mr Allman said I didn’t have to go because they clash with training.” He rushed it all out in one breath, the words getting faster and faster towards the end.

“He’s your PE teacher, he would say that.” Dad stared him down until James had to look away.

He shuffled his feet back and forth on the carpet, jaw jutted forward “but I’ve already got my place at the academy for after I finish Year Eleven.”

“You can’t act like nothing matters besides football, you need to knuckle down and make sure you get proper qualifications so you have options in the future.” Dad threw the crinkled bit of paper on to the coffee table, “I’m not expecting you to get straight A*s but I am expecting you to pass James.”

“I’m not smart like Titch is, it’s not like I’m going to go to uni or anything,” James glowered at the carpet, “you didn’t go.”

Dad sighed, the exhale long and controlled, buying himself time, “no, and I’m not saying you should feel like you have to, but you need a backup plan James, there’s no guarantee that football will work out as a career for you.”

“Yeah, but-”

“Your exams are important, and you have to treat them that way, you still need the grades to get onto the BTEC course.”

“I am taking them seriously,” he clenched his fists in his jumper sleeves, “I tried really hard in the mocks but. . . but the,” he swallowed hard, “the questions don’t always make sense, and I keep rereading the same line over and over by accident and,” the words were all rushing out of him, “it’s so hard to write neatly so it takes me ages, or I can’t remember the stupid maths formulas, and I just. . . I know a bunch of words but I can’t spell them and nothing looks right no matter how many ways I write it down. . .”

He was breathless, his ribs jerking and his knee jiggling up and down. Dad was silent for a moment, just looking at him, then rested a hand on James’ shoulder,

“Has. . . has it always been like that for you?”

James wrinkled his nose, “what? Have I always been stupid?”

“No, no, James,” Dad squeezed his shoulder, “I mean have you always found it that difficult with reading and writing and remembering things?”

He just shrugged, still staring at the carpet. The TV was still chuntering away to itself in the background, some pointless, brightly colour game show. James fiddled with his sleeves, picking at the cuffs and twisting it between his fingers,

“Yeah, why?”

Dad sighed again, but smaller, “I think. . . I think we need to talk to someone at school about getting you tested for dyslexia.”

James hunched over a bit, he’d kind of always just figured it was like that for everyone but he wasn’t smart enough to get over it. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t read or spell at all, and he only had messy hand writing because he’d never put much effort in to learning how to write nicely in primary school. He wet his lips,

“Okay, if that’ll. . . if that’ll help.”

Maybe he wasn’t thick, if it turned out he was actually dyslexic. Maybe there was a reason he found it harder to do those things than other people and it wasn’t that he was lazy or a moron. He slowly unfurled his fingers from his jumper sleeves, the fabric wrinkled and creased where he’d be crushing it. Dad patted his shoulder,

“I’ll put the kettle on.”

James pulled his knees up to chest as Dad got up off the sofa and headed for the kitchen. He looked up at the TV, eyes slightly unfocussed so all he could really distinguish were the colours and the movement. Regardless of whether he was dyslexic or not, what would he do if the football didn’t end up working out? Nothing else pulled at him the same way it did. He never felt more in place than on the pitch. Things just worked there, his muscles and brain and gut all knew what to do and how to make life rocket through his veins. For better or for worse, the football better work out.

September 2013

He did pass his GCSEs, enough to go to the college in Bristol that did the academic side of the academy but nothing spectacular. Getting the dyslexia assessment had probably saved him, he’d been given exam time and allowed to type his answers rather than hand write them. Although, the spell checker had been disabled so while legible, what he’d written was almost inevitably full of interesting approaches to spelling. Not that it mattered anymore, he’d gotten the bit of paper he needed. Dad had given him a solid pat of the back and squeezed his shoulder when he’d seen the results. Titch, who’d been home from uni for the summer, had hoisted James on to his shoulders and carried him on a victory lap of the farmyard, then cooked all of James’ favourite things for dinner. He’d had to hold onto one of Titch’s hands to stop himself falling as he was jogged around the yard, laughing loud and breathlessly under the August sunshine. Titch had hooted and cheered along, proudly informing the general countryside that his brother was going to single-handedly be the reason that Rovers got promoted up and would keep being promoted until they reached the Premier League.

The same light-headedness he’d had on results day jiggled around inside his skull and tingled over his skin. They were squashed into the Land Rover again, driving to Bristol to drop him off at the academy accommodation he’d be living in during the week for the next two years. Term at his college started earlier than the Harper Adams one so Titch had been able to come as well. Sitting jammed up next to him in the Landy was like having something to tether himself to so he didn’t drift off entirely. It let the coil of nerves and excitement teetered more towards excitement. He was leaving home, sort of, going somewhere else where life wasn’t measured out in constant relation to planting, and growing, and harvesting. He wasn’t going alone either; Jordan, his parents, and his younger sister were following behind them in their car. Knowing there’d be a familiar face kept the clatter of his heart manageable, made sure the tide didn’t get high enough to drown him.

Seven years of hard work since he’d first joined the academy. Seven years of choosing to give his free time to football rather than seeing his friends, or being able to keep hold of a girlfriend, or taking some of the farm work load off Titch and Dad. Seven years of asking his family to agree to coming along with him on this too, and of them doing that unbegrudingly. He’d thought a lot about what he’d do with his first pay check after he’d been signed. Because he was going to be signed, not making that happen wasn’t an option. He’d do something for them, for Titch and Dad. A holiday abroad somewhere, and he’d pay whatever it took for people to look after the farm for two weeks. That way they could actually go away, properly, together like they’d never really been able to before. He knew Titch still practiced the Spanish they’d learnt at school, so maybe they could go there. Or really, really go for it and go to Mexico or Puerto Rico or somewhere like that. The idea of Dad not working and instead being on holiday, relaxing on a beach, almost felt like imagining taking him to the moon. James would make it happen though. He would.

Chapter Text

May 2014

The second half of the match was electricity on six and a half thousand odd square meters of grass. They’d started behind, two-nil down, after half-time and, good God, as much as he loved a clean win, nothing hit quite like the high of clawing victory from under the other team’s nose. He and Jordan had exchanged a look just before kick off for the second half. The previous forty-five minutes were dead, all that there was, was the here and now. All his world shrank down, nothing in his head besides the pinpoint focus of an exocet missile. He hit like one too. Twenty minutes in he and Jordan had levelled the score. The ball had barely left the other team’s half, and James, Jordan and the other forwards had dominated possession. The adrenalin ate him from the inside out, pushing him further and faster and deadlier.

He had the ball, he had a clear path, he had his team behind him if he needed them. He could take them ahead. He could grab winning by the scruff of the neck and drag it back towards them. Dad was there, was watching, the first match he’d been able to come to for months. Jade, the girl James had been dating since not long after he moved to Bristol was there too. He could do it. He could. Something slid into his feet like a train. He heard a sound like a gunshot. His vision went white. The ground was were the sky had been. Screaming, howling, blinding pain crushed his muscles into atoms. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to move. Every nerve he possessed and some extra whipped themselves into a raging feedback loop of hurt. His eyes were wide open but he couldn’t see a thing. He passed out.

He came to in bits and pieces. The world washing in and out again like the tide. Everything was fuzzy; the inside of an ambulance, Dad’s face, being wheeled into A&E. He didn’t really come back to the world properly until he was in a hospital bed, on a ward that smelt like plastic and disinfectant. His was lying on his back, tucked under a constricting layer of hospital sheets. All except for his right leg which was suspended in the air in a sling. He squinted, his mouth felt fuzzy and dry, and rolled his head to the side. Or at least, he started the motion and then gravity flopped him the rest of the way. Everything was running in half speed, jittering and jumping from frame to frame like a lagging video. Dad was sitting beside the bed, he leaned forwards, eyebrows pulled together,

“James?”

James blinked at him, lifting a hand and limply sort of flapping it against Dad’s cheek, “what do you hide in your beard?”

“Oh you know, just bits and bobs,” Dad took hold of his hand, patting it gently.

“Where’s Titch?” James started looking around the room, trying to push himself to sit up but mostly just flailing against the pillows, “where’s Titch?” He frowned, why wasn’t his brother here? Where had they put him? “Titch?” He called out, half-shouting, “Titch come out now, I. . .” his chest lurched, “I don’t like this game.” His eyes stung as desperate little tears and whimpers fell down his cheeks and out of his mouth.

Dad pulled him into a hug, shushing him softly, “it’s okay James, you’re okay, it’s just the anaesthetic wearing off. Titch isn’t here, he’s at uni, but he’s all fine.”

James buried his face into Dad’s shoulder, spiky sobs and gasping breaths making his ribs ache. Dad rubbed his back, taking all of James’ weight as he slumped over. Once the tears had dried to just tacky tracks on James’ face and his brain had stopped being chock full of sedatives, Dad explained what had happened. One of the other team’s defenders had fouled him, an outright red card offence kind of foul, with a two-footed sliding tackle. The speed and force of it had broken James’ tibia. He’d been brought to Bristol Royal Infirmary in an ambulance and, when the x-ray showed the bone was shattered, had had surgery to pin it back together. James didn’t remember any of it, everything since the match just a disjointed, blurry smear.

The further and further away the anaesthetic slipped, the more and more his leg made itself known. Washes of nauseating, burning, static and thunder pain weighing him down and painting his face pallid-pale. A nurse brought him some Oramorph, it was sweet and sort of raspberry flavoured and reminded him of taking Calpol as a kid, but it did the trick. The pain dissolved and so did part of his grip on the world. It all went swimmy but frankly, he didn’t really care, and by the time someone came to give him something to eat his addled little brain was half way to thinking things were pretty okay. Dad stayed with him until visiting hours ended, only popping off occasionally for a smoke or to get coffee. He hugged James, tight and long, squeezing him as if the pressure could put James back together again. After Dad left James slept, sort of, sliding fitfully between exhaustion and morphine knocking him out and being kept awake by the strange noises on the ward and not being able to change position because of his leg. Eventually, morning came.

A nurse poked his head around the privacy curtain, “someone’s here to see you.”

James looked up from his phone. Titch appeared around the curtain, his hair was ruffled and his eyebrows were pulled together behind the frame of his glasses. He hovered at the end of James’ bed, his bottom lip between his teeth but lurched forwards as soon as the nurse had gone. James was pulled into a bear hug. His brother’s arms wrapping around him tightly and squeezing. He buried his face into Titch’s shoulder and curled his fingers into the back of his hoodie. He let himself be held, swallowing roughly and trying not to let his lungs run away with him. After a wonderfully dragging moment that he didn’t want to stop, Titch leant back but kept his hands on James’ shoulders. James sniffed,

“But, but when did you. . .?”

“Dad rang me yesterday, so I caught the train down last night an’ came ‘ere as soon as visitin’ ‘ours started.” Titch glanced down at James’ leg, “’ow. . . ‘ow’re you feelin’?”

James’ chest hitched, “well they, umm, they said it was a. . . a com. . . a com-something fracture, or whatever it’s called when the bone is all in bits. They’ve put screws and stuff in to fix it and. . .” He fought his face into a smile, “but I’m full of painkillers so that’s pretty cool.”

Titch frowned, pressing his mouth into a tight line, “I’m so sorry pal, that’s really shitty.”

James’ eyes burned. The hands on his shoulders, the solid warmth of them, pulled at all his seams. His brother was here. Had come all this way just for him. It would have taken him at least two buses, two trains and a twenty minute walk from the nearest bus stop just to get to the farm and then there was the drive from there to Bristol. His fingers clenched in the baggy fabric of Titch’s sleeves. Maybe if he held on tight enough Titch wouldn’t leave again. His chest hitched again, a gasping kind of breath that didn’t seem to get him any air. He was folded into another hug, one hand rubbing up and down his back the other cradling the back of his head. His whole body juddered. Something wet leeched from his squeezed-shut eyes and soaked into Titch’s hoodie. Soft words were murmured into the side of his head,

“It’s oright, yer oright,”

James clamped his teeth together, muffling the wavery little sobs. Titch perched on the edge of the hospital bed, putting them in a more comfortable position. He didn’t let go, didn’t loosen the squash of his arms. Just sat, and held, and kept mumbling gently. James’s cheeks flushed blochty-bright, his fingertips buzzed fizzily. All his hems were coming unstitched and were fraying away at the edges. The up and down of the hand on his back gave him an anchor, somewhere to tie all the loose bits of himself to. Titch leant his head against James’,

“You need ta remember ta breath pal, noice an’ steady.” James tried to tune in to his brother’s breathing, following it as Titch continued, “I spoke ta the nurse earlier an’ they reckon you’ll be discharged today, but whatever ‘appens I’ll stay with you all day.”

James nodded, not lifting his face from the crook of Titch’s neck. He let his fingers relax a little though, the joints protesting from where they’d locked up during his clinging. He swallowed, rough and scratchy, and sniffed,

“When do you have to go back to Harper?”

“The weekend, but I won’t leave ‘til Sunday noight.”

James slumped even further against Titch, he had week. More than he'd hoped for but barely enough. The wavery drifting of all his ends slowed down, and some of the strands started to reel back in. They stayed sat like that for a while, not talking, until his eyelids felt weighted and he kept blinking catishly slowly. He yawned, and Titch carefully manoeuvred him so he was resting against the pillows again. His brother ruffled his hair, the gingery strands sticking all askew.

“Shall I get us some tea, an’ maybe somethin’ ta eat?”

James nodded, “can you put some sugar in mine?”

He’d not had sugar in his tea since he was about thirteen but his bones ached and he’d unravelled down to a little boy again. Titch smiled,

“O’ course pal,” he patted James’ hand and stood up, disappearing around the curtain.

Titch came back with two teas, a sausage and egg bap, a BLT, and a large bar of Dairy Milk. James took a sip of tea, sighed and let his eyes close for a moment. It was his first cup of tea since before the match yesterday, and he hadn’t been sold on God even as a kid and Dad had made them go to church on Sundays, but this might’ve been the closest he’d come to believing. It’d been made strong and milky and the sweetness chased some of the medication bitterness off his tongue. They shared both the sandwiches between them, Titch tearing the bap in half and giving James the bigger bit. They ate the chocolate more slowly, piece by piece as they drank their tea. James just talked, about stupid things he and his friends had done lately, about what Bristol was like, about how he’d gotten together with Jade. He didn’t talk about the match.

A doctor came to check up on him, and he was taken for another x-ray to make sure everything was as it should be post-surgery. Titch was allowed to come with him on the way down to x-ray suite, waiting outside until it was done. Back up on the ward his surgeon came by, she introduced herself to Titch and shook his hand, then spoke to James,

“So, everything looks like it’s doing well after the surgery and I’m happy for you to be discharged home today.” She handed him a stapled together booklet, “this is the post-op care info, but the main things are not to put any weight on that leg until you get told it’s safe to, make sure to keep it elevated, and don’t get the cast wet. We’ll send you home with some crutches and pain killers and the physiotherapist will be round to discuss that side of things with you before you go.”

He nodded, trying to take it all in, “will. . .” he took a deep breath, “if. . . after physio will I be able to play football again?”

She pressed her lips together, “honestly, I’m not sure, it’ll depend on how things heal but there’s a solid chance that you won’t be able to, or at least not at the level you were before.”

His hand clenched in the bedsheets. Something cold and rushing careened through his chest. He stared vacantly at his cast. Titch’s hand covered his, warm and solid. James blinked,

“Oh, okay. . . thanks for. . . being honest.”

She smiled apologetically, “I’m sorry it wasn’t better news.”

The physiotherapist gave him some exercises to start with to stop his joints seizing up and prevent DVT and outlined that he’d be having regular outpatient appointments while he healed. Then he was discharged with a pair of crutches and the sort of prescription pain killers that they warned you repeatedly not to take too many of. Titch helped him out of the hospital, into the Land Rover and drove him home. Dad was out working in the greenhouses when they got back to the farmhouse so it was still just the two of them. Gravity pulled at his shoulders, and his leg ached, and the crutches were awkward to use. The coldness from earlier sat behind his sternum and dragged all his energy into it. He propped his crutches against the kitchen island and flopped down so his whole upper body was lying on it. Titch rubbed a hand across his back,

“You oright there pal?”

“Tired, want to have a nap,” he mumbled into the worktop.

“Come ‘ere,” he was scooped up, Titch lifting him without much difficulty, “let’s get you upstairs then.”

He was carried upstairs and essentially put to bed, his leg carefully propped up on a pile of cushions. Panda snuffled from his pen. James’ insides weighed him down and what the surgeon had said looped around and around in his head. He sniffed, it sounded soggy in the quiet. Titch closed the curtains and then sat on the edge of the bed. A hand closed around James’, holding it lightly so he could pull away if he wanted. He didn’t. Titch looked down at him,

“Just give us a shout if you need anythin’ okay.”

James closed his eyes, “stay, for a bit. . . please?”

Titch hummed, staying exactly where he was. James fell asleep still holding his hand.

Chapter Text

June 2014

Jordan stared at the pattern of James’ duvet cover, he was home for the weekend and had dropped round to see James. They were sat next to each other on James’ bed, Xbox controllers abandoned for the moment, Jordan clenched a handful of fabric between his fingers,

“But that’s not fucking fair.”

James shrugged. The physio had told him that while his leg would heal well enough for him to walk and even run, it wouldn’t ever be up to coping with playing top flight football during his appointment earlier that week. He’d left all his insides back in outpatients wing of the hospital, they’d fallen out when the news had come, and ever since it was like he was full of porridge. Lumpy, more or less able to hold a shape, bland and claggy. Jordan’s hands whisked the air,

“It was a bloody deliberate dirty tackle and we all know it.” He raked a hand through his hair, “and now you can’t. . . can’t. . .”

Dad had been speaking to the academy staff, and as of yesterday, he’d explained to James that the best option was for him to transfer out of the academy, come back home and carry on his BTEC at the Taunton campus of the local college. Where Jordan wouldn’t be because he was still in the academy. Where Ethan wouldn’t be because he was doing his apprenticeship. Where Ali wouldn’t be because even though technically he was going to the same college, his course was based at the Bridgewater campus. Where James would be on his own, with a stupid broken leg that his body couldn’t even fix properly. Panda rustled the hay in his little house.

“It’s probably for the best,” James sighed, staring at cast and wrinkling his nose, “the odds of me being able to go pro were pretty slim anyway.”

Jordan frowned at him, “hey, come on, we both know Rovers already had a contract with your name-”

“Don’t,” he thunked his head back into the wall, “please Jordan, just. . . just don’t.”

Because it was true. Of all the lads in the little intake at the academy for their year, it was him and Jordan who were more or less dead certs to be signed. He’d only ever gotten thinly veiled hints because he was still nine months off turning eighteen and had a year of his BTEC left to go but still, they’d been very thinly veiled hints. His lungs dragged in a huge, ragged, sucking breath. He clenched his teeth together, pressing so hard it hurt. Every bone and nerve in his body was hollow; cold and vacant. His fingers itched to pull them all out, to snap his wrists and dislocate his shoulders, to wreck himself. Jordan huffed quietly, a little ship sinking beneath the waves,

“I mean, you’ve kind of dodged a bullet,” he forced out a lumpy chuckle, “everyone knows City are better anyway.”

James snorted, half derision and half relief at being back on steadier ground, he punched Jordan in the arm, “fuck off.”

They went back to playing Call of Duty, sliding into easy bickering as they played through one of the survival mode maps. The sound and frenetic movement pulled all his focus and buried the quavering, creeping void like dust swept under a rug.

July 2014

He’d broken up with Jade, it seemed pointless to stay together when he wasn’t going to be in Bristol and she’d not come to see him at all in the past two months. Not that he’d gone to see her either, but he at least felt like he had an excuse. She hadn’t exactly sounded cut up about it on the phone, clearly dating a former member of a football team was significantly less appealing than dating a current member. He hobbled out of his bedroom, his cast had been taken off last week and now he was in one of those big plastic boot things. At least he could finally walk, sort of, without crutches. He was also a master of getting up and down the stairs now, it’d taken a while but he’d gotten there. No one was indoors when he got down to the kitchen. Titch was back for the summer but both he and Dad were out working on harvesting.

He leaned against the kitchen island, the worktop cold under his hands in much needed contrast to the sticky July heat. Really, who could blame Jade. He dropped his forehead down onto the worktop too. He could see the boot in his peripheral vision, big and bulky around his leg which still couldn’t do the most basic of leg things and hold his weight properly. He ground his teeth, thumped his forehead into the island again. Titch would tell him it was her loss, that she was being shallow for only wanting him while he was in the team. Was she? He pushed away from the island, straightening up and shuffle-limping to the boot room to put on his left shoe. He let himself out into the farmyard, the sun over-bright and making him squint. He stumped towards the greenhouses, towards where Titch would be.

He only got halfway there. His brother was working, had taken over organising the harvesting schedule and rota for the pickers from Dad. What was James expecting that he’d do, just drop everything in the middle of the day to come and stop his little brother feeling sorry for himself? When he’d already done that to visit James in hospital. Had already spent the last two months calling and texting to check in even though he had exams. Had brushed off James forgetting to make Titch’s birthday cake for the first time ever in about ten years. Was spending his break from uni working flat out with Dad. James couldn’t. Couldn’t just go and bother him, add more weight to those shoulders. The urge still clawed up his throat, cloying and thick, to just keep going and find his brother anyway. He clenched his hands into fists, wrenched himself through a ninety degree turn and walked towards the fields instead.

It was far from straightforward, the bloody boot making walking over the uneven ground a complete nightmare. His hip and knee ached and moaned at him, grumbling, shooting pains running up his leg. His physio was going to have a fit if she ever found out he’d done this. But he walked. And walked. And walked. Sweat ran down his back and stuck his t-shirt to his skin. He didn’t have any suncream on and he was definitely going to be sunburned later because of his stupid ginger hair and pasty-pale skin. Served him right, all he did was fuck things up lately. The thought rose up from his stomach, acidic and spreading and bitter. It flooded him, rushing into all his corners and spilling over all his edges. The crest of the wave shattered down and splashed into bright little shards. Each one popped, blowing like the wire in an old lightbulb, ringing out into a bell peal of jagged, lurching contractions around his ribs and sternum. He had to gasp in breaths, stumbling as he forced himself to keep walking. The ache in his right leg cranked into an air-raid siren’s call.

He’d covered two whole fields already, moving blindly passed the flowering oilseed. He heaved himself over one more, reaching a gate in the hedge line that led into yet another field. One that marked the edge of their land on this side of the farm, the boundary where the field met the little wood Margaery lived in. He collapsed against the gate, the metal of it warm from the sunshine. He still couldn’t find his breath, it ran from him, always slightly out of reach. His hands shook on the gate, a weightless buzzing in his fingertips. He scrambled up the gate like a spooked cat, all jittery arms and feet that couldn’t quite find proper purchase. He sat on the top rail, chest heaving and lungs fluttering, staring towards the tree line across the field.

“Are you okay?”

He looked down. A girl was sat in the lee of the hedge, a sketchbook balanced on her knees and a pencil between her fingers. He knew her, they’d been at secondary school together. She had a roundish face and a fringe, the under layer of her hair was dyed a rich sort of coffee brown and the upper layer had been left it’s natural blonde. She’d twisted it up into two buns. Roberta. Her name was Roberta. She put her sketchbook down on the grass, stuck the pencil through one of her buns, and stood up,

“Seriously, are you okay?” She came over to stand by the gate, looking up at him.

James blinked, “umm. . . I. . . what? Sorry?” He couldn’t get words out properly passed the gasping of his breath.

She frowned, her eyes tracing over his face and then down to the boot strapped around his leg. She pressed her lips together, then climbed up beside him and sat twisted at the waist and leaning forwards a bit so she could look him in the eye,

“Okay, so, you’re hyperventilating and that’s generally not a good thing,” she held his gaze, her eyes were hazel brown, “I’m going to count and you need to following along with your breaths,” she paused, bit her lip, waited for him to be on an abortive exhale, “now in, two, three, four, and hold, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four.”

The only things in the whole world were her eyes and her voice. Brown, with green and gold mixed in and a ring of darker colour around the edge of the iris. The first days of autumn when not quite all the leaves had turned yet. He wrangled the march of his ribs to match what she was saying, her voice low and light and soft. The twanging fizz in his veins settled. The hum of insects in the hedge and grass filtered back in, so did the birdsong, and the hot earth, dry plant summer smell. James squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, wringing out the last dregs of the fog. She stopped counting, the frown easing off her face as she smiled at him instead.

“Better?”

James swallowed, his mouth dry, “yeah. . . yeah, I am, thank you.”

“No worries,” she shrugged, “I used to have panic attacks all the time when I was younger, they suck.”

“Is that. . .” he gripped the top rail of the gate harder, “is that what that was?”

Roberta raised her eyebrows, “I mean, I hate to break it to you, but yeah.”

“Oh.”

The roaring crash of pain biting up his leg settled in his stomach as a churning, sick feeling. His skull pounded like a sadistic metronome and all his muscles were as sloppy as melted ice cream. He let his head hang forwards, chin almost touching his chest. He squinted his eyes nearly completely shut, the bright high-summer sun too ferociously yellow to stand. He wet his lips,

“Do. . . do you always feel this shitty after having one?”

Roberta patted his shoulder, “well, in my experience, it depends on how bad the panic attack was but generally, yeah, you always feel at least a bit crap after.”

“Well fuck.”

She snorted, “definitely, well fuck.”

“Thanks again,” he turned to look at her, still struggling to cope with the light, “for, y’know, helping me. It’s. . . it’s Roberta right?”

“Like I said, no worries, and,” she wrinkled her nose, “only my Nanna calls me Roberta, I prefer Bertie.”

“Sorry,” he ducked his head again.

He felt her shrug more than he saw it, “hey, it’s not like you knew.”

The internal wailing that gnawed at his bones settled down to a bearable nibbling. She was like being sat next to a river; smooth, unflustered, sort of sparkly in the light. Had they ever spoken before now? Probably, their year at school wasn’t exactly massive but not properly, not so that he remembered it. He’d have remembered it feeling like this. James rubbed the back of his neck, the skin tacky and hot,

“I’m James, by the way.”

Bertie raised an eyebrow at him, “I know, I watched you punch the shit out of Harrison Daly.”

The back of his neck got even hotter, the almost certainly sunburnt skin turning fever-red, “well, he was being a dick. . .”

“When isn’t he being a dick? Someone should’ve punched him ages ago.”

He looked at her again, half a smile pulling the edges of his mouth, “pretty sure Mrs Braithwaite thought so too when she was suspending me but-”

A frantic, insistent, mechanical buzz broke out in his pocket. It rattled to itself while his sun-bleached brain parsed that his phone was ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, the screen said Titch so he hit the answer button.

“James? Where are you? What’s ‘appenin’? Are you okay?” Words tumbled down the line, clipped and tripping over each other.

“Yeah, I’m. . . I’m fine,” why did Titch sound so tight like that?

A huge, strangled exhalation gushed down the line, “oh thank God. We got back ta the ‘ouse an’ you weren’t there, couldn’t find you anywhere.”

Oh. The tumbling buzz pushed up his throat again. He’d made them worry. Had caused problems again, just wandering off like a complete moron. His fingers tightened around his phone,

“Sorry,” his good leg bounced up and down, juddering fitfully, “I’m really sorry I. . . I just wanted to go for a walk. . . I should have-”

“It’s oright pal, as long as yer okay, it’s all oright but can. . . can you just tell me where you are, please?” The last word was faint, pleading.

James stared out across the field in front of him, the pit of his stomach somehow turning cold, “I’m in one of the fields, the one that’s next to Margaery’s wood.”

“Okay, okay, stay there an’ I’ll come an’ get you.” He could hear the faint crunch of Titch starting to walk, “I’ll be as quick as I can, so. . . so just ‘ang toight.”

James hummed, nodding even though that was next to useless over the phone, “see you soon.”

Titch said something else but it didn’t filter in, and then hung up. James’s eyes lost focus, the treeline blurring into smudgey shapes and changes in light and colour. He’d come out here so he wouldn’t bother Titch, and he’d done that anyway. What an utter fuck up he was. He bit his lip, hard, and then even harder. His teeth pushing in and in and in. Fingers snapped in front of his face,

“Earth to James,” Bertie waved her hand barely inches from the end of his nose, “what’s up?”

The wood shuttered back into focus, he frowned as his disjointed brain tried to piece things together again, “umm, that. . . that was Titch, he. . . he wanted to know where I was and he’s. . . he’s going to come and get me, I shouldn’t. . . I shouldn’t really have walked all the way out here.”

“No shit,” She gestured at the boot bracing his lower leg, “are you even meant to be walking at all?”

“Yeah, I can walk on it just, y’know, maybe not across fields. . .” and yet here he was, because he was a raging moron.

Bertie jumped down from the gate, landing with a little crunch in the sun dried grass. She picked up her sketchbook then handed it to James. It was open on a page of little pencil drawings of trees and plants and insects. She climbed back over the gate to the side that’s back towards the farmhouse and held her hand out for him to give the sketchbook back,

“Come on, we can meet your brother half way.”

She smiled at him, it made her cheeks go a bit apple-y, it suited the sunshine and bird song and the blinding yellow of the oilseed flowers. The river-like sense of calm, the susurrous wash and cool pull, rippled in her voice. It was practical and level and perfect worlds away from the ragged drag of his thoughts. James carefully swivelled on the top of the gate, then slithered gracelessly down it until he was on the ground. He kept any weight off his bad leg, leaning on the gate for balance. Bertie tucked her sketchbook under her arm and came to stand on his right, slipping under his arm and wrapping hers around his back. He let go of the gate, resting his weight on her instead, she was smaller than him but it didn’t seem to bother her at all. They started back for the farmhouse, James hobbling with his teeth gritted.

Even without putting that much pressure on it, his leg kept up a litany of reprimands for his earlier actions. He was sweating so badly he could feel it run down his back and temples. Bertie didn’t let go of him though, just stayed braced against his side. Less than halfway back Titch came into view, jogging across the field towards them. His hair stood in ruffled angles and shone gold-bright in the sun. He slowed down as he drew near them, then stopped, taking his glasses off so he could wipe the sweat off his forehead and the bridge of his nose. James and Bertie shuffled up to him. James’ eyes were so narrowed they were almost shut, his throat scratched and tasted metallic every time he gasped in a breath. He was manhandled carefully until Titch was carrying him in a piggyback, his arms limp around his brother’s shoulders and his head tucked down in the crook of Titch’s neck. Titch and Bertie were talking to each other but it slid over him like oil on water. He didn’t really remember being carried home.

Chapter Text

September 2014

He felt sick, a roiling rise in his stomach that’d clawed it’s way up his throat and kicked his lungs into fumbling overdrive. His breaths were still close enough to normal that no one else had noticed as they streamed passed him into the college buildings. He’d still got his stupid boot on his right leg and even though he and Dad got shown round when his transfer had been confirmed he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he needed to be going. Wherever the hell the sports stuff was. But he couldn’t think, couldn’t dredge anything out of his brain other than that there were too many people. Too many bodies and too much noise. Which was nonsensical because the college he was going to in Bristol for the BTEC part of his academy programme was, if anything, bigger than the Taunton bit of the Bridgewater-Taunton College. His hands had worked up a sweaty film over the palms. When had he gotten like this?

He forced himself to walk forwards, down the path lined by grass and trees to the main entrance. He’d gotten used to walking with the boot on now but each step clunked a bit still and the fog at the back of his mind insisted that everyone was looking at him. There were faces he recognised from school scattered in the crowds. People who knew that he’d gone off to Bristol with Jordan to go and become a professional footballer and now must know that he’d absolutely fucked that up and was back here, a failure. He’d managed to get inside but the world was turning sideways and doing it’s best to shake him off the surface of it. He tucked himself against a wall, leant against the cold, hard, reassuringly vertical surface of it. His fingers twitched by the pocket with his phone in. Titch was still at home, term hadn’t quite started yet at Harper Adams. He could call. He could call but it was literally his first day, not even more than half an hour in and he’d already made a mess of things. He couldn’t call.

“James,” someone stood in the way of his thousand yard stare, “everything alright?”

Blonde hair with the under layer dyed brown. Heart-shaped face, and hazel eyes, and a foresty green oversized plaid shirt tucked into high-waisted black drainpipe jeans. Bertie. It was Bertie, HD clear against the panic-fuzz of everything else. She put a hand on his arm, rubbing it up and down softly. He screwed his eyes shut hard and then opened them again,

“I don’t. . .” he took a breath and tried again, “I don’t remember where I need to go.”

She nodded, “that’s fair enough,” she hadn’t stopped running her hand up and down his arm and every motion pulled more of the world back into focus, “give me a look at your timetable and I can show you.”

He shrugged his backpack off and rummaged in it, dragging out the printout of his timetable. Bertie peered at it as he held it between both hands. She nodded, scanning the room codes,

“So, good news, I do actually know where all of those are,” she looked sideways up at him, eyebrows slightly pulled together, “you sure you just want to head straight there or do you need a minute?”

His ribs weren’t quite so tight anymore, “I’m good I. . . umm. . . thank you.”

“No problem,” she waited for him to put his timetable away and then gently steered him off by his elbow, “this place is like a maze at first but you get used to it.”

Once he was following her more successfully under his own steam she let go of his arm. She pointed things out as they went, not in the sales pitch kind of way the staff member who’d shown him and Dad around had, but interspersed between tangents and anecdotes. Easy and light, as if they knew each other. As if when they’d met he hadn’t been careening off into deep water like a listing ship. But her being there made it so the too many bodies and the too much noise didn’t clatter against his bare-wire nerves anymore. They got to where he needed to be, hovering just outside the door. Bertie settled her satchel strap on her shoulder a bit better,

“What’s your phone number?” She pulled hers out of her pocket, “and then I’ll text you so you’ve got mine too.”

He told her, watching her tap the numbers in, then type out a message and then hit send. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Save this number, it belongs to someone really good and cool

He added her to his contacts under Bertie Good and Cool and prayed he’d not dyslexia-mangled her name. She made a squelchy noise through her teeth, looking at the time on her phone screen,

“I’ve got to run but I’ll text you so we can meet up for lunch okay.”

He nodded and she dashed off back the way they’d come. He got through the morning, a fair chunk of it spent talking through with his tutor exactly what he’d already completed for the course while he was in Bristol and what the plan was going forward. He was going to have to front end some of the more coursework based bits while he waited until he was cleared by his doctor for going back to the practical stuff. There were bits of coaching he could still do though, just probably not reffing a match or anything like that yet. Bertie was as good as her word, she texted him to meet her out front by the bus stops. He managed to get back there, mostly by following the flow of other people but the route was at least a little familiar from the morning. She was easy enough to spot, standing with three other people, satchel over her shoulder. He knew one of them, it was Ash, the boy he’d sort of gotten in a fight to defend, but the others were new to him. Bertie saw him, waving him over. James swallowed the breathless clatter in his chest.

“Hi,” he slotted into the circle, hands in his pockets and shoulders pulled in.

Bertie smiled at him, rounded edges and bright eyes, “cool, so Ash you know, but this is Danni,” she gestured at a girl with short hair and a different colour of nail varnish on each finger, “and this is Connor,” a lanky boy with a patchy beard who was standing hand in hand with Ash. She finger gun pointed at James, “and this is James, he was at school with me and Ash.”

“Hey,” Ash smiled at him, easy and warm enough that James’ shoulders relaxed a little, “we were going to walk over to Longrun Meadow and eat there, there’s a cafe if you need to buy anything.”

They started walking, James staying next to Bertie as if getting too far away from her would invalidate his permission to be there. They ended up sat on the grass by the river and near the bridge over to where the cafe was. Danni and Connor went buy food but James had come down to the kitchen that morning to find Titch making him a packed lunch, just like he had done every day for school before he’d left for uni. None of it was out of the ordinary, kind of just whatever Titch could put together from what they had in the fridge and cupboards, but opening the plastic lid of the tupperware felt like opening the back door and coming home after being away. Bertie had a tupperware of her own, Ash peered into it as she took the lid off,

“What have the rabble left you with today?”

Bertie snorted, pulling out a misshapen chunk of sandwich, “oh, you know, the usual.” She took pity on James and explained, “I’ve got three younger siblings all still in primary school, and my Step-dad has to leave super early for work and Mum has her hands full making sure the three of them get dressed and eat breakfast so I make all the lunches. I, umm,” a faint pink curled into her cheeks, “I like to cut their sandwiches into fun shapes but it leaves a load of off cuts and I usually just pack those for myself.”

“I should have words with Titch, he never did that for me.”

She laughed, and his stomach rushed to match the river beside them, “oh yeah, he really dropped the ball on the older sibling duties there.”

“Nah,” Ash shook his head, “sounds about right for an older brother, mostly they just reserve the right to be the only one that’s allowed to bully you.”

“I can’t imagine Titch bullying anyone, he always seemed pretty nice,” Bertie ate another sandwich off cut.

James wrinkled his nose, “he used to do this thing he called slow hand where he’d tackle me and pin me to the floor, and then just really slowly mash his hand into my face while I tried to stop him, only I couldn’t because he’s, like, weirdly strong.”

Both Bertie and Ash laughed this time, teasing a slow smile out of James. This could be okay. It was okay, in fact. No one had asked about his boot, or why he was back, they’d just gotten on with things as if he’d always been there. The wash of the water, the hum of insects, the calls of people walking their dogs, all of it under the late summer sun gave him something to hold on. Just enough purchase that his fingertips didn’t feel like they were seconds away from losing grip on himself. He could do this, he could get through this year.

December 2014

Bertie Good and Cool:

FYI you’re now busy on the 20 ^th

??

Bertie Good and Cool:

It’s my 18 ^th

Having a party in a cool old cinema

Everyone has to dress fancy

And dance and drink cocktails

Like we’re old Hollywood film stars

do i have to dance?

can i be frank sinarter and hang out with criminels insted

Bertie Good and Cool:

Sure, but if you’re going to be Sinatra then you have to sing

no fuking way

Bertie Good and Cool:

You can sing, I’ve heard you in Danni’s car

What about being Paul Newman if you’re not Sinatra

whos he?

Bertie Good and Cool:

The other one with blue eyes that everyone thought was hot back then

TBH, I’m from now and I think he was hot

Anyway, can you come?

You don’t have to if you don’t want to

yeah ill come

of cors i want to

The venue was a single screen, old cinema built back in the 1920s. The double doors at the front had stained glass in them and the foyer was light and airy, pastel colours and art deco shapes. There was a bar, and an old fashioned looking popcorn machine and tables and chairs set up. A few people were sat down out here, most of them he recognised from college or school but not everyone. Some of them had really gone all out with the theme for their outfit, but plenty of other guys were just there in a shirt and presentable trousers and James had at least bothered to put a tie on too. He drifted passed a little side table with cards and presents stacked up on it and carefully tucked a wrapped poster tube down towards the back. His palms were tacky, the pulsing clench in his stomach that had started on the drive over was building.

Inside the actual cinema screen the lights were down low, as if a film was on. There was an upstairs mezzanine level and on the ground floor the seats only went about halfway towards the stage and screen, leaving a spacious enough gap to dance in. Colourful uplighters ran along each wall and some disco lights had been set up too, spilling neon colours like fountains. The music was fairly loud, but it wasn’t oppressive and a throng of people moved around to the beat on the dance floor. He forced himself to take a breath. It was fine. He was fine. He squinted a bit through the semi-dark, eventually finding Danni, Connor and Ash. James slid in to their little circle. The tremulous coil of his innards relaxed. Connor slung an arm around his shoulders, he’d shaved his facial hair in an attempt at a moustache. James raised an eyebrow at it,

“What have you done to your face?”

Connor scoffed an exaggerated sigh, “oh God, not you too, it’s an Errol Flynn moustache.”

“It looks like he’s glued a dried out hamster to his lip,” Danni tried to cover her smile with her hand.

“James,” bright and warm and more than enough to make his insides hitch, Bertie was walking towards them.

He blinked, swallowed, then blinked again. She was in a pale blue dress, fairly plain with long sleeves and the hem went down to her ankles. However, it managed to be both floaty and the right kind of clingy at the same time, and the neckline was a narrow plunge that didn’t stop until the bottom of her sternum when it met the almost belt-like waistband of the dress that had four little buttons down the centre of it. Her hair had had things done to it so that it fell in soft curling waves down to her shoulders. She was wearing make-up, again fairly unfussy expect for the vivid red lipstick. She looked like Grace Kelly or Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake or one of those other famously glamorous actresses that’d come up when he’d Googled old Hollywood movies. She hugged him, a little taller than usual because of her heels.

“Happy birthday.” The mercy of the low light hid the rebellious crawl of heat up his neck and over his cheeks.

Bertie smiled, squeezing him a bit tighter, “thanks for coming,” then let go to hold him at arms length, “you scrub up alright don’t you.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” he couldn’t hold her gaze, looking down at the floor instead, getting red enough that even the dimness wouldn’t hide it anymore, “it’s just a shirt and tie. . .” he glanced over at Connor, wrangling up a smirk, “it’s not like I’ve gone to the effort of glueing a hamster to my face.”

Bertie cackled while Connor make throaty scoffing sound and flapped his hands in the air. Ash patted Connor on the shoulder,

“Aww, it’s okay, I think it’s a very nice face hamster.”

“I hate all of you,” Connor pouted, he slid his hand into Ash’s anyway.

James did dance, mostly in a little group with Ash, Connor and Danni as Bertie had to keep drifting off to chat to other people and generally do birthday girl things. Part way through the evening they abandoned the dance floor temporarily to go and get a drink. Yvonne, Bertie’s mum, was behind the bar and pouring out pre-batched cocktails or mocktails for people from massive teapots. She winked at the four of them, bending her hitherto strict policy of no alcohol for anyone not eighteen yet by pouring them all something from the proper cocktail teapot. She did make it very clear that she was still firmly adhering to the only one alcoholic drink per person rule though. Drinks finished, he lied that he was heading to the bathroom when the others went to go back to dancing. The wobble in his knee and a bone deep ache running up and down his right leg begged him to sit down. James found the roped off stairs up to the mezzanine and ducked under it. Upstairs was darker, lit only by what light bled up from below. He sunk into a cinema seat at the front, looking down over the balustrade.

“Hey, everything okay?” Bertie dropped into the seat beside him, her dress pearlescent in the dark, “I saw you come up here and . . .”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he rested his folded arms on the top of the balustrade, putting his chin on top of them, “just. . . my stupid leg hurts from dancing too much.”

“Said the man who claimed he wasn’t going to dance.”

“It was self-preservation, Danni would have murdered me if I hadn’t,” he shrugged, but a smile pulled across his face at the same time.

She snorted, “she’s like the opposite of the fun police, a fun enforcement officer or something.” She leant against the balustrade next to him, but with her cheek rested on her arms so she had her face turned towards him, “seriously, though do you need me to get you some pain killers or anything?”

“Nah, it’s not that bad,” James chewed his lip, “just needed to sit down for a bit.”

“You are having a good time though right?”

He nodded, immediate and firm, “yeah, of course I am.” He looked up at the dark ceiling, almost voidish and invisible in the party lighting. How could he not be, this was the closest to normal he’d felt in months, “are you?”

She looked at him with something so soft and gentle wrapped in the tilt of her eyebrows and the curve of her lips. She was a river again, cool and deep and slow moving, ready to cradle him in the water and soak away all the things he’d picked up and couldn’t work out how to put down. She slid her foot over the floor so the side of it pressed up against the side of his, their knees were touching too. It wasn’t true, was purely a figment of his imagination, but it was her left knee touching his right and he could have sworn it took the ache away.

“I’ve spent all evening with everyone telling me how great I am, I’m having a bloody fantastic time.” She didn’t look away from him, kept his eyes tangled with hers, still smiling faintly, “I was really hoping you’d enjoy it, I’m glad you are.”

“Thanks,” he shifted, edging as close to her as the cinema seating would allow.

She looked hazy, almost sleepy, “no worries.”

“You look great by the way,” it fell out of him, “I. . . I forgot to say earlier.”

Bertie unwound one of her arms, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder, “aww, thank you.” She finally glanced away, down at all the people on the main floor below them.

She took in the wash and swell of people downstairs. The ripple of colours under the lights and the fizz and swing of music. The tangling jumble of people dancing or talking or cosying up to one another. As if they were actually watching a film, some sort of big crowd scene that would play background to the hero and heroine falling in love, or out of love, or something else entirely. Ash and Danni sparked with laughter as they took turns trying to throw popcorn into Connor’s mouth. Bertie watched it all. He did too, but only between watching her, the light curling around her profile and the waves of her hair.

She straightened up from the balustrade, “come on then Jimmy, we should head back down,” she put her hands on her hips in faux indignation, “it looks far too much like they’re having a good time with out me.”

“Disgusting, don’t they know it’s your party?” He got up too, shaking his head to carry on the charade.

“Exactly.” Bertie started heading towards the stairs.

He over took her and held the door open, “and since when was I Jimmy?”

“Since now,” she stuck her tongue at him and walked through the door.

Dad picked him up around midnight, driving him home through the pitch black country lanes. James headed up to bed as soon as they got back. Panda shuffled about in his pen when James switched on his bedside lamp. He leant over the fence and petted the rabbit’s ears,

“Sorry buddy.”

James got ready for bed absently, part of him still on the mezzanine of the cinema, sitting next to Bertie. His memory catching on the warm earth, cool river pull of how she’d looked leaning on the balustrade. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Bertie Good and Cool:

I love those movie posters so fucking much

Thank you!!!!!!!!!

He’d found prints of the movie posters for Somebody Up There Likes Me and A New Kind Of Love, both starring Paul Newman, online and bought them for her as her birthday present.

happy berthday

Chapter Text

March 2015

He came downstairs and into the kitchen which smelt perfectly of bacon. Dad was standing by the Aga cooking breakfast. Based on the quantity of pans involved, the empty baked bean tin, and the open egg box it was a full English affair. James couldn’t exactly remember the last time he’d had a proper cooked breakfast at home. Even when Titch was here he and Dad were normally up and out on the farm so early that there wasn’t much point in going to the trouble. Dad looked over his shoulder,

“Morning,” he left the Aga to come over to James, giving him a quick one armed hug, “happy birthday.”

He leaned into the tobacco, almond, fruity smell that just was his Dad, “thanks.”

Dad ambled back to the assortment of pans and began to dish up more breakfast than could easily fit on a plate. It was the whole nine-yards of sausage, bacon, eggs, baked beans, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, black pudding, and buttered toast. He plopped the teapot on the table as well, along with two mugs and the milk. James fetched cutlery and slid into his chair, trying to work out the best plan of attack to deploy on his breakfast. He set to, working through it with methodical joy. Once they were both finished Dad set three wrapped presents on the table, next to James’ elbow. One was a cylinder, another a long, thin rectangular box, and a bigger, flatter rectangle. He picked up the cylinder first, already having a reasonable idea what it’d be. He peeled off the paper carefully, trying not to tear it. It was a cardboard tube, with a lid on one end. The packaging design was retro, but the real deal and not a facsimile. It was a boxed bottle of single malt whisky, presumably from the nineties.

“I bought that the day you were born,” Dad paused, chewing his next words before he said them, “I’m not sure if whisky is your thing so you don’t have to drink it if you’d rather not. . .”

Titch had gotten a bottle of whisky on his eighteenth too, again one that Dad had bought the day he’d been born. James carefully opened the tube and took the bottle out. He turned it in his hands, the pale golden liquid inside sloshing slightly.

“No, I’d. . . I’d like to try it.”

Dad raised an eyebrow, “now?”

“Yeah,” James looked up at him, lop-sided smile spreading, “yeah, why not.”

Dad chuckled and got up, going over to one of the cupboards and pulling out a couple of glasses. James opened the bottle. Eighteen years ago, at three in the morning according to Dad, he’d come wailing into the world. He poured them both small glassfuls. Eighteen years his Dad had raised him, the wonky son. They clinked their glasses together. Eighteen years old and already a fuck up. James drowned the crackle and lurch in his throat with a swallow of whisky. It burned. He squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the glass tighter to hide the shake in his fingers. He opened his eyes again,

“Well, I’m definitely awake now,” he dragged a laugh out of somewhere.

Dad ruffled his hair, “it’s certainly one way to start the day, maybe not one to make a habit of though.”

James picked up the thin box next, again taking off the wrapping paper with care. It was another box, sort of like the kind that jewellery came in but shaped like an old-school metal pencil case. He opened the lid, there was a watch inside, clearly old but in very good condition. The strap was black leather and the case silvery metal. The face had an outer black ring with the numerals for the hours on, and the inner part was off-white with a little square window showing the date on the righthand side, next to the three. The numerals and hands were gold. Dad cleared his throat,

“That belonged to your Granda, your. . . your Mum’s Dad,” he took a deep breath, “she. . . she and I decided that you should each get one when you were still very little and. . . and Titch has Gramps’ watch so. . .”

James lifted the watch out of the box, holding it as if it might dissolve at any moment, “thank you.” He looked up at Dad, his throat was scratchy and dry, “really, just. . .yeah. . . thank you.”

Dad nodded, clearing his throat again, “well then, that last one’s from Titch.”

It was rectangular, roughly A4 sized, perhaps a little bigger. James peeled the paper off. It was a picture, landscape and in pencil, drawn from a photo taken back at Bertie’s eighteenth birthday party of him, Bertie, Danni, Connor and Ash. The five of them were bundled into a little group, arms around each other, with Bertie in the middle and James on her right. In the bottom left corner a tiny signature read RCM, Roberta Cecily Mosse. James’ heart crackled with electricity, the backs of his eyes buzzed, and the scratchiness in his throat burned white hot. He fell headfirst into staring at himself standing right next to Bertie, her arm around his waist and his lying across her shoulders. A folded piece of note paper had fallen out of the wrapping paper. He picked it up, a few lines of Titch’s neat writing spilled across it.

Happy 18 ^th pal.

I asked Bertie to draw this for you, thought it might make for a good present, hope you like it. It’s from both of us because I tried to pay her for it but she wouldn’t let me.

T

James pulled his phone out of his pocket, took a fairly wonky, rushed photo of the picture and texted it to Titch.

thank you

its grate

siriusly thank you

Titch:

Happy birthday!

Glad you like it and I’ll make cake when I’m next back

Buy you a pint as well

Have a good one

When afternoon was starting to roll in, a car horn honked from the farmyard. James opened and leaned out of his bedroom window to try and figure out what was happening. Bertie was poking out the sunroof of Connor’s mid-2000s Corsa that was pulled up in the middle of the yard, she waved and called up to him,

“Jimmy, we’re stealing you, if that’s okay?”

He snorted, “pretty sure kidnappers don’t usually ask for consent.”

“We believe in doing crime politely, thank you very much.” She stuck her tongue out at him, “anyway, get down here and get in the bloody car.”

James rolled his eyes theatrically, and shut the window. As soon as she couldn’t see him anymore he hurtled out of his room and downstairs. After skidding gracelessly across the kitchen tiles he grabbed a jacket, made sure his phone and wallet were in his pockets and shoved his feet into his shoes. Out in the farmyard, Bertie threw her hands in the air as he came through the backdoor. Four warbling voices broke into a hearty if discordant rendition of happy birthday. The back of James’ neck flushed red and he ducked his head even as a soaring grin lit his face. As they came to a close, he flapped a hand in the vague direction of the greenhouses,

“I just need to tell Dad we’re going. . . umm, where are we going?”

Bertie shook her head, beaming, “kidnapees don’t get to know where we’re going.”

“I thought you believed in doing crime politely.”

“We do, which is why we’ve not shoved a bag over your head and stuffed you in the boot.” She made shooing motions at him, “go on then, get a shuffle on.”

He found Dad in the farm office actually, pinching the bridge of his nose as he trawled through his emails. James hovered in the doorway,

“My, umm, my friends from college are here and they want to take me somewhere for, y’know, my birthday.” He fiddled with the cuffs of his jacket sleeves.

Dad looked over the top of his computer monitor, “okay, text me when you know what time you’ll be back.”

When he got back to Connor’s car, Bertie, Ash and Danni had all crammed into the backseat so he could sit up front. As soon as he was in, Danni reached forward from behind him and plopped a gold plastic crown on his head. Ash poked his head between the front seats,

“You’re not allowed to take that off, by the way.”

They took him, of all places, to Cheddar Gorge where they did some kind of bananas caving-escape room hybrid. The quantity of good-natured bickering was monumental but they managed to get out before the time ran out. Afterwards they got coffee and cake in a little cafe and Danni and Ash still insisted James kept wearing the plastic crown. The caffeine, and sugar, and the company went straight to his head. None of him weighed anything, he was simply a collection of floating pieces held together by the tug and pull of affection. The clatter and crash of the morning bubbling away now he was here with them all. They got the cafe staff to take a picture of them all together, which Bertie texted to him and he, on impulse, texted to Titch. After that Connor held them all to ransom by refusing to drive home again until they’d been to a cheese shop. He ceremoniously presented James with an entire truckle of cheddar as a birthday present.

Back at the farm, clustered in the kitchen and elbows deep in cheese and cups of tea, the room swung with their laughing. James had been made to go and fetch Panda who was snuffling in Bertie’s lap as she sat on the floor. Danni and Ash had bought James one of those football sticker collecting album-magazine things you normally give to kids and about thirty of the little blind packets of stickers. All of them had been ripped open and the stickers scattered all over the table as they collectively worked to fill in the album. James was slowly building up a collection of repeats stuck to his arms, front and forehead. Connor reached over to slap another Jamie Vardy over James’ right eyebrow,

“Put that over here for safe keeping.”

James fended him off, ducking away and sliding out of his chair to retreat to join Bertie on the floor. Connor huffed, sticking Vardy to Danni instead. Bertie chuckled, running her hand over Panda’s ears,

“I’m enjoying this bold new look you’ve gone for.”

James started peeling the stickers off, wincing as it pulled out some of his arm hair, “I don’t know, I’m not sure it’s working for me.” He gave up with the stickers, chewing his lip for a moment, “thanks for the picture I, umm, I really like it.”

“Oh, well, it was all Titch’s idea really,” she graced him with a gentle half-smile, “he messaged me on Facebook to ask and it just seemed like exactly the right thing.” She squeezed his hand, “happy birthday Jimmy.”

August 2015

He pressed his fingernails into the palms of his hands. He’d just finished moving all of Panda’s old things out into one of the outbuildings now they weren’t needed anymore. He ran the back of his hand under his nose. All in all, nearly seven and half years was good going for a rabbit really. Still, still. . . He didn’t like looking at the empty space in the corner of his room. He shook his head, trying to get rid of the thoughts like a dog shaking off water. He was too old to feel like this. He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and left the outbuilding, shutting the door behind him. He started walking. Passed the greenhouses and out into the fields, following the same path he had more or less exactly a year ago. He walked quicker this time, not hampered by a boot and a healing broken bone. It wasn’t baking hot this time either, only muggy and overcast, everything waiting for a thunderstorm that just didn’t want to come.

The gate where he’d first properly met Bertie came into view. She was already sitting on it, facing away from him and towards the wood. Her hair was tied up, but strands stuck to the back of her neck. She glanced round as she heard his footsteps crunching in the dry grass, smiling faintly as soon as she clocked who it was. James climbed up the gate and settled beside her,

“Hey.”

She sighed, “hi.”

“Everything okay?” He leaned forward and craned his neck to try and look her in the eye.

“Yeah,” she fiddled with the rough hem of her cut-off shorts, “no. . . I’m not sure really. How about you?”

James held his breath for a moment, “I. . . umm. . . fine I guess. . .”

“Real convincing there Jimmy,” she flashed him that wan little smile again, a lacklustre moon on a cloudy night, “I’ll tell you why my day is shit if you tell me why yours is.”

He opened his mouth, the shape of the words crumbling before he could get them out. They tripped and broke on the lump in his throat. He sniffed, wrestling with his own tongue and teeth,

“Panda died yesterday.”

Bertie wrapped an arm around him, holding him as the tree line of the wood opposite them swam in his vision. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as if somehow the wetness there would seep back in. He sniffed again. She squeezed him tighter against her side,

“I’m so sorry, he was a sweet little guy.”

James nodded, letting his hands fall back into his lap, “he was.” Scrunched his face up, “sorry, I’m just. . . being stupid about it.”

“No,” it was firm, kind but firm nonetheless, “no you’re not.”

He slumped against her a bit, not leaning all his weight on her, but no longer holding himself so rigidly. He put an arm around her too, resting it along the top of her back and his hand on her farside shoulder,

“Thanks,” the insects buzzed in the hedgerow, “how come your day sucks?”

She dropped her head onto his shoulder, “I was talking with Mum about what I need to go to uni, y’know, like bedding and pots and pans and whatever. . . anyway, it. . . it set Viv off crying about how she doesn’t want me to go and then Lyn started and I know Ozzie is upset about it too, even though he pretends he isn’t.”

James had been deliberately not thinking about that. About how she was leaving for Falmouth to go to art school in less than a month. Not just that but Ash, Conor and Danni were going too. Scattering around the country to go and do more, see more, be more. They were going and he was staying right here, sticking around for an extra term at college to finish off his course. One more part of the unwelcome legacy of his broken leg; it’d left him with too much of the practical parts of the BTEC to catch up on before the end of last academic year. More accolades to add to his growing list of fuck-up badges. He tried his best to breathe into the quailing hollow of his chest.

Bertie carried on, “I just. . . I. . . I want to go, so badly but I just,” she turned her face into his arm, “I feel so awful for looking forward to it because I’m leaving them and. . .”

“I know it’s not exactly the same, because they’re younger than I was but,” he chewed his bottom lip, the hollowness on the inside ringing, “when. . . when Titch went to uni it was difficult, I guess, I mean I. . . I missed him, I still do, but I know he’s doing something he wants, that’s good for him and. . . and I’m glad he got away. . .” Glad in the same way that he was glad she was getting away too, to somewhere better and brighter than here. Glad neither of them were stuck, slowly sinking, like he was, “it might take them a while but they’ll get it.”

She sighed, deep and long enough to shift the whole sky, “well, if Titch felt at all like I do, then he misses you just as much,” her voice wobbled, “I’m going to miss them so bad, I already do and I’ve not even gone anywhere yet. It’s. . . it’s going to be so weird being that far away from them, and it’s even further from Dad and I don’t see him that often as it is.”

She’d be far away from James as well. Not impossibly far, but still two trains away, just like Titch was just in the opposite direction. He’d be pulled taut between them, stranded and stretched out in the middle. He was already wet tissue paper and there was no way the fibres of him would withstand the strain. Aching, bone waring cold clumped around his spine. The summer air was thick as it barely moved in and out of his lungs. His hands itched to do something. To shred himself now and save himself from the inevitable disintegration crashing towards him. What did it mater if he missed her when she had so many more important people who’d miss her too. All her siblings, her Mum, and Step-dad, and Dad. Because, unlike him, she’d been worth both her parents sticking around despite them splitting up.

“Can I. . . sorry but. . . can I ask what’s it like, to have parents that. . . even though they aren’t together, they’re still, y’know, both there?”

She kept her head resting on his shoulder, the stray strands of her hair tickling against his neck and arm. Their arms were still around one another and everywhere they touched acted like a raging beacon in amidst the flailing tide behind his ribs. Something to plot his course by as he waded through it all, desperately hunting for surer ground. Bertie hummed thoughtfully, not even questioning the sudden swing in topic,

“It’s good, but also not good sometimes.” She pressed her lips together for a moment, “I mean, they were only nineteen when Mum got pregnant and Dad, bless him, he did and does his best but he’s, well. . . he’s chaotic, a bit all over the place, but he really tries.” She huffed out a breath, “I think it was hard for him when Mum and Elis got together but it all works more than it doesn’t.”

“Thanks,” he swallowed down the thundering of his blood.

She glanced up at him, eyebrows pulled together a little, “do you. . . do you never see her at all? Your Mum I mean.”

“No, not at all since she left,” he was breathing but no oxygen seemed to be reaching his brain, “Dad. . . Dad isn’t Titch’s actual Dad, he thought he was but he isn’t, and Mum left when he found out,” his hands felt fish-cold, “Titch and I are only half-brothers really.”

Bertie put her hand on his knee and squeezed it, “nothing wrong with being half-siblings, I’m a big fan of them personally.” She smiled at him, it was still weak but it filled him like sunlight anyway, “and, honestly, what distinction does it really make? They’re still your sibling right, still someone you love and have grown up with.”

Was that what being the eldest did to you? Fill you full of competence, and wisdom, and unshakeable calm? Titch had it. Bertie had it. He didn’t. But having it near him, around him, turned air that felt like breathing water back into air again. How much softer the world seemed when it was there. What would he do without it? How long could he tread water for without either one of them there to drag him back to the shallows. How long before this aching itch pulled him under.

“I’m going to miss you too Jimmy,” her smile broadened, “so you better come and visit, or I swear to God I’ll fight you.”

He snorted, “I’m half a foot taller than you, I’d like to see you try.”

Chapter Text

November 2015

The train from Taunton to Falmouth was actually two trains and took three and bit hours including the change in Truro. That said, it was easy, he could just sit with his headphones on and music playing, looking out the window as the world slipped by and not have to do anything. No greenhouses full of plants to see to. No broken machinery to mend. No skirting around the lingering yawn of the holes in his life. Between Exeter and Newton Abbot the train line ran right along the edge of the coast and it washed him all out to sea. The ebb and flow of the waves running in time to his heartbeat and the swell building like the hum of easy joy growing in his bones. The November weather was verging on wild, the wind pulling the waves into spray and foam, but not so bad that they’d had to close this part of the line. The gulls wheeled impossibly in the wind and a tiny smile pulled at his lips.

He got off the train and Falmouth station was tiny, just one platform and not even a ticket office. Bertie was on the platform waiting for him. She stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all the people in their more standard winter gear. She’d obviously found a black vintage bomber jacket somewhere and a pair of skinny jeans with one pastel pink leg and one pale yellow. Her cream, knitted scarf was wound round her neck at least twice but the ends still draped all the way to her waist and she had a matching woollen hat with a fuzzy pink bobble on the top. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the wind and stray strands of her hair blustered about like a mobile halo. She ran at him the moment she saw him step off the train and he scooped her into a hug.

“I’ve missed you Jimmy,” she squeezed him, her cheek pressing into his puffer jacket.

He squeezed back, “missed you too.” The gentle bass hum of joy clattered into a full on buzz, feeding off the sunshine, orangey, cinnamony, gingery way she smelled.

She stepped away, grabbing him by the wrist and tugging him along the platform and down the ramp into the car park. She kept looking over her shoulder at him, smiling wider than a horizon. He bit his lip but it didn’t do much to stop him grinning in return. Bertie bundled him off to her uni halls to drop his bag in her room. The building was pretty new, chunked up into flats with shared kitchen-dining-living rooms. Her room was roughly square but with one corner chopped off to make an en-suite bathroom. The furniture was hotel-like generic, a single bed, a desk with drawers, shelves, a pin board and a wardrobe. She’d decorated it though, because of course she had. The pin board was chock full of photos, prints, her own drawings. Views and scenes from back home and, in a way that jittered in his veins, the Paul Newman movie posters he’d bought for her eighteenth. She’d strung up fairy lights and covered the boring carpet with a bright rug. A couple of pot plants sat on the windowsill. He plonked his backpack in a corner.

“You’ll have to sleep on the floor but we can steal all the cushions off the sofa and I’ve got a sleeping bag.” She shrugged, “but I figured that was better than us both trying to fit in a single bed.”

His hands got clammy, “umm, yeah, the floor is fine.”

He’d shared a bed with a girl before, but only ever one he’d been dating and while that came with it’s own pitfalls it provided steadier ground. Bertie flashed him a thumbs up,

“Aces,” she herded him out the bedroom door again, “I want to take you down to the beach and we can walk to the castle as well if you want.”

The beach was a crescent shaped strip of sand. The wind was racing off the sea so hard they could stand, leaning almost impossibly far into it with their arms outstretched like kites. James had to snatch breaths out of the roiling air and Bertie’s scarf-ends flew out behind her to match the seagulls soaring overhead. The salt-air and spray and thunder of the wind and water cut with their bubbling laughter threw him so high his brain wavered and swam on the thrill of it. He flew. Huge, floating bursts of lightness pulsed alongside his heart. Sunshine licked along his ribs. They walked along the sand, Bertie tucked on the leeward side of him and their arms linked so they could stay upright. The pink in her round cheeks and the tip of her nose glowed like sunset. They walked in silence, beaming, the wind too loud and too ready to snatch their words away for talking.

Wind tumbled and numb-fingered they let the weather sweep them into the little beachside cafe. He bought them toasted sandwiches and obnoxiously cream-topped hot chocolates. Bertie ate all the cream off hers with a spoon whereas James waited for it to melt into his hot chocolate. She begged him for news from the village and about the farm. He shrugged, saying nothing had changed much and she’d only been gone for two and a bit months. Two months, one week and four days to be exact. He shuttered that behind his teeth though. When the waitress came to take their empty plates, she paused before heading back to the counter,

“I hope you don’t mind, but your trousers are amazing.”

Bertie grinned lopsidedly, “thanks.”

James rolled his eyes, smiling at her, “never would have thought anyone else wanted to dress like a demented licorice allsort.”

“At least I don’t hate colours.”

He tapped his foot into hers, “I don’t hate colours.”

“Oh really,” she tapped his foot right back, “says the man wearing all black.”

“Whatever off-brand Bertie Basset,” he huffed in mock exasperation.

She raised her eyebrows at him, “oh, super original there Jimmy, never heard that one before.”

“Come on then Allsort,” he poked the tip of her nose, “lets go and look at this castle.”

She laughed; her eyes crinkling at the corners, and her nose wrinkling up, and all the green and gold mixed with the brown in her eyes standing out brighter. They wandered around the castle and walked out to the end of the spit of land it’d been built on. The wind fought them every step of the way out and hustled them into a stumbling run on the way back. Bertie took a selfie of them, the sea in the background and both of them looking dishevelled and like kids hopped up on too much sugar. She showed him her favourite shops in the town and they whiled away the evening in an artsy, student pub. It was raining by the time they left, and they ran helter-skelter back to Bertie’s halls. They had to hang up their coats in the little bathroom to stop them dripping on the carpet. He fell asleep on the tetris-ed together sofa cushions to the sound of her breathing, barely a foot away from him.

In the morning he made bacon sandwiches for them and they lost hours sitting in the kitchen-living room thing until it was one in the afternoon and they were still in their pyjamas. Time was hazy and the day felt yellow and pink, sort of blushed around the edges and it sat in him like warm water. He unwound, his lungs worked better, and his mouth remembered what smiling was. The afternoon cantered by like the morning had and with a lurch Bertie pointed out there was only half an hour before his train. They had to run to make it on time, gracelessly hurtling down the streets and James having to slow down every so often so Bertie could catch up with his longer stride and faster pace. He was still quick, even with the leg and not having played football for two years. They staggered on to the platform just as the train pulled in. He pulled her into a swallowing hug, she squashed him just as hard back, her fingers gripping onto the back of his coat.

“Text me when you get home Jimmy,” she called after him as he threw himself through the train doors.

He half-shouted over the beeping of the closing doors, “Of course, see you at Christmas Allsort.”

The doors slid shut, he waved at her through the window until the train had moved far enough he couldn’t see her anymore. He bought a packet of licorice allsorts while he waited for his connection at Truro station. He’d never had particularly strong feelings about them before, Dad liked them but Titch couldn’t stand licorice. The white and black and pastel pink, yellow and blue and the bitter, sugary, coconutty-ness felt like the beach now. Like leaning into the wind with arms outstretched like wings. Like tousled selfies and bacon sandwiches and sleeping better than he had for ages on a makeshift bed. Like too-long scarves and stupid trousers with different coloured legs.

February 2016

Allsort:

Can you text me a picture of the wood whilst you’re sat on the gate?

i gess why?

Allsort:

I want to use it for an assignment and none of the pictures I have are right

And when I say sat on the gate I mean it!

And and if you do it around dawn or sunset or any time with cool light I will buy you chips

Or whatever else you want as long as it’s less than a fiver XD

James rolled his eyes, every message in the little string making the corner of his mouth turn further and further up. Surely she already had hundreds of pictures of that exact same view in every possible season and at every time of day. He wouldn’t know the artistic muse if it accosted him in the street, but evidently it was very particular about it’s reference pictures.

make it cheesy chips a battered sosage and an irn bru and your on

Allsort:

Cheesy chips and irn-bru, yes

But I refuse to buy you battered, cylindrical mystery meat

kill joy

fine i axept

not getting up at dorn to take you a bloody photo tho

He did in the end, creeping out of the house at five in the morning bundled in his coat because it was February still and his breath fogged the air and everything was sharp and sparkling with frost. He dutifully sat on the gate, the metal making him shiver as he waited for the sun to eek itself over the horizon. He was facing west, the light coming from behind him and pulling his shadow out spectrally long over the barely up oilseed shoots. Dawn lit the trees pastel-gold, the winterish light watery and delicate. It hung on the wisps of mist lying low to the ground and made the frost riot-bright in its glittering. He took a handful of photos, his fingers fumbling with cold by the last one before climbing back down off the gate and heading back to the farmhouse. Dad was in the kitchen by the time he got back, drinking tea,

“Morning, you’re up early.”

James ducked his head, “just was awake, y’know,” he kept his back to Dad, making his own cup of tea, “figured I may as well get up.”

“Well, you can finish up pruning the trees in the big orchard today.”

“Sure,” James leaned his head against the kitchen cupboard door.

He pulled his phone out his pocket and texted Bertie the photos. He stared at the glazing of newly-up sun on the beeches and oaks and yews. It was like when he had a wobbly tooth as a kid, probably better left alone but he just couldn’t. The swell, the ache, the press of that view, the addictive calm cut through with a bitter undertone.

A week or so later Bertie sent him a photo of a black and white, pen and ink sketch. It was the wood, based on one of the reference pictures he’d taken for her. Mostly it was the treeline, and a little detail of the field running up to it, the whole composition was sort shaped like a diamond lying on it’s side. It reminded him of those illustrations you saw in some old books. She’d used tiny fine lines and dots and hatching and white space to capture the texture and light. He dug his teeth into his lip, an idea settled somewhere in his stomach. He let it sit there for three weeks, and when it didn’t look inclined to go anywhere, he ran with it.

Chapter Text

May 2016

He took the train down to Falmouth for the weekend again. Bertie was waiting for him at the station, she was easy to pick out, wearing the bomber jacket again but not the licorice allsort jeans. She trotted up to James and flung her arms around him, pulling him into a hug. He hugged back just as hard, lifting her off her feet briefly and making her laugh.

“It’s good to see you Jimmy.” She let go finally, “how was the train?”

He resettled his backpack, grinning, “good to see you too Allsort, it was fine, nearly missed my connection at Truro but made it in the end.”

“Ugh, well I guess it could have been worse,” she caught hold of the sleeve of his jumper, “come on, don’t know about you but I’m starving.”

He gladly let her lead him off towards the town centre. It smelt like salt and it was seagulls screeching rather than rooks and Bertie was talking about people he didn’t know doing daft things. He could breathe. She took him to a cafe that looked over the harbour and they found a table tucked into a corner. They got coffee and food and out the window the boats bobbed on the water. He fiddled with the cuff of his jumper, weightless humming threaded up the back of his neck. The outcome of his idea from months ago sat on his tongue. He wanted to tell her, to show her. She had her bottom lip between her teeth,

“So, I’ve got news,” she smiled so broadly he could see her teeth, “I didn’t want to tell you over text but if I have to wait any longer I might, like, expire.”

He raised an eyebrow, “okay. . . what is it?”

“I’ve got a boyfriend,” she squeezed his hands and he almost flinched.

The words that’d been almost tumbling to come out of his mouth rammed themselves back down his throat. He nodded, contorting his face into a smile that was a poor mirror of hers,

“Oh cool,” he wet his lips, “what’s. . . what’s he like?”

“His name’s Yusuf and he’s on the Media Production course but he’s in the same halls block as me and we’re both in the Table Top Gaming society,” she was starting to go a bit pink in the cheeks, “he’s really funny, and sweet, and I think you’ll like him. I. . . I thought maybe the three of us could go to the pub together later.”

“Sounds. . . sounds great.”

She squeezed his hands again. Staticky fluttering flooded his stomach and his coffee didn’t seem to taste like much anymore. She was all light and smiles and giddiness, so unconfinably happy over it. His friend, who mattered spectacularly much to him, was happy about something important and he couldn’t even manage to be happy for her too. The floor had turned through ninety degrees and he didn’t know where to put his feet anymore. Should he still text her? Was it weird that he was coming to visit her? Why the ever loving fuck had he gone through with his stupid idea? He ate mechanically, nodding through their conversation and piecing it together while only taking in every other word. After they were done Bertie took him round the maritime museum and then the art gallery. Listening to her talk about the art, explaining the compositions and techniques and styles she particularly liked smoothed out some of his internal reorientation. Starting to find his footing again when he managed to correctly pick out a couple of her favourites before she’d pointed them out.

The static crashed back in on the way to the pub. Yusuf was meeting them there and an entire roster of possibilities of what he could look and sound and act like flickered through James’ brain. It was the same pub Bertie had taken him to back in November, the arty student one. He kept his hands in his pockets, wrapped into fists on the walk there. Someone leant against a lamppost outside the pub, but stood upright and walked towards them as soon as they got close. He was roughly the same height as James, dark hair and multiple ear piercings. James was broader though, fitter too. Yusuf was wearing a merch hoodie for a band James didn’t recognise and obnoxiously pristine Vans high-tops. Bertie hugged him, they kissed and James looked away. She stayed leaning into Yusuf’s side,

“Jimmy, this is Yusuf,” she waved a hand between them, “and Yusuf, this is James.”

Yusuf held a hand out, “nice to meet you, and, umm, is it Jimmy or James?”

“James,” he shook Yusuf’s hand, “just. . . just Bertie calls me Jimmy.”

Yusuf raised his eyebrows, “cool, cool.”

They headed inside, Bertie and Yusuf in front, holding hands, and James bringing up the rear. It was Saturday evening and busy but they found a table, wedged in between two largish groups. The noise and the press of bodies clashed with the static inside him and he couldn’t quite catch his breath properly. He rubbed his palms on his jeans and insisted on going to buy the first round. He carried their drinks back to the table and finally sat down. What with the amount of people in the pub he was overheating so, with a bit of awkward wrestling so as not to elbow anyone, he managed to get his jumper off. Thankfully somewhat cooler in just his t-shirt, he reached forward to pick up his pint. Bertie squeaked in a breath,

“Holy shit, did you get a tattoo?”

James’ stomach dropped. Yes, he very much had gotten a tattoo, on the inside of his left bicep back in March. He’d gone all the way to a studio in Bristol for it after trawling through reviews and Twitter and Instagram to find who he felt was the best artist for what he wanted. Heat that had absolutely nothing to do with the alcohol and the crush of bodies washed up his neck. He really should have left his jumper on and just suffered through being too hot. Bertie wafted a hand at his arm,

“I wanna see, show me,” she was almost vibrating in her seat, “I’d never have had you down as the type.”

Yusuf slung an arm around her shoulders, “ah come on, it’s just going to be, what was it? Bristol Rovers forever or something.”

James bit the inside of his cheek. He took a deep breath and held his arm out, pulling up his t-shirt sleeve slightly so the whole thing could be seen. Bertie pressed her hand to her mouth and Yusuf’s eyebrows pulled together slightly. James’ fingers twisted tighter into his t-shirt sleeve,

“I really liked it so, umm, yeah. . .”

It was the pen and ink drawing Bertie had done of the wood from the dawn picture he’d taken for her. Her drawing on his skin forever. The view from their gate on his skin forever. The picture he’d gotten up before sunrise to take just for her on his skin forever. The recreation was impeccable, the fine lines and dot work and shading all seamlessly mimicking the original. Bertie met his eye,

“Jimmy, that’s incredible, I love it.” She gently took hold of his wrist so she could angle his arm and see it better, “when did you get it? Where did you get it?”

He pulled carefully out of her grip, tugging his sleeve down to cover up the tattoo as much as it could. Even though it’d finished peeling ages ago the skin itched again. He held on to his drink, the cold of the glass a welcome distracting sensation. His cheeks and ears were heating up to match his neck,

“At a place in Bristol a couple of months ago.”

It was the idea that had come as soon as he’d seen the picture Bertie sent of her drawing. He’d never even considered getting a tattoo prior to that moment, and to make sure, he’d sat with it for a while just in case he changed his mind. He hadn’t. He’d meant to surprise her with it, the fizzy wash of excitement making him smile periodically all the way down on the train. Then she’d told him about Yusuf and it’d all curdled. Having something so incontrovertibly linked to her so permanently on him smacked of an intimacy he was suddenly self-conscious of.

“Kind of weird not to ask before getting it done,” Yusuf took a long sip of his coke, “but at least you got someone good to do it, would have been super awkward if it’d come out shit.”

James’ grip on his glass got tighter, he looked down at the table top. His face burnt. He knocked back the rest of his pint and stood up,

“I’m going to head to the bar, can I get anyone anything?”

“Hey, you got the last round,” Bertie put a hand on his arm, “and I’m pretty sure I still owe you chips for taking those pictures for me.”

Her eyebrows were scrunched upwards together in the middle. The weird, artsy mood lighting in the pub put a soft gilding on the angles of her face and made her hazel eyes greener than actually were. James clawed a smile out of somewhere,

“Yeah, but I’m not the one who’s a broke student,” he made a sound that might have been a laugh, “call it payment for stealing your art.”

He managed a couple more drinks before pleading tiredness and they decamped back to the uni halls. He slept in Bertie’s room again, not on the floor but in her bed because she was with Yusuf in his room. He’d rather have been on the floor. The single bed shrank smaller in the dark and he couldn’t get comfortable no matter what he did. He woke up with gritty eyes and a powdery mouth. The three of them went for brunch down by the beach and he sat with his back to the cafe window so he didn’t have to see the ghosts of the time he and Bertie walked along the sand. He sat opposite the two of them, they held hands, and the cafe table felt wider than the sky. He smiled and nodded along to the conversation and fitted in about as well as a square peg in a round hole. Weak, hollow wisps of a headache clenched in his skull.

Just Bertie walked him to the station later that afternoon. James’ ribs ached less without Yusuf there but the mewls and cries of the seagulls made his pulse throb behind his eyes. They stopped outside the station entrance, he had his hands curled around his backpack straps and he shuffled slightly from foot to foot. Bertie sighed, looking up at him with half a smile,

“Come visit again soon okay.”

He bit his lip, “sure. . . I will. . .” last time he’d have promised.

“Unless of course you’re too cool to hang out with me now you’ve got a tattoo,” she punched him lightly on the arm, the half smile spreading into a grin.

He rolled his eyes, “please, I’ve always been too cool for you,” he shifted his weight again, “it. . . it is okay right, you don’t mind that I did it?”

“Fuck no, it’s rad as hell. Come here,” she opened her arms for a hug.

His hands twitched on the straps of his backpack. Was this okay? Could he still hug her? He stepped towards her. She squeezed him and he vaguely patted her on the back and then stepped away again quickly.

“Let me know when you get home Jimmy.”

He gave her a thumbs up and a tight lipped smile, “yep, and, umm, thanks for having me Allsort.”

“Always, anytime.”

He turned and walked up the ramp to the platform, ignoring how easy it’d be to look over his shoulder one last time. A scratching itch churned inside him, growing every step further away from her he took. He’d fucked up again. He always managed to fuck up somehow. His guts ached, dull and growing until it was so pervasive he’d gone numb.

A week or so later, he was doing a delivery round of vegetables and herbs to the local places they supplied, chuntering down the country lanes and b-roads in the clanky old Land Rover which was easily older than both him and Titch. There was a country house hotel they had a standing order with and he pulled into the back delivery yard and turned off the engine. He schlepped the plastic delivery crates out of the back of the Landy and started hefting them over to the door to the kitchens. Once he’d got them stacked up he knocked on the door. One of the sous-chefs opened it, they did a hand-clasp-back-slap greeting and begun bringing the crates in. A few other chefs and kitchen porters called out hellos and he smiled and nodded and hello-ed back. James pulled the delivery sheet out of his back pocket and went to find the head chef so everything could be checked off.

Mandy was talking to a young women, both of them leaning lightly against the pass and looking at a sheet of paper lying on it. James hovered a few steps away, waiting until he could interrupt. They both looked up at him and a shoe he hadn’t even known was hanging dropped. The young woman was Chloe, his first girlfriend from secondary school. Mandy straightened up and smiled at him,

“Morning James, is that the veg delivery?”

He blinked a couple of times, “yeah, have you got a moment to check it?”

Mandy took the list of what he’d just dropped off and ran down it quickly. He flicked his eyes back to Chloe. She was looking at him, her eyes running up and down the full length of him until she caught his eye and smiled. She looked more or less the same but more polished, all neatly twisted bun, flawless barely-there make-up and approachably professional outfit. He smiled back, quickly and vaguely, then looked away. Mandy nodded at the list,

“Yep, that’s everything,” she pulled a pen out of the pocket of her chef’s whites and scribbled some notes in a margin, “and then the same again next time but with a couple of extras that I’ve written down there.”

James took the list back, “thanks, I’ll let Dad know.”

He smiled again, moved his hand in what could have been a wave and forced himself to walk slowly out of the kitchen. He was just about to climb back into the drivers’ seat of the Landy when someone called out to him,

“James,” Chloe was walking across the yard towards him.

His tongue had gone all claggy, “hi Chloe, I, umm, I didn’t know you worked here.”

“I’ve not been here that long, I’m in the Events Team,” she tucked a stray bit of hair behind her ear, “we do all the weddings and parties and conferences and stuff.”

“Oh, sounds. . . sounds interesting,” she was looking at all of him again, still smiling, and his hands flexed awkwardly at his sides.

She really was incredibly pretty, in an air-brushed sort of way. You probably wouldn’t catch her dead in two-tone trousers or bomber jackets. Her nails were perfectly manicured and painted. Something hot was trickling up the back of his neck. She lightly dragged her teeth over her lower lip and he wasn’t sure if he was meant to look or not. She rested a hand on his arm,

“I was wondering whether you might want to get a drink together some time?”

“Sure,” his own voice came from somewhere over his shoulder, “I’d love to.”

She beamed, “perfect, give me your number and I’ll text you.”

He did, and she did and they met up for drinks in Taunton and he even put a proper button up shirt on for it. She was stunning, wearing a summery dress and heels and looking like a magazine cover, plasticky and intangible. She laughed prettily at the things he said, touched his hands and arms, and smiled up at him from under her lashes. She didn’t make stupid jokes, or drag them into pointless hypothetical arguments, or go off on an impassioned monologue about something she found interesting. Which was good. Right? Because stupid jokes and pointless arguments and monologues were a hundred and forty miles away and why did that matter anyway. Chloe was here, and pretty, and real enough. So he kissed her when they said goodbye and she kissed him back.

Chapter Text

July 2016

He heard a car door clunk shut out in the farmyard so he extricated himself from inside the combine harvester, wiped his hands on his shorts and poked his head out of the open barn door. Chloe was stepping out of her little blue Golf, her shiny work shoes swapped for a pair of slightly incongruous trainers. She had a largish paper bag in one hand and waved at him as he came towards her. She dragged her teeth over her bottom lip, looking him over in the same slow way she had when they’d bumped into each other at her work. It was baking, the late July sun determined to treat them all like ants under a magnifying glass, so out of self preservation James had dressed in shorts and a tank top. A quavering impulse to cover his arms hoiked itself up his spine.

“Hey handsome,” she went to give him a one-armed hug.

“I’m kind of gross,” he leaned out of reach, “I’ve been fighting with the combine all day.”

She looked him up and down again, then rested her hand on his jaw, “good thing I like a hot mechanic then,” she guided him down into a kiss.

The feeling that he should be more dressed rattled at him again as a blazing flush ran all the way up to his ears. She drew away from him and he rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. The skin was tacky and too warm.

“When did you get a tattoo?” Titch crunched over the desert dry farmyard towards them, he’d only been back at the farm for a few weeks having finished his final year at uni.

Titch looked even more heat bedraggled than James having been in the greenhouses, measuring them up for fitting the new hydroponic system. He’d got his shirt sleeved rolled up and the top couple of buttons undone, and his hair was sticking to his forehead in places. James dropped his arm back down to his side, hiding the ink on the inside of it,

“Umm,” he flicked his gaze between Titch and Chloe, “earlier this year.” He grabbed a change of topic in a chokehold, “Titch this is Chloe, my girlfriend, and, umm. . . yeah, Chloe this is Titch.”

Titch held a hand out, “noice ta meet you.”

Chloe swept her hair off shoulder, smiling breezily at Titch, flicked her gaze slowly up and down him too, and shook his hand, “same to you.” She held up the paper bag, “there was some of the good buffet food left over from an event this afternoon so I though I’d bring it round.”

“Oh, wow, that’s,” James took the bag as she held it out to him, “that’s really sweet of you, thanks.”

The three of them crunched over the farmyard and into the blissful cool of the farmhouse. James put the paper bag on the island, and Chloe started lifting out various takeaway boxes and sorting them depending on whether they needed to go in the fridge or not. James hovered next to her,

“I’m. . . I’m just going to go and get less, y’know,” he gestured at himself and Chloe laughed lightly and nodded, “but I’ll be as quick as I can.”

He dithered, knowing Titch was in the room made the back of his neck prickle, but he pecked her quickly on the cheek anyway. Hopefully, his brother would just think it was still the summer heat making James’ face quite so red. He trotted out of the room, bundling himself upstairs and rushing through showering and changing. He put on a t-shirt, the sleeves covering up half of his tattoo and quieting the wibbly clench in his stomach. He went back down to the kitchen. He could hear Chloe giggling about something, the sound lilting and birdlike. As he came through the door she and Titch were chatting and putting away the food she’d brought over. The kettle burbled to itself as it boiled.

“Yeah, so the groom’s uncle was completely wasted and just stared trying to do the worm in the middle of the dance floor, and then the bride tripped over him,” Chloe giggled again, pressing her fingers to her mouth, “she went arse over tit, got stuck in her dress and couldn’t get up again.”

Titch nodded, smiling politely, “that’s. . . that’s quite an end ta the evenin’.”

“You wouldn’t believe half the stuff we see,” Chloe rested her hand on Titch’s arm, “the amount of people who skinny dip in the lake is an absolute nightmare.”

The kettle finished boiling, the switch clicking off, and Titch slid away from Chloe to finish making the tea. James filled the gap his brother had left, coming to stand beside her. She tucked herself against his side and he put an arm around her waist. Chloe tugged at the sleeve of his t-shirt and pouted,

“Aww, babe, you put the eye candy away.”

Titch snorted but wrestled it quickly into a cough. James’ ears could’ve done a fair job functioning as a lighthouse as they burned bright red. If the world was a fair place then a hole would open in the kitchen floor and consume him whole. The world, however, wasn’t a fair place.

March 2017

All three of them were working in the same greenhouse, putting Titch’s grand renovation plan into action. He’d come back from uni after graduating last summer fresh off the back of his dissertation project on hydroponic growing systems and had spent the months since talking Dad around to implementing it. He’d outlined the potential for increased yields and efficiency and other things that’d sloshed passed James without sticking in his brain. What difference did it make to him whether things grew in soil or water. It’d all just be same same but different. Day in and day out working robotically while life drifted passed them all. Just doing what he’d been told, like now, as he fitted together one of the new growing tables.

“I want ta start keepin’ bees again.”

Dad raised an eyebrow. James ducked his head, staring at the screw he was tightening as if it were delivering the secrets of the universe to him. Mum had been the one who’d first brought their own hives to the orchard. Dad had been the one who’d sold them after she left. James couldn’t remember her very well, her face in his memory was mostly reverse engineered based on his brother’s. She’d smelt like juniper, pine and vanilla. She’d sung while she worked or cooked or gave them a bath. Sometimes she’d just stood out in one of the orchards, looking far away at what seemed like nothing at all. She’d given them small, sticky, sunshine yellow pieces of honeycomb to eat. Titch cleared his throat,

“It’d. . . it’d give us a reliable source o’ pollinators fer the green’ouses an’ orchards, an’” James’ hands had fallen still as he listened to Titch, “I’d loike ta ‘ave a go at brewin’ mead as well as the cider.”

James heard Dad suck in a breath through his teeth, “we’ve been doing just fine without for the last fourteen years.”

Fourteen years. Fourteen whole years. He’d lived more than twice as long without Mum as he had with her. He clenched his teeth. Something heavy settled low in his bones, dragging and grinding. His spine ached, radiating out from the centre of him down every nerve like a spreading rot. In a cold wash, the itch to try and pull the rot out of himself rose. To take himself apart piece by piece so he could clear it out, and then put himself back together but right this time, as something better. Perhaps Mum would have stayed if he’d been better. Or maybe he should just leave himself in pieces. James forced himself to breath, just in and out. He dragged his mind to a sun washed field, violent yellow with oilseed flowers against a backdrop of Margaery’s wood. Sitting on a gate with someone softly counting out loud his inhales and exhales. Someone who ran calm and deep and gentle like a river and soaked out the ache. Stop it. Metallic and sharp the thought pressed against the inside of his head. He couldn’t, shouldn’t think about that. He made himself think about Chloe instead.

“I know, I’m not sayin’ we ‘aven’t,” Titch’s voice went in careful steps, as if he was testing the ground under his feet, “just that I’d loike ta ‘ave some again.”

James squeezed his eyes shut, breathing in and out deeply one more time, then opened his eyes again. He unfroze his fingers, stutteringly going back to putting the hydroponic growing table together. Dad grumbled,

“It’ll be another thing to maintain.”

“It will, but I’m willin’ ta do it an’ I’m not expectin’ anyone else ta do anythin’,” Titch kept pushing, “I’ll. . . I’ll do it all. . . please?”

The warm, still air in the greenhouse got even stiller. It hung around James like bathwater, fugged with the smell of the herbs. He didn’t breathe and finally looked up. Titch was kneeling in the midst of the bit of the hydroponic system he was in the middle of building, the parts scattered around him like mechanical snowdrifts. He was clutching a length of tubing in his hands, wringing it as he stared at Dad. His eyebrows were pinched together and his lips were tight. Dad wasn’t looking at Titch, he’d turned his face away so only James could really see it. James watched the bob of Dad’s throat as he swallowed hard, as if something was stuck in it. He closed his eyes, kept them shut for what felt like hours but was probably just seconds. He exhaled, long and slow, and his shoulders collapsed inwards as he did. Their Dad, who’d always been solid as a mountain, deflated. Washing out and turning paled and thin at the edges. For the first time James noticed the grey in Dad’s red hair.

“Do what you like, but it’s your responsibility.” Dad pinched the bridge of his nose, “I’m going for a smoke.” He walked out of the greenhouse, clacking the door shut behind him.

Titch gusted out a lungful of air, dropping his head back to look up through the glass panes of the greenhouse ceiling to the sky. His hands slackened on the tubing and his shoulders relaxed. After a coupled of heartbeats he turned himself back to focussing on constructing the hydroponics. James let himself breathe again. Looking at the screwdriver in his hands, he’d been holding it tight enough that the ridges of the handle had pressed marks into his palm. He settled it more comfortably in his grip, and went back to working.

April 2017

He helped Titch carry the new hives out to the orchard. Just a pair of gable-roofed wooden ones for now, but the plan was to get more over time given they had plenty of space and food sources to support multiple colonies. The long orchard grass brushed against their shins as they moved through it, littered with lady’s smock, betony, tansy, and oxeye daisies. The flowers swayed and bobbed in Titch’s wake, the ripples of movement spreading out surprisingly far and washing around the base of the apple tree trunks. The spring was painted in splashes of green, and blue, and white, and pink around them. Almost too bright, too new, too hopeful. James a hollow, grey-blue iceberg in the middle of the violent aliveness of everything. His bones ached for the warmth of it but somehow none of it could seep into him. He stayed cold.

Titch had sourced a couple of nucleus colonies from another local beekeeper and they’d been in place in their nuc boxes in the orchard, getting settled and situated, for a couple of days. They moved the nuc boxes carefully aside and placed the hives, entrances facing the same direction as the boxes, in same spots. Titch lit the fallen apple twigs and dried herb prunings he’d gathered as fuel for the smoker. He blew a gentle drift of smoke at the entrance of each nuc box, enough to calm the bees but not to turn them into little insect-y kippers. Then he and James started moving the frames from the nuc boxes into the proper hives. Neither of them wore beesuits, there’d never been a need to even when they’d been little. The bees always seemed so docile, just curious, many of them landing on Titch and climbing over him, exploring. By and large they left James alone, one or two alighting on him but never for long before they gave him up in favour of a flower or his brother.

He took a picture of the hives and texted it to Bertie. He’d almost put his phone back in his pocket when a queasy thought that he should probably have sent it to his actual girlfriend bubbled through his brain. He pulled open his messages again and sent the same photo to Chloe. Within bare minutes his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out.

Allsort:

BEES!!

Buzz buzz motherfucker >:)

That’s so cool, can I come and see them?

Much later, when he was working on refitting yet another greenhouse his phone buzzed again.

Chloe <3:

But don’t bees sting?

Chapter Text

October 2017

He was sorely tempted to strangle himself with the hydroponic tubing. It would be flexible and strong enough to do it with. He didn’t, instead he just kept laying it out according to Titch’s design and shoved the cold, achy itch back into the odd void inside him it seemed to come from. They didn’t have many more greenhouses left to do now, and it was getting easier and quicker as they got more and more to grips with the process. James ran a hand through his hair, then down the back of his head to his neck. He squeezed, the pressure doing something to wick away some of his less helpful thoughts. It took the edge off the rising and sinking tension in his joints that ached for something to do that wasn’t the repetitive, semi-mindless work of refitting the greenhouses. He’d have to go for a run later, get out and move, let the countryside slide passed him rather than staying stuck in the fish tank of the farm.

James sighed, dropping his head back and screwing his eyes shut for a breath. Then he went back to working, laying tubing until the light started failing. He checked his phone, it was close enough to a time that he could legitimately stop. He let himself out of the greenhouse and headed back to the farmhouse, working out if he had enough time for a run before dinner. He came into the kitchen to find Titch crouching down next to a medium sized dog crate. His brother looked over his shoulder at the sound of James coming in. A wonky smile dusted over Titch’s face and he beckoned James over,

“Come an’ say ‘ello.”

James went, kneeling down next to Titch as he opened the door on the crate. Inside was a puppy, it was mostly white with tan splotches over it’s long body, eyes and entirely brown droopy ears which were quite possibly longer than it’s legs. It’s little tail was wagging back and forth slightly. Titch reached in, carefully lifting the puppy out and holding it close to his chest,

“This is Tater, she’s still only about eleven weeks old but she’s bein’ an absolute champ about movin’ to ‘er new ‘ome,” he looked down at the puppy, “ent you sweet’eart.”

Tater wriggled in Titch’s arms, trying to lick his chin. James held out a hand for her to sniff, she did, stretching her nose towards him. Titch pet her behind one of her floppy ears,

“Tater, this is James, ‘e’s a good sort so you make sure ta make friends with ‘im oright.”

She made a little huffy noise and wagged her tail harder. Titch set her down on the ground and she started moving around, nose to the floor, like a four-legged little Roomba. Both he and Titch stayed kneeling on the kitchen tiles, watching her slowly map out the space by smell more than anything else. Periodically she kept coming back to Titch, whining occasionally when she’d gotten further away from him than perhaps she’d realised. The skitter of her claws on the tiles, and the little huffs and snorts and sighs she made hammered home quite how quiet the farmhouse had been without any animals in it. He gently flapped Tater’s ears when she next came over to sniff him.

“Who’s this?” Dad looked down at them, stopping short as he came in from the hallway.

Titch wrangled himself up to standing, “I’ve called ‘er Tater, I. . . I got ‘er today.”

“Hmmm, did you now,” Dad pressed his lips together, “funny, don’t remember you asking about getting a dog.”

James scooped Tater up, plopping her in his lap when it looked like she was about to trot over to Dad. The hedgehog-y bristling of Dad’s beard made James bite the inside of his cheek. Dad liked dogs, always had, and based on James’ recollection that he’d chain smoked all day when both Skye and Bow had died, probably missed having one around. Dad looked down at the wiggly collection of legs and ears, his lips all compressing to one side. Titch’s hand squeezed into a ball in James’ periphery.

“It just didn’t,” Titch let out a long breath, “it didn’t feel roight not ‘avin’ one in the ‘ouse.”

Dad raised an eyebrow, “well, she’s your dog so you’ll be the one looking after her, training her, and paying for everything she needs.”

“I know,” Titch settled himself on the floor next to Tater’s crate again, she scrambled from James’ lap and into his.

Dad shrugged, turning away to go and pour himself some cider from the open bottle in the fridge. James chewed his lip, Titch was right though, there was too much space in the farmhouse for just three people. Too much empty air for all the years of ghosts and choked back words to drift around in like smog. A smog that they all breathed day in and day out until James wasn’t sure what real air would taste like anymore. His fingers itched, they wanted to pick at his rough edges and pull until all the loose things could be ripped away. He pressed his teeth together, and held his hand out to Tater again instead. She sniffed him, her nose cold against his fingers. It pushed the itch back.

January 2018

Titch had asked him to take Tater out for a walk and even though it was freezing out James would rather do that than spend a Saturday morning sifting through paperwork with Titch and Dad. Chloe had stayed over last night, and when he poked his head around the living room door, she was curled up on the sofa, watching one of the programmes about middle-aged, middle-class couples buying a second home in France or Spain or Portugal or wherever. She was still in her pyjamas and yet bafflingly looked so put together. Her pyjamas were one of those matching sets, in spring-green and light pink striped silky fabric. She’d plaited her hair, but left two sections at the front loose and they fell picture-perfect around her face. She’d fit in like a puzzle piece to any one of the swish holiday homes on the TV. He settled down on the sofa beside her, letting her swing her legs over his lap and lean against his side as he tucked an arm around her. He kissed her cheek,

“I’m going to take Tater out for a walk, do you want to come?”

She ran her fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck, “where were you thinking of going?”

“Across some of the fields probably.”

“Ugh,” she wrinkled her nose, “it’ll be so muddy, can’t we go into the village?”

James bit his lip, going into the village meant there’d be a non-negligible chance of bumping into Margeary and ideally he tried to avoid that at all costs. He scratched his beard,

“I mean, I’d rather not-”

“But don’t you want me to come with you?” She looked up at him through her lashes, leaning closer into him.

“O. . . okay, we’ll, umm, we’ll go down to the village.”

She smiled, sticky honey sweet, resting a hand on his jaw and bringing him down to kiss her. She always smelt like flowers, and those old fashioned Parma violet sweets which were like eating perfume flavoured chalk. Chloe let go of him, sliding gracefully out of his lap and gliding out of the room. Once she’d gotten dressed and they’d bundled up against the January frost, James wrangled a fairly obliging Tater into her dog coat, clipped her lead on and they headed out. Chloe slipped her gloved hand into his as they walked down the lane and towards the village. The sky was glassy blue and the washed out winter sun was only just starting to burn off the mist hanging low over the ground. Bare, spindly branches jabbed at the blue, and the only greenery was the evergreens and the mistletoe. Frost split the sunlight into glancing fragments.

The sun was already too high up for it to match properly, but the crackly clear coldness dragged up the memory of getting up at dawn to take that picture for Bertie. The one that’d become a drawing, that’d become the beautiful embarrassment of ink on the inside of his bicep. He tried not to look at it much these days, and didn’t answer properly whenever anyone asked about it. Even Chloe didn’t really know the story behind it. It was probably for the best they weren’t walking across the fields. His feet would have taken him to the gate and just the thought crashed such a cacophony of aching through him that he had to clench his teeth to swallow down the urge to rearrange all his insides, to let his hands do something catastrophic just to make it all go away.

They got into the village, Chloe half dragging him towards the green. James bit his lip, eyes flitting over the open space but it seemed to be empty. Once they got onto the green proper he flicked the sliding switch on Tater’s lead so it could extend and she could wander about a bit more freely. Not that Tater was much of a one for dashing about, but she did move steadily, nose to ground, mostly piecing together the world by smell. He watched her, eartips dragging over the damp grass, tail poking vertically in the air like a radio antenna.

“Morning.”

His heart flip-flopped behind his ribs and Chloe gasped out a little start. They both stopped, looking to their right to see Margaery. Tater veered off course, huffing and sniffing over the grass until she got to Margaery’s foot, and gave it a thorough olfactory examination.

James nodded a greeting, “morning Old Lady Margaery.”

Margaery strode forward, faster than she had any right to be, and smacked him round the back of the head, James winced, he still hadn’t learned not to call her old. He rubbed the prickling sting of her hand away, she hit a lot harder now than she had when he was a boy. Tater whined, standing on her back legs and putting her front paws on his leg. He bent down a little to stroke one of her ears, trying his best to let her know he was alright really. Chloe was still holding his hand but her fingers had gone lax enough that it was only just barely. She’d pulled back a little, edging some more distance between herself and Margaery, and her shoulders had risen up round her ears.

“I’m not old, I’m-”

“Only sixty-two, I know, I’m sorry,” James shuffled his feet.

Still. She was still only sixty-two and still looked exactly the same as she’d always done. James tightened his grip on Tater’s lead, squeezing the plastic of the handle. This was why he hadn’t wanted to walk through the village, and especially not by the green. Margaery’s bark and earth brown eyes were so dark it got difficult to tell the iris and the pupil apart. She stared at him, stared at the world, and peeled bits off everything as if it were just lichen to be crumbled off a tree trunk. It left him bare and raw, and without any doubt, he knew that she knew the things he thought sometimes. She knew he had the itch and the ache to pull himself apart. He swallowed,

“Is. . . is there something we can help you with?”

“Help me with?” She bark-laughed, “Lord no, and I’m glad of it. There’s plenty you could help yourself with though, if you stopped being so blind.”

She looked at Chloe, a full up and down and up again. Chloe tugged her hand out of James’, wrapping both arms around herself, her gloved fingers clutching at the fabric of her coat. A crawling buzz worked through James’ veins and arteries, numbing and staticky. Should he do something? Tater moved to hide behind his legs, pressing herself against his calves. The air had fallen so low that it clumped in a layer just above the ground and left him nothing to breath. Chloe stepped back a little further,

“Why is she staring at me?” Her voice tinged a little nails-on-chalkboard.

Margaery snorted, crossing her arms but otherwise changing nothing about what she was doing. James fiddled with the handle of the lead again as his mouth started to taste sour. Chloe thrust her arms down by her sides, elbows locked out straight and fists bunched like an angry child, she glared at him,

“James, don’t just stand there.”

He glanced over at Margaery, she raised an eyebrow, looked at him and then managed to raise it even higher. Other than perpetually seeming to stay the same age, he’d never actually seen her do any magic. Unless being able to appear out of nowhere counted, but if even if that was her doing magic the point seemed to be that you didn’t see her doing it. Otherwise she wouldn’t be popping up out of thin air. Dad had always, always been so emphatic though, to steer clear of her and not to give her any trouble. He grit his teeth,

“Ol-,” he caught himself, for once in his life, “I mean, Lady Margaery, if. . . if there’s nothing you need from us we’ll. . . we’ll just be going. . .”

He held out his hand for Chloe, backing up until they were side by side again, she didn’t take it. He slowly closed his fingers, letting his hand fall. Tater was still keeping tucked in close to his legs. Margaery rolled her eyes, shook her head and turned away from them. She strode off across the green, hands shoved deep in her pockets, whistling a lilting tune that danced somewhere between birdsong and a river. Chloe shoved his shoulder. He blinked, looking away from Margaery and down at her instead. Her eyebrows were furrowed, incongruously stormy between her fluffy scarf and pale pink earmuffs.

“Why didn’t you do anything?”

He tensed, “I did,” and cocked his head a little.

“No you didn’t, not really,” Chloe pouted, “and I had to ask, I shouldn’t have to ask.”

Tater whined again, sitting droopily by his feet. She was shivering a little so he picked her up, holding her against his chest. It gave him an excuse to not look at Chloe, a way to try and hide the hitch in his breathing and the reflexive twitch in his jaw muscles at her tone. He was fucking things up again. Maybe Margeary was right, maybe if he tried harder to see what it was Chloe wanted he wouldn’t always make such a mess of things. Tater nuzzled her nose into the crook of his arm, at least she seemed happy with him still. Stinging heat washed over James’ face that had nothing to do with the cold weather,

“Sorry, I. . . sorry.”

Chloe sighed, putting her hands in her pockets, “whatever, let’s go back to the farm, it’s too cold out.”

She turned away from him and walked back towards the farm. James made sure Tater was comfortably in his hold and followed.

Chapter Text

June 2018

He and Titch walked into the carpark of the Hoss-stinger, Tater pottering along behind them. Johnny and Bertie were standing outside the open door of one of the pub’s outbuildings that, at some point, had been used to store things in but had been empty for years. Bertie had texted James asking for his help moving some stuff into it now that Johnny was letting her use it as a studio. A couple of days ago she’d added that it might be an all hands on deck sort of affair, and that if he knew anyone else who was capable of shifting something very heavy to bring them too. He’d asked Titch, still easily the strongest person he knew, and they’d both worked longer on the harvesting the day before to offset taking a couple of hours out now. He’d been wire-taut for the whole walk down. The first time he’d be seeing her since she’d finished uni and moved back. She was back. For good. God he hoped it was for good. Bertie turned to wave at them,

“Well hello tall, ginger, and beardy,” she gestured at his face, “when did that happen?”

James shrugged, prickly warm around the edges, “umm, a little while ago, didn’t realise I was meant to be sending you updates about my facial hair.”

“I know, shocking of you to have forgotten, and I thought we were friends,” Bertie pulled him into a hug, ginger, cinnamon and orange, “it suits you.”

“Don’t say that,” Titch huffed, “it’ll just make ‘im even more annoyin’ about the fact ‘e can grow one an’ I can’t.”

She wheezed, and hugged Titch as well, “sorry. How’re you doing?”

“Oright, an’ yerself?

Bertie beamed at Johnny, brighter than the June sun, “bloody spectacular seeing as I’ve essentially just been given a studio space for free.”

“Well, it ent loike it were bein’ used fer anythin’ else, an’ anyways,” Johnny waved off her gratitude, “it’s mostly ‘cause if you’ve got somewhere ta do art ‘ere then I moight be able ta keep you on longer workin’ behind the bar afore you jaunt off ta London or wherever it is you arty types all go.” He nodded to James and Titch, “noice ta see you lads, I’m afraid I’ll ‘ave ta leave you three to it, got ta go an’ change some o’ the kegs on the beer lines.”

He ambled off back into the pub. A few of boxes full of an alarmingly large amount of art supplies were sitting by the open outbuilding door, along with what were presumably canvases and a cast iron hand cranked something or other that looked like a table but with a top that moved along rails and an adjustable press spanning the width of it. Clearly this was what needed the extra hands to shift. If the crank handle didn’t detach then it was going to interesting to get it through the door.

“Yeah, so that needs to go in there,” Bertie had her hands on her hips, looking at the contraption. “Dad found it on one of his antique hunting trips to France, which is very sweet of him, but I could have done with more than a couple of days notice that it was going to be turning up.”

James squinted at it, “what even is it?”

“A lithography press.”

“Bless you,” he said as if she’d sneezed, which as far as James was concerned she may as well have done, it’d would have made as much sense to him as what she’d said.

She rolled her eyes and pretended to hit him on the shoulder, “you uncultured swine.” She pushed her fringe out of her eyes, “it’s how I made the pieces for the final thesis project at uni, y’know, the ones in the pictures I sent you.”

He knew exactly the ones she meant, she’d sent the pictures after he’d made lame excuses about being busy with the farm so he wouldn’t be able to go down to her end of degree showcase. Excuses he’d made because in truth it had clashed with a date Chloe had planned for them, and when he’d gone to type that out in a message a howling rush of burning cold had turned his intestines glassy. The lie had been easier, oddly it had felt less like a betrayal. He was nothing if not a coward. Connor, Ash and Danni had gone though, Bertie had texted him a selfie of the four of them in front of her artwork. He’d looked at it when Chloe had nipped off to the loo, stared at their smiling faces and not really been able to taste any of his overly expensive dinner after that.

Utching the lithography press through the door was a much of a pain in the arse as he’d feared it would be but he and Titch managed it. Bertie directed them as to where she wanted them to put it and after that it was a fairly quick job of moving the lighter bits and bobs in as well. Daisy popped out with a round of tea, and toast made from the bread they didn’t use up during last night’s dinner service. They sat at one of the pub beer garden tables, gently toasting themselves in the sun to match their snack. Tater lay in the shade under the table. The air over the tarmac of the carpark was already starting to get that wavery, low lying haze to it and it wasn’t even midday yet. The three of them shone metallic bright, two gold and one copper. Not that James noticed the heat, not sat between the river flow and ocean swell of Bertie and his brother. The calm, cool wash sinking into his bones and teasing loose knots he tied in himself.

When the tea and toast was gone he and Titch got up, the greenhouses and the harvesting unable to be put off any longer. Bertie had her chin propped in her hand, staying so Johnny could start showing her the business of being a barperson. She waved them off,

“Thank you, if you come down the Stinger when I’m working I’ll buy you both a pint.” James pulled a face and she laughed, “Jesus Jimmy, you can’t spend your life hiding from Margaery, she’s not going to do anything to you in the pub.”

He scrunched his face up, “you only say that because she doesn’t hit you.”

“She wouldn’t ‘it you either if you stopped callin’ ‘er old,” Titch rolled his eyes and started walking back towards the farm, whistling for Tater to follow, “see you round Bertie.”

James waved, “let me know when you’ve learnt how to not pull a shit pint and I’ll come down.”

Bertie made a rude gesture at him and he laughed, turning and jogging a little to catch up with Titch and Tater. He fell in step besides his brother. Titch raised an eyebrow at him,

“So. . . Jimmy ‘ey?”

James’ ears betrayed him, turning red with a heat that went all down his neck as well, “it’s. . . it’s just a stupid nickname she gave me when we were teenagers.”

“Uh huh,” Titch snorted, then elbowed him lightly, “she’s a good friend ta you, I loike ‘er.”

Hearing Titch say he liked Bertie was heady, like the smell of meadowsweet. It mattered. It mattered so cloyingly much to him that they liked each other. He wasn’t sure what he’d have done if they didn’t. It’d be like his left and right hands not getting on.

November 2018

It didn’t take hugely long for Bertie to learn how to pull a pint well but James’ first trip down the Hoss-stinger with her working behind the bar was inadvertent. He and Chloe were going out for dinner on a low-key date night, and he’d tried to argue that the village pub was too mundane even for that but he’d been overruled. Chloe had said they should support local business, which James was onboard with, and also something about it having a good aesthetic for an Instagram photo. So, here they were, walking down to the pub hand in hand and with James wearing a brand new soft grey shirt Chloe had bought him. She seemed to quite like buying him clothes, dressing the pair of them up like a life-size Barbie and Ken.

He held the pub door open for her, following her in and then hanging both their coats up on the pegs just inside the entrance. It was already busy-ish, the taproom breathing and chortling with the sounds of people. He clocked Margaery, out of habit, and voided off that entire end of the pub as a no-go zone. He didn’t see Bertie at all until he and Chloe were already walking towards the bar, whoever she’d been serving blocking her from view until they left. His steps stuttered into an awkward shuffle for a couple of feet. Had Chloe and Bertie ever been in the same place around him before? His hands twitched and the palms went clammy. Bertie spotted them,

“Jimmy,” she waved at him from behind the bar.

Chloe wrinkled her nose, “Jimmy?”

A dull red ran up James’ neck, “it’s just a stupid nickname she gave me when we were at college.”

“Well it doesn’t suit you,” Chloe said as she slid her work smile on, “oh my God, Bertie it’s been ages, how are you?”

James hovered next to her as they stood in front of the bar. His tongue tasted metallic and the back of his brain shivered like a rabbit stuck between a wildcat and a long drop. Chloe was marble statue beautiful, long lines and smooth curves and spotless. Her long dark hair shone blue-black in the light and he knew the deceptively simple looking dusty navy and pale yellow window pane check brushed cotton shirt dress she was wearing had been eye-wateringly expensive. Her nails were french manicured to hand-model worthy levels. Bertie’s were flecked with a spatter-shot of colours of paint or ink or whatever else she’d been working with that day. She’d pulled half her hair into a ponytail and stray strands were making bids for freedom, the fly-aways almost giving her a blonde halo. Her big, knitted brickish red cardigan was falling off one of her shoulders and he knew she’d had that Florence & the Machine t-shirt since they were teenagers. It was the world’s easiest game of spot the difference.

“I know right,” Bertie smiled, her cheeks rounding into apple shapes, “I’m good thanks, trying to make being an artist work mostly,”

Chloe smiled stickily, “aww, that’s so cute, I’ll ask at work for you, y’know, see if there’s anything we need painting.”

“Thanks. . .” Bertie glanced up at James, still smiling but more stretched.

He tried to smile back, more wincing than anything else, then started as a hand clapped him on the shoulder.

“James, mate, nice to see you down the Stinger for a change,” Reece Fowler, who’d been in the year above him, Bertie and Chloe at school, had come up behind him. Reece carried on past him and leant on the bar, “alright there B, how’s about a pint then?”

James’ brain caught on the nickname, grating over it, but Bertie’s smile just slid back to easy smoothness. Reece had been on the school rugby team with Titch, had played flanker and like most of the forwards had been one of the bigger guys on the team. He was still built, about the same height as James but broader, and although he was in fair shape it was kind of clear he enjoyed a few pints down the pub on the regular. Bertie was already pulling a pint of bitter for him, she hadn’t even had to ask what it was that Reece wanted.

“That’ll be three-seventy please,” she set the full pint glass on the bar.

“How about three quid and a snog?”

Bertie snorted, “nope, still three-seventy but I’ll take the snog anyway.”

Reece grinned then leaned over the bar and kissed Bertie, not on the cheek but the lips. James swallowed so hard he couldn’t breathe for a moment. He put his arm around Chloe’s waist, needing something to hold onto as the floor tottered underneath him. Chloe leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. He ran his thumb back and forth over her side, the soft expensive cotton of her dress warm and real even as everything else drifted behind glass. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter that someone was kissing Bertie. James was literally cuddled up to his own actual girlfriend at that very moment. Miles away he heard Chloe tell Bertie about their dinner reservation, felt her pat his chest as she made a coy remark about it being date night, and dragged a smile and a nod out of somewhere. His insides and his outsides ran at different paces, the internal lagging behind the external, as he followed Chloe to their table. The menu was churned into even deeper dyslexia-ed meaninglessness than usual so he lied when he said he’d decided what he wanted to order and just guessed that Daisy would have some kind of pie on it. His bones tensed up, he was being a shitty boyfriend, he shouldn’t be so absent when he was meant to having a lovely evening with Chloe. He couldn’t really taste the pie, but he told himself he was having a good time anyway.

Chapter Text

February 2019

Allsort:

I am too young to be a parent!

Bertie followed up her message with a picture of two slightly rumpled looking kittens, one ginger and one tortoiseshell. They were sat on a towel in one of the empty boxes that the packets of crisps they sold in the Hoss-stinger came in.

whos the dad?

Allsort:

That ginger guy cat from the Aristocats

But he’s run off with the fancy lady cat and left me

bastard!

you shood go on jerimy kile

Allsort:

Yes!!

And make him do one of those paternity test things

Sorry to ask this, but could you take them up at the farm? They were just left in the Stinger’s carpark and I can’t keep them at the studio and the twins are allergic to cats so I can’t take them home either.

James pressed his lips together. They’d never had cats before, or at least not that he could remember. He was fine with cats, and he’d yet to find an animal that Titch didn’t like and that didn’t like Titch. Dad, however, he had absolutely no idea about. They did look cute in the photo though, tiny little bedraggled, fuzzy peanuts with eyes that must only recently have opened. It was hardly fair to leave the poor things without someone to look after them.

probly let me chek with titch and dad first tho

Allsort:

Amazing, thank you!

He didn’t bring up the kittens until the evening. Chloe was round and the two of them were cooking tea, he was standing behind her with his chin resting on the top of her head whilst she poked some frying onions with a wooden spoon. She huffed, frowning,

“Can you get off, that hurts.”

He shuffled back, “yeah, sorry. . .”

The backdoor clicked open and Dad and Titch came through, windswept and rosy cheeked, with Tater following behind. Chloe’s frown shifted like someone whipping a tablecloth off from under a fully laid table,

“Hi Titch,” she waved at them with the wooden spoon, “hi Arthur.”

Dad nodded at her, smiling, “evening Chloe, how’re you keeping?”

“Oh, you know, same old same old. We’re got a big gala dinner and a whole bunch of spring weddings booked in at the hotel, so it’s all a bit hectic.” She shrugged, a little coy hitch of her shoulders paired with a sugary smile.

“Must get a bit taxing planning other people’s weddings, lots of people with lots of opinions I imagine.”

Chloe glanced up at James, her smile drifting into a saccharine pout, “it’s not so bad, but it would be nice to be planning mine rather than someone else’s.”

A seismic effort stopped James’ eyebrows hurtling into his hairline. He had to swallow thickly to unclog whatever the lumpy thing that’d gotten stuck behind his Adam’s apple was. He was only a month off turning twenty-two. Did people still get married that young these days? It had never even occurred to him that she might want to marry him. Did he want to marry her? Was that what he was supposed to want? Did she want him to want that? The kitchen tiles were soaking all of the heat out of his feet. His nail beds itched and all the tendons in his hands ached and hummed to rearrange him like a jigsaw puzzle. To make a better picture, or nothing at all. He pulled his lips into a thin smile,

“Ah, umm. . . yeah, I. . . I bet it would be. . .”

He looked away from her, bending down to run a hand over Tater’s ears as she settled into her bed by the Aga. Titch’s feet and shins came into his peripheral vision, pausing next to the dog bed. James bit the inside of his cheek, then tilted his head up. Titch met his eye, one eyebrow raised, then he flicked his gaze over to Chloe and then back again, raising his eyebrow even higher. Hot prickles ran up the back of James’ neck, he looked back down at Tater. Titch sighed and carried on passed him, getting some glasses out of a cupboard. Chloe drifted over to him, laying a hand on Titch’s arm,

“Aww, thank you, you’re always so helpful,”

Titch cleared his throat, “no problem,” moving away from her and retreating to the kitchen table.

After they’s finished eating and the plates were cleared away, James put the kettle on. He leant against the kitchen worktop,

“So, umm, Bertie said that someone left a couple of kittens in the pub carpark and she can’t take them home, so she asked if we could?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets to stop himself twisting his fingers together.

“Why can’t she have them?” Chloe scrunched her nose up, “it’s not like she’s that busy or anything.”

James frowned, “two of her siblings are allergic to cats.”

“So, give them to a shelter or something, why does she always have to get you to do everything for her?”

The prickly heat flared up James’ neck again, “she was just asking. . .”

“Does she know ‘ow old they are?” Titch cut in to their back and forth, throwing James a conversational bone.

“No, but I’d guess not much more than a couple of weeks.”

Dad hummed, “that’ll be a lot of work, they’ll need bottle feeding.” The corners of his lips were turned down slightly, “you can have them if you want but they’ll be your cats and you’ll be the one looking after them, same as with Titch and Tater.”

James’ lungs faltered. He had no idea about looking after kittens. Adult cats seemed pretty straight forward and fairly self-sufficient in many ways, but these very much weren’t adult cats. He shuffled on his feet slightly, seizing the opportunity afforded by the kettle finishing boiling to turn his back on the room. He poured water into the teapot, watching it change colour for a moment before putting the lid on.

“I’ll ‘elp, I loike cats an’ it’ll be easier if the two o’ us share lookin’ after ‘em.”

He looked over his shoulder at his brother, a gentle half-smile kicked up one side of Titch’s lips. James smiled back, a bare seconds worth of one before he turned back around to see whether the tea had brewed enough to pour. He texted Bertie back just before he went to bed, letting her know that the kittens had found a home. He went to pick them up in the morning, on the way back from doing a delivery round. Bertie met him in the Hoss-stinger carpark, she was bundled up against the cold, the Granny Smith apple green dip-dyed ends of her hair a bright stab in the winter grey. He double checked to make sure Magaery wasn’t anywhere in evidence and then got out of the Land Rover. Bertie trotted up to him, arms wrapped around herself,

“They’re in the studio,” she bounced from foot to foot, “hurry up, it’s bloody freezing.”

He snorted, “you’re wearing about four coats, how are you cold.”

“I slept in the studio last night so I could keep an eye on them,” she blew on her fingers as they headed across the carpark and in to the studio, “think I’ve got frost bite.”

He took her hands between his, rubbing them to try and chase off the icy chill, “you should have said, I’d have come and got them last night, or at least brought you some coffee or something.”

She shrugged, “it’s okay, Johnny and Daisy have given me enough tea and coffee to fill a bathtub already, and anyways, I’m asking enough from you as it is.”

James ignored the shotgun spray of photos Bertie kept stuck up on one wall, his eyes only ever seemed to find the ones of her and Reece. She still had the Paul Newman movie posters he’d bought for her years ago hung up on the wall as well though. He shuffled around the press and the piles of her art supplies. The crisp box was down next to the little portable heater Bertie had, it was cranked up to maximum, the metal occasionally ticking as it expanded and contracted with the heat. The kittens weren’t any bigger than the palm of his hand. He crouched down next to the box, Bertie knelt next to him,

“I think the orange one is probably a boy and the tortoiseshell a girl, but I’m not sure.”

James held a finger out for the kittens to sniff, “Titch or I’ll take them to the vet and they’ll be able to tell us.”

“Have you thought about names at all?”

“Hmm,” he scratch his fingers through his beard, “well, I thought the orange one could be Carrot and then I wasn’t sure about the other one.”

“Maybe Parsnip? If you want to stick with the vegetable thing.”

James nodded, a breath of a laugh coming out of his nose, “yeah, Carrot and Parsnip, I like that.”

April 2019

He pushed the boot room door handle down with his elbow, his hands full of mugs that’d been abandoned in the office and really needed to be put through the dishwasher. He toed his shoes off and went into the kitchen. Then stopped immediately. Titch was backed into a corner against the countertop and leaning backwards away from Chloe, who was standing so close to him they were practically body to body. Titch’s eyes were huge and his hands were gripping the edge of the kitchen worktop so hard that even from a distance it was obvious his knuckles were white. Chloe had her hands resting on his chest, her head tilted to the side and looking up at Titch with a syrupy sort of smile. Tater and the cats stared on from the dog bed, all of them alert as if something dangerous was in the room. Titch caught James’ eye, his lips pressed together so hard they’d basically disappeared,

“James,” he squawked, easily an octave higher than he usually spoke.

Chloe whipped around, taking a handful of too quick steps away from his brother. Titch collapsed against the counter, sagging down until he was resting on his elbows. James walked over to the table, clunking the mugs down on it. He stared at Chloe. She took a step towards him, half reaching a hand out,

“James it’s. . . it’s not-”

“Go home Chloe,” he sighed, “I don’t want to see you again.”

“But-”

He folded his arms across his chest, “no, no, we’re done.”

She nodded, sniffed, looked between him and Titch and then ducked her head and left. He picked up the mugs again and went to put them in the dishwasher. Titch was still flopped limply and pale in the corner, he raked a hand through his hair,

“James I’m so sorry, I didn’t. . .she just. . .”

James shrugged, “it’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

He bent down to rearrange some plates in the dishwasher to make more room. The thump behind his ribs beat unevenly. Lightness flooded his blood. It was over. He and Chloe were done.

“No it ent foine, she just. . .”

“Look I. . .” he straightened up to look at Titch but glanced away again, “I didn’t. . . we. . . it’s just,” lots of words clattered against the back of his teeth but didn’t make it through, “I mean it, it’s fine.”

Titch frowned, drummed his fingers on the worktop then sighed, “do you want a cup o’ tea?”

He leant against their gate, waiting for Bertie. She’d said she wasn’t working that evening when he’d texted her and the weather was meant to hold so here he was. He straightened up when he saw her coming, wearing a massive knitted cardigan, paint splotched dungarees and wellies. Her hair was loose, the now bright orange dip-dyed ends falling over her shoulders. His pulse jittered and the intravenous lightness that’d started as soon as he’d told Chloe they were through made his head swim. She waved, her round cheeks going all apple-y as she smiled. James climbed up the gate, sitting on the top of it, the metal cold through his jeans. She clambered up to join him, bumping her shoulder into his,

“So then Jimmy, what’s up?”

He huffed out a breath, “Chloe and I broke up.”

“Oh, umm,” Bertie looked away for a moment, “how. . . how come?”

“She cornered Titch in the kitchen and tried to, I don’t know, make out with him or something and I walked in on it.”

Bertie shuffled up so that their arms and shoulders were squished together, “oh shit, I’m so sorry, but like. . . I can’t say I’m surprised she, umm, she was always a bit, y’know, keen around him. Although,” she pulled a wry grimace, “she couldn’t have picked a wronger tree to bark up. . .”

His stomach lurched, “what do you mean?”

“Well,” Bertie chewed her lip and raised a cautious eyebrow at him, “I mean. . . Titch is hardly straight is he?”

“Uhhh,” his heart hammered, “why’d you think that?”

She took a deep breath, “you’ve never, ever mentioned him having a girlfriend and. . . and maybe this is just because I’m friends with Ash and Connor but I guess I noticed at school that girls were super, obviously in to him and he just. . . didn’t notice? Didn’t care? I don’t know, anyway it kind of struck me that perhaps he wasn’t interested in women.” She smooshed her lips all to one side, “also, once when I was back for the summer during uni and on a night out in Taunton, I might have seen him snogging a guy round the back of Zinc while I was waiting for Connor and Danni to finish buying weed. Don’t think anyone else noticed though, they were too busy with the illicit transactions”

“Jesus,” James snorted, his heartbeat settled again, “how very classy of all of you. . . but yeah, I mean, he’s never. . . never actually said anything but I’m pretty confident he’s gay. It’s why I got in that fight with Harrison Daly over Ash, because I’d just figured it out and, yeah, y’know, what he said really pissed me off.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, “I’ve always thought that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen someone do.” She sighed, “and I really am sorry about Chloe, you deserve so much better than that.”

“Thanks Allsort.”

James dropped his cheek on to the top of her head. Her hair smelt like cinnamon and ginger and oranges, same as always. It wormed through him, same as always. His joints and tendons and ligaments ached again. She had Reece. She was happy. He should be feeling hurt. Or angry. Or something more logical than this swimmy weightlessness.

Chapter Text

October 2019

After Chloe was Paige, they met on Tinder in August. She was a year younger than him and made him think of a spaniel, cute but energetically scatty. She bounded along and he followed in her wake, telling himself the helter-skelter tumble was fun. She’d sweep through the farmhouse; fussing over Tater and the cats; giggling over the pictures of him and Titch as kids; managing to get every single wooden spoon dirty when she helped cook. Almost every weekend involved a trip somewhere to do something and take thousands of photos to document even the minutia of it. He smiled in the pictures. He met her friends. He leaned into the hurly-burly of her. He watched himself from the inside out, trying to work out when having fun had become so much active effort.

He was over at the house Paige shared with a couple of friends, the two of them for once just staying in and watching stupid Saturday night TV. Her feet were resting in his lap as she sat with her back to the arm of the sofa. She was burrowed into one of his jumpers, her hair pushed out of her face with a headband. He’d been about to suggest that he go and make them a cup of tea each, but his phone had buzzed before he’d gotten around to it.

Paige sighed, her nose wrinkling, “are you texting her again?”

James looked up from his phone, he was midway through typing out a reply to Bertie, “her?”

“Bertie,” she leaned back into the sofa cushions, armed folded.

He raised an uncertain eyebrow, “she. . . she was just saying that they’re clearing out the freezer a bit down the Stinger and asking if I wanted anything. . .” Paige pulled a face, her nose wrinkling even more and the corners of her lips turning sharply down, James wet his lips, “it’s. . . it’s not like it was interrupting anything, I mean, we’re just watching TV.”

“You’re spending time with me, you shouldn’t be texting other girls.” She jabbed him in the leg with her toe.

He spoke like he was taking unsteady steps over creaking ice, “you, umm, you text your friends all the time when you’re spending time with me. . .”

“Yeah, well, that’s different, none of my friends are guys.”

He took a slow breath, this was another part of Paige that reminded him of a spaniel, she wasn’t the best at not being the centre of attention. He ran a hand along his jaw, fingers scraping through his beard. This was an argument that’d been building like a headache for weeks. His hands tensed and his lungs fizzed, being friends with Bertie was a hill he was willing to kill or die on. She was hands down the singular good thing that’d come from breaking his leg and he’d damn well break it all over again rather than not have her in his life. The idea of his existence without her in it shunted a cloying, hazy fog right into the marrow of his bones that crackled and popped and cut sharper than shattered glass. It made the ache and itch claw up from his stomach, made him want to pull himself apart and keep pulling and pulling and pulling until he was just shreds and air.

“It wouldn’t matter if they were, you can be friends with whoever you like.” It was conscious thought that kept his voice even, “she’s just my friend, you’re my girlfriend.”

“It’s doesn’t feel like I’m the one that’s your girlfriend when you’ll write out whole bloody paragraphs for her but I basically just get one word answers these days.”

“That’s. . .” he bit his lip and stopped.

“Say it,” Paige had her shoulders hunched up around her ears and her eyebrows pulled down hard together, “say whatever you were going to say.”

“That’s because Bertie doesn’t point it out every time I fuck up a word.”

“I’m just trying to help-”

“I don’t need help,” his jaw muscles ached in spreading waves that crawled over his skull, “or if I do I’ll, y’know, ask for it.”

“Why are you making me sound like such a dick?” Fat, wet drops started to spill down Paige’s cheeks.

James closed his eyes for a moment, giving himself one breath to brace for what was likely going to be a very long evening.

February 2020

Titch raised an eyebrow at him from across the kitchen table. James cleared his throat, took another sip of tea and made no effort to interpret the eyebrow at all. Evie was sitting next to him, making polite “this is the first time I’m meeting my partner’s family” conversation. She was midway through talking about the more entertainingly exasperating bits of being a secondary school art teacher. She was also blonde, had brown eyes, and about five foot five. None of which was uncommon at all, fairly unnoteworthy really. In fact, if anything, it was more notable that so far none of James’ girlfriends had been blonde.

He held Evie’s hand, both of them resting on the tabletop, relaxed and comfortable. They were planning a long weekend away in France over the school Easter holidays and honestly, he was quite looking forward to it. They’d never done holidays abroad growing up, it was hard for Dad to take that much time away from the farm so pretty much every family trip had been to Wales. Every few years, until around when Titch went to uni, they’d gone for a week in the Brecon Beacons. Always to the same little holiday cottage in the same little village, and honestly by now he knew his way around the area just as well as he did the Quantocks. This would be something entirely new though. Evie wanted to go to Normandy, to see some of Rouen, and Giverny, and some of the other places the Impressionists had painted. James was under strict instructions from Titch to bring back some Norman cider and calvados.

When they’d finished the tea, and Titch had excused himself to go back to working and finish up a couple of things in the big barn, he took Evie out for a walk through the orchards. It wasn’t warm out, but it was at least dry and not too cloudy. He let them in through the gate and Evie waited for him to finish latching it so she could slip her hand back into his as they walked.

“I’d love to come and paint here in the spring,” she gestured at the trees around them, “where they’ve got all their blossom on.”

His free hand twitched inside his pocket, “oh, yeah. . . yeah, that’d probably be really picturesque.”

It was stunning, even though he’d seen it every year for the entirety of his life and the charm was far, far from new anymore. She could set up in middle of the blousy, flower covered apple trees. A lovely picture herself, blonde and round faced and probably wearing some weird trousers or dungarees of something, and with a new colour in her hair. Nope. His pulse was buzzing under his skin and his palms had gone a little sweaty. That hadn’t been Evie. He’d been imagining someone else, and he knew exactly who it was, but even the idea of finishing the thought was turning the air into chalk dust. He stopped walking, squeezing Evie’s hand and sliding his arms around her when she turned to face him. She smiled up at him, he tried to catalogue her face, fix the one he should have been picturing into his brain. He brushed some hair out of her eyes, then kissed her, letting sensation push anything else out of his mind.

May 2020

Steph looked over from where she was lying next to him, her hair still messy from where his hands had been in it, “yeah, so, I don’t think this is working.”

“What?” He blinked, brain still foggy on the post-coital come down.

“Not the sex, the sex is great,” she shrugged, “but, like, this feels like more of a fuck-buddies thing rather than y’know anything else, and a booty-call that’s an hours drive away is sort of a hassle.”

“Oh,” he stared at the ceiling.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel like much of anything really. His body was still lax from having just spent the previous half hour fairly vigorously working in tandem with Steph to get them both off. His skeleton was soupy, the thick kind that had lentils in it or whatever, and it only seemed to be vague surprise that bubbled up from the morass. She wasn’t wrong, it’s not like they talked much beyond arranging when they’d next meet up, which always ended up in sex, or when she felt like sexting him, which also always ended up in sex. At least she said he was good at it, unless that was just a nicety to soften the blow. Not that it needed softening, not when his internal soup-state just seemed to swallow the impact and drown it into oblivion without any noticeable reaction. The pain, or indignation, or hell, even relief simply sunk to the bottom of his psyche without so much as a ripple.

He ran a hand through his hair, “yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Perhaps he just wasn’t made to be the sort of person who was wanted. Who was lucky. Who had things turn out okay. That gargled around somewhere below his stomach for a moment or two before it subsided into the swamp as well. Steph shifted beside him, patting him on the chest,

“No hard feelings right? And hey, if you’re ever over this way and fancy a fuck then you’ve got my number.”

James nodded, turning away from her to get out of the bed and start tracking down his clothes. The frenetic abandon he’d been undressed with poles apart from the sluggish fumble he moved with now. Time to go back to the drawing board.

December 2020

James could’ve taken or left it but almost the entire village went down the Hoss-stinger for New Years’ Eve and so going was the path of least resistance. He walked hand in hand with Yasmin, they’d been together since the summer after Steph had split up with him, following Titch and Dad down to the village. Curls of cigarette smoke wisped in the air over Dad’s head, invisible against the black night sky but heavy with the familiar tobacco smell. The back of James’ mind ran over how best to avoid Margeary for the evening, because she’d most definitely be at the pub. He still hadn’t learnt his lesson despite the number of times she’d hit him. The sting of her hand against the back of his head or his cheek easier to remember than what his own Mum had sounded like. Yasmin squeezed his hand,

“I still can’t get over how big a difference it makes being out of town,” she was looking up, her eyes playing dot to dot with the stars, “the sky is so clear here.”

James hummed, glancing up as well. He’d forgotten a lot of the constellations Dad had taught him and Titch, now just a jumble of half-recalled names and pin pricks of light, but one or two had stuck. He found the spoon shape of the Plough, it’s name sat listless behind his teeth and his hand stayed in his pocket. She probably already knew it, didn’t need him to point it out. There was nothing impressive about knowing it. Dad looked over his shoulder at them, he and Titch slowed down, falling in step with them so they walked four abreast. Dad pointed to the sky with the cherry bright lit end of his cigarette,

“It’s always been good for stargazing here.”

Yasmin linked her arm with James’, “I wish I knew what to look for.”

Oh. James balled the hand in his pocket into a fist, pressing his fingernails into his palm. Dad started pointing out the constellations that were visible. He did the Plough first, then Cassiopeia and Orion. Titch pitched in every so often as well, the shapes and names clearly coming more easily for him than they did James. He just stayed silent, an extra part with no real purpose. Perhaps it’d be better if he’d just been entirely absent. Perhaps he ought to leave. Yasmin nodded, following their pointing and asking questions every so often. She looked up at James, her smile wide enough to be obvious even in the dark,

“It’s so lovely that your family knows stuff like this.”

“Yeah. . . yeah it is. . .” not that he’d added much to the experience.

The Stinger was already halfway rammed when they arrived. Clouds and clumps of people milling around. The four of them drifted towards the bar, joining the organised scrum that suggested a queue. James let himself look around, not really seeing anything, until his eyes juddered and caught on Bertie, standing talking to the couple who ran the livery stables nearby. She was wearing a dusty-red velvet blousey thing and her hair was just it’s natural blonde at the moment, but she was wearing it loose and with some kind of wreath-ish headband of evergreen foliage and holly berries. She hadn’t noticed him yet and Reece had his arm around her, his hand resting on her hip, James turned away. He gently brushed some of Yasmin’s hair out of her eyes and behind her ear, kissing her when she smiled up at him. Every muscle in his body locked up as he heard Bertie call out to him,

“Jimmy,” he looked to see her and Reece walking towards them, “happy new year.”

She hugged him and he and Reece did the odd, hand-clasp-back-pat-thing that passed for a hug between men. Yasmin hugged them both too, it wasn’t the first time they’d met, and the fact they’d met at all was more than could be said of some of James’ girlfriends. He was never more aware of how he stood and spoke and breathed as when Bertie and whoever he was dating were in the same place. He wrapped his hand around Yasmin’s, not for the comfort or the feel of it though. The three of them were chatting about what they’d been up to over Christmas, rehashing a conversation they’d probably all had ad nauseam by now. How did you look relaxed? Was it normal for his stomach to be clenched like a vice? He clocked that they were all looking at him,

“Hmm?” He blinked.

Reece repeated himself, “can I get you a drink mate?”

“Oh, yeah, thanks, just a pint of whatever they’ve got on tap that’s good.”

He was only half present all evening, part of him following Bertie wherever she was in the room. She was glorious, supernova-bright and alive like the feeling of sun-hot sand under bare feet. Every time she laughed it burned through his bone marrow in a tempest. He’d hardly drunk anything, just the one pint, but his legs were unsteady beneath him and his innards lurched and tumbled. Only when she was nearby though. Away from her, he crackled with frost and his fingers fumbled with numbness. He smiled and chatted and breathed and blinked and performed the actions of a human, but each one was a marionette dance of conscious effort and string pulling. He was a void. An absence. A lack that ached, desperately, pathetically, for the biggest, brightest, single most beautifully alive person in the room. He ached for her. But she didn’t for him. Because what on Earth could a ghost offer the sun? And even if, somehow, she did he couldn’t bring himself to damn her to desert that he was. So barren and bankrupt was he, that over and over again he’d condemned women to his half-hearted, empty show of affection just to leech the warmth from them until they realised they were better off without him. He might be a coward, but he wouldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t do it to her. Anyone else, just not Bertie. Perhaps it would be better if he just wasn’t there at all.

Midnight rolled in like a train crash in slow motion. His eyes met Bertie’s across the bar. The holler and stamp of the countdown was going on around them. His voice died out on five, but he could near Yasmin still slurring over the numbers next to him. His arm was around her waist and she leant into his side but the nerves on that side of his body had gone all disconnected. He could feel her but as if it was happening to someone else. Reece was holding Bertie’s hand, pumping them both in the air in time with the chanting of the countdown. Bertie wasn’t saying anything either. Just looked at him, her eyes wide. He couldn’t properly see the hazel of them from over here but he knew it anyway, the tearingly familiar goldy, greeny, brown. Everyone around him shouted two. He mouthed I love you over the press of bodies between them. Because God help him, it was the truest thing he’d said for years. Bertie frowned trying to piece together the silent words on his lips. Then everyone hollered one, then zero, and he kissed Yasmin and Bertie kissed Reece and James’ guts plummeted through the floor.

Chapter Text

April 2021

“So,” Dad raised an eyebrow as he looked at James over the top of his tea mug, “what’s this one called?”

James flushed, fumbling with the Land Rover keys as he went to hang them on their hook on the wall, “Natalia.”

“That’s a noice name,” Titch was unloading the dishwasher, “’ave you been seein’ ‘er-”

Dad cut in over the top, clunking his mug on the table, “and what happened to the last one, what was her name? Lauren? Lucy?”

“Laurel, her name was Laurel.” And it had taken her less than a month to figure out that James wasn’t worth her time.

Dad rolled his eyes, “well excuse me for not keeping track seeing as you seem to be going through girlfriends like they’re going out of fashion.”

Six. It’d been six girlfriends in the nearly two years since Chloe. Was that a lot? He had absolutely no idea. He’d been trying his best not to look behind him, just lurched with horrible clinging hands outstretched towards whoever was going to be saddled with him next. Just a barnacle on the bottom of the boat, present, affixed, but contributing nothing. They always scraped him off eventually. But what else could he do when the only person he really wanted was with someone else. He could leave. Leave leave, make it so that no one had to carry the burden he was anymore. Dad ploughed on,

“This is what you get for having dumped as lovely a girl as Chloe, I still don’t know what possessed you to end it with her.”

James prickled as the flush spread over his face and neck like spilt wine. He and Titch had never told Dad about exactly why James had broken up with her. In fact, he and Titch hadn’t really spoken about it besides the mangled, abortive conversation they’d had at the time. Even though he’d never, ever blamed Titch for any part of it, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his brother hadn’t wanted her advances at all, none of the words he wanted to say would come out. He couldn’t squeeze them passed the thumping anxiety that James’ own deficiencies had driven Chloe to do what she had. Nor could he stumble over the shaky ground of whether or not he should just out right say that he knew Titch was gay, and had known for years. At the very least, outing his brother in front of Dad was absolutely not on the cards. James chewed his lip,

“Things just. . . just didn’t work out okay, like I said. . .”

“You dated her for three years” Dad shook his head, “she probably got bored of waiting for you to propose.”

“I’m still only twenty-four, no one gets married that young anymore.” His voice was rising higher, whinging through his nose a little.

Dad’s fingers drummed on the tabletop, a staccato rhythm like a rattlesnake’s tail, “well one of you needs to settle down, marry, and have children, we need to make sure the farm stays in the family,” Dad’s beard bristled at the edges, “and your brother clearly doesn’t seem to think that’s important seeing as he’s never even brought a single girl home. . .”

The plates in the dishwasher clacked against each other as Titch fumbled with them. Girl. Dad had only spoken about bringing a girl home. Nothing else, no acknowledgement of another possibility. People being gay wasn’t an issue, or at least James assumed not, he couldn’t remember Dad ever saying anything that suggested he wasn’t okay with people who weren’t straight, but equally, he’d not said anything to confirm that he was either. Either way, it was blindingly obvious that it had never and would never occur to Dad that his own son might not be straight. James’ nerves flailed, he had to drag the focus away from Titch.

“It’s because she cheated on me.” He blurted it out, the whole room was shaking around him, and he was breathing too fast and too hard.

Dad crunched out his words, “my point still stands, perhaps if you’d been a better boyfriend she wouldn’t have.”

“As if you’re in a place to talk,” James pressed his fingernails into his palms, his breath and thoughts slipping by too fast and spilling out of his mouth, “seeing as how Mum was fucking someone else.”

He thrust a hand in Titch’s direction as a horrible punctuation mark. No. Oh fuck, no. Titch went very, very still, his hands freezing completely on the saucepan he was drying. James met his brother’s eyes, his horrifiedly wide and Titch’s tight and under crumpled eyebrows. The strings holding Titch upright had sagged, leaving him looking sloppy-shouldered and slack-jointed. All of James’ intestines threw themselves off a cliff and hurtled breakneck downwards. The heaving in his chest shuddered from spiky with angular rage to breathless.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean-”

He didn’t get to finish as Dad’s chair clattered over the kitchen tiles as he stood up. He thumped over to James, standing thunderously close. They were eye to eye with one another now, had been for years. Red, and blue, and marble pale. Both carved to the exact same pattern from the exact same lump of stone.

“Don’t you dare,” Dad’s lips barely moved over the words, they were so low that James could feel the bass rumble in his chest, “don’t you dare talk about her.”

All his body heat plummeted into the tiles under his feet and left him grave-cold, “why not? Why can’t we talk about her?” His jaw clenched so hard as permafrost rage locked his body up, “you’re not the only one she left, and we’re the ones who didn’t get a fucking choice in the matter.”

Because they hadn’t. No one had asked them at all. No one had even ever properly explained what was happening or why. The only person who’d actually been there, really truly been there, for him was Titch and James had just pulled off a masterclass in throwing his own brother under the bus. Because all James ever did was screw things up. Leave. Dad’s lips wavered where he was pressed them together so tightly they’d gone white beneath his moustache. He was breathing heavily through his nose, the inhales and exhales rushing like a tide. He swallowed, the movement of his Adam’s apple jagged and uneven, and he started to reach out with one shaking hand towards James. It just hovered, uncertain, between them as James realised that water welled in the outer corners of Dad’s eyes. A crushing swell of static fear shattered against his ribcage. Leave. Never, not once in all his life, had he seen Dad cry. Dad’s hand fell away and he stalked passed James towards the back door. He wrenched it open and walked out without stopping. James looked back towards the dishwasher as the door slammed behind Dad. No one was there. Clearly sometime during the argument Titch had slipped away. James pressed his face into his hands, using them to muffle a broken whine. Leave.

July 2021

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Not the quick buzz of a text but the prolonged one of someone calling him. James pulled it out of his pocket, glancing at the name on the screen. Allsort. He was on his own at that end of the greenhouse so he leaned against the growing table and hit the button to pick up the call,

“Hey, everything okay?” She’d have texted if it wasn’t urgent.

He could hear her breathing, uneven and too fast. There was a wet noise, a sniff, but no words. He frowned, fiddling with an aubergine leaf, his stomach starting to turn to ropes inside him,

“Allsort, what’s going on? What’s happened?”

“Reece proposed,” she vomited it out, words splattering and messy, “and I. . . I panicked and-”

“Hey, hey,” all the oxygen dropped out of the greenhouse, “it’s alright. Where are you? Do you. . . do you need someone with you right now?”

“Please.” It was so tiny, and wobbly, whispered down the phone connection. “I’m at the gate.”

James pressed his hand over his mouth to stop the jagged hitch of his own breath going over the line, “okay, I’ll be with you as soon as I can.” He started walking out of the greenhouse, “I’m not going to hang up, okay, we’ll keep talking until I’m with you.”

She muttered a little noise of agreement, though her breathing was still wrong. Too loud. Too fast. Punctuated by half-sobs and sniffs and hiccoughs. James rattled open the greenhouse door, barely remembering to slide it shut again behind him. As soon as he was outside he started to jog, passed the rest of the greenhouses and over towards the fields.

“You’re okay, everything is going to be okay,” his heart had lodged itself in his throat, “can you tell me what you can see?”

Bertie took a deep breath, then another, “there are. . . there are trees and. . .” every word had too many angles to it, like it hurt her mouth to push them out, “and the sky is blue but only. . . only between the clouds.”

“Good, that’s really good Allsort, what else is there?”

“The oilseed is flowering and it’s yellow and. . . there are insects, I can hear them, and birds as well.”

He was out in the fields as well now, jogging down the side of a sea of acid-yellow flowers. Through this one, then one more and then he’d be there. He swung himself over the gate, even one-handed it was quicker that bothering with the latch. There were fewer breaks in her voice, it still wavered but caught on itself less.

“Can. . . can you tell me what kinds of birds?”

“Wrens, I think, and. . . and goldfinches and. . . some sparrows and also rooks, over in. . . in the wood. I can see woodsmoke too, from Margaery’s probably.”

He hauled himself over another gate, trotted up the little rise and then, finally, finally, he could see her. She was sitting on the gate, facing away from him towards Margaery’s wood. One of her hands wrapped around the top rail of the gate and the other holding her phone to her ear.

“I’m here Bertie,” James’ lungs and heart and guts were too big inside him.

She turned round, almost falling off the gate and ran at him. He jammed his phone in his pocket and she thudded into him. He pressed her to his chest, arms folding around her. She leant bodily into him, all her muscles going slack the moment they collided. He held her, rocking her gently back and forth, not speaking until she took in and slowly let out an oceanic breath. Bertie pulled away and he let his arms fall gently, ready to scoop her up again if she looked like she needed it. She stayed steady, a little red eyed and ruffled but not jittering anymore. They walked to the gate, climbing up to sit on it and stare across to the wood.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She had her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her slouchy sweatshirt. It was too big on her and the neck was so stretched out that it slopped down off one shoulder. The bottom of it went almost all the way to her knees and she had black tights and big, clompy Doc Martins on and the coziness jarred against the blotchy, wetness of her face. He held on to the gate rail too tightly because it was that or take her face in his hands and that way madness lay. She kept twisting her jumper cuffs between her fingers,

“He. . . he got down on one knee and everything, and he probably said something really sweet because he is really sweet, but I didn’t take it in at all because. . .” she had to stop and breath for a little bit, “I wasn’t expecting it, not in, like, a finding a fiver in a coat you’ve not worn for ages’ pocket kind of not expecting, but more like a blindsided and out of the blue kind of way. Anyway, he asked and I just. . . didn’t know what to say. I’d never thought about us getting married at all, never imagined it or anything. So I just panicked and said I had to think about it and ran away. . .”

She hadn’t said yes. She hadn’t said yes. It thundered round his head. She hadn’t said yes and she’d run away and called him instead. His skeleton was all turned to dust and air and light. An inky black blotch smudged something sticky in the middle of the dizzy churn. It looked horribly like his girlfriend’s face. He squeezed the cold metal of the gate harder,

“It’s not, y’know, unreasonable to want to think about it a bit.”

“But what if I’ve completely blown it? What if. . . what if I do want to say yes but now he doesn’t want to?”

“Do,” James had to squeeze the words out around the sticky black splodge, “do you want to say yes?”

Bertie looked down at her hidden hands, “I. . . don’t know. . .” she looked up at him, her heart shaped face framed by wispy bits of blonde hair, her fringe sticking out at odd angles. She went to speak, then hesitated, and eventually ended up with, “I feel like I should, want to say yes that is, because he is sweet and I do love him and what if. . . what if this is the best I’m going to get?”

He bit his tongue. Bit back telling her that no, this wasn’t the best she was going to get. It wasn’t even half of what she deserved. Reece could be offering her all the sky and sea and the sun itself and it still wouldn’t be equal to what she should have. Lukewarm wasn’t Bertie. She was permafrost and pyroclastic flow and solar eclipses and artic circle midnight sun. So no, Reece wasn’t in any way shape or form the best she could get. But James was a serial offender for only loving his girlfriends halfheartedly so he hadn’t got a leg to stand on when came to being judgemental. It’s not like he was anywhere near good enough for her either, not with his litany of fuck ups stretching away behind him. Not when all he did was drag, and drag, and drag everyone around him down. He watched a bee bimble between some oilseed flowers, his mouth tasted like cardboard,

“Allsort,” he gasped a sigh, “if. . . if I know anyone who can work out what the right thing to do is, it’s you but please. . . please don’t do it if it’d make you unhappy.”

She closed her eyes tight shut, the corners of her mouth pulled quaveringly downwards, “the first thing I did was run away and call you. . . I. . . I think that probably says all it needs to.”

Hearing her say what he’d already thought popped and crackled behind his eyes like static on an old TV screen. His grip on the gate rail was white-knuckled. She opened her eyes and looked up at him and he had to say Natalia’s name over and over and over in his head. He couldn’t. Not like this. Not now. Not when all it’d do was hurt three people. Not when she deserved more than everything he was and then some. Not when, over and over again, it seemed like the best thing he could do was leave. He nodded and looked away from her,

“Sounds like you’ve got an answer then.”

Chapter Text

November 2021

He liked Natalia’s flat, it was cosy and tucked up in the attic of an old Victorian building now chunked up into apartments. She’d filled it with pot plants and the fridge was covered in magnets from all the places she’d been on holiday. Over the summer they’d added a new one from Czechia when they’d been to Prague. It’d been a good holiday, they’d eaten too much, drunk Czech beer, and hung out by the riverside. They were doing the washing up after dinner, James with his hands buried up to the wrists in warm soapy water and Natalia drying things up and putting them away. The bluetooth speaker was humming out music softly over the sloshes and clacks.

“I’ve been offered a promotion,” Natalia went to tuck her hair behind her ear even though it already was.

James nodded, smiling, “that’s great news, well done.”

“I think I want to take it.”

“You should, if it’s what you want,” he handed her a mug, “when would it all get sorted out?”

She dried the mug slowly, setting it carefully in the cupboard and adjusting some of the other mugs so it’d fit better, “well. . . it, umm, it depends on how quickly I could move. . .”

“Move?” He stopped, midway through scrubbing a plate.

“The new role would be based out of the Birmingham office so I’d. . . I’d have to move there and, ideally, they want me to start in January.” She wrung the tea towel in her hands, “would. . . would you come with me?”

Couldn’t this be exactly what he wanted? He didn’t fit here so why not just leave. It’d hardly cause anyone any trouble if he wasn’t around, not when he brought nothing to the table. His hands spasmed as the buzzing ache set into his fingers. Moving away would be a way to hide a half-step towards the itch. The one that whispered that what he ought to do is leave-leave. The geographical distance would let him throw a fig-leaf over the immediate fallout of what doing that would mean. He could tell himself that Titch and Dad and Bertie wouldn’t be irradiated so badly by him making the nuclear choice. Something spiky and rushing and hot detonated in his stomach with unholy force. He had to swallow down the urge to vomit. Titch and Dad and Bertie. Titch. Dad. Bertie. His pulse became an alternating current, flowing one way and then the other, flipping back and forth as static rattled his teeth in his jaw.

Natalia squeezed his shoulder, “I totally understand if you need to think about it for a bit but, umm,” she chewed her lip, “I don’t. . . I don’t want to do long distance so if. . .”

“So if I don’t come too then?”

“Then we break up I guess,” she dropped her gaze.

So either he left here, and everyone, or she left him. Because somehow, some way, someone always, always leaves. Titch. Dad. Bertie. His heart did what the Grinch’s did but in reverse. It constricted, crumpling like an empty Coke can inside him. His lungs were grit and dust. The ache rippled up his arms. It sang the itch to him. No one could leave him anymore if he left first. Not left with her. But left. He couldn’t be a fuck up if he wasn’t here, couldn’t be not enough, couldn’t keep causing problems. His throat tightened, burned as he fought to keep the bile down. He couldn’t. Mustn’t. Because he knew, knew it so well he could navigate it blindfolded, just how wreckingly, disjointingly, shatteringly it hurt to be left. Titch. Dad. Bertie. He had to stay. For them. Just keep clinging on by the barest sliver of his fingertips. Stay. Please, just this once let him do something right.

He inhaled, deep and ragged, “I. . . I don’t think I can go. . .”

Natalia nodded, she sniffed, wiped the back of her hand beneath one of her eyes, “I figured you might say that.”

“I’m sorry.” He pulled her into a hug, holding her gently as her fingers tangled into the back of his jumper.

He kept holding her as she cried, the damp patch on his shoulder spreading slowly larger and larger. The fizz of the static stripped the feeling and heat from his hands and feet. The thub-thub of his shrunken heart rang hallow and fitful behind his ribs. He could feel Natalia in his arms, the shake and shudder of her shoulders. He could hear the muffled sniffle and hitch of her breathing, but only skin deep. It didn’t register any further than that, couldn’t struggle passed the tilting desert of realising how much he wanted to go but equally how little he could bare to inflict his leaving on the people he really loved. Because in all honesty, he knew he didn’t love Natalia and he never had.

January 2022

“So, how was it?” Bertie blew her fringe out of her eyes as she worked on polishing the printing surface of one of her lithography stones.

James was perched on the work surface in her studio, one of Daisy’s giant tea mugs clutched in his hands. The little heater was going full tilt but they were both still wearing their coats. He’d spent the last weekend helping Natalia move to Birmingham, spending the very last of their time together before calling it quits. She’d cried, his insides had rattled cold and hard and blank like marbles. The goodbye had been awkward, but not difficult, not for him anyway. He shrugged,

“Fine, her new place seems nice.”

Bertie raised an eyebrow at him, “fine? Really?”

“Yeah, well, I mean she did cry a bit and stuff,” he took a sip of tea, hiding behind the mug.

“But what about you?,” Bertie stopped working, putting her hands on her hips, “how did you feel? You were together for nearly a year and she was one of the good ones.”

“Good ones?”

Bertie cleared her throat and turned back to sanding the stone, “well, it’s just that with some of your girlfriends I did. . . I did wonder why you were with them because they didn’t seem, y’know, all that good for you.”

He swallowed, they’d never talked about their respective partners before. Even before the disastrously dawning realisation that he was in love with Bertie he’d known it was a can of worms he didn’t want to touch with a barge pole let alone open. He gulped some tea and could feel the hot trace of it all the way down. Bertie was focussing with loud intent on the lithography stone, not looking at him and burnished faintly pink across her cheeks. Giddiness vomited itself into his blood stream. They were both single. For the first time in five years they were both single at the same time. His knee started jittering up and down. What did it matter, when he knew forwards and backwards he’d rather shutter himself away from her sunlight for the rest of his life than drag her down the way he had everyone he’d ever dated.

“Which,” he took a breath, “which ones were the bad ones then?”

Bertie inhaled through her teeth, “I, umm, I never really liked Chloé if I’m honest, and then some of the other ones I met were a bit, I don’t know, it just felt like the wrong fit.” She sighed, putting down the polishing tools and washing her hands, “not that they were all like that, as I said Natalia was good and I thought Evie was pretty cool.”

He bit his lip, nodding slowly. Did it make sense or was it weird that Bertie had thought the woman he’d dated that’d just been a poor attempt to get as close to being with Bertie as he could was cool? Had she noticed as well, how similar she and Evie had been? The back of James’ neck sprouted a dull heat. Bertie leant against the worktop next to him,

“Come on then, what did you think of my boyfriends, it’s only fair you get a turn.”

He choked on a sip of tea as the dull heat tangled from his neck to his ears and face. Bertie clapped him on the back. The giddiness that still chased through his arteries and veins jangled with half formed sentences saying you deserved more, you deserved better, they weren’t me. Not that he would have been better, or what she deserved either. He wet his lips,

“Uhh, Reece was alright, just maybe kind of bland,” his face was heating the studio much more than the little heater was by now, “and, I’m sorry but, I did think Yusuf was a prick. . .”

Bertie chuckled, breathy and flat, “yeah. . . yeah he kind of was, he broke up with me because he was mad that we were friends.”

“Really?”

“Yup,” she over-pronounced the p, “went the whole nine yards with the men and woman can’t just be friends and it actually means they fancy each other thing.”

His fingers twitched around the mug. He was her friend, would always, always be her friend but he’d gone well beyond just fancying her. He loved her, had for so long that being in love with her was just part of him and would be until the day he died. It didn’t matter whether they ever became a couple, whether she loved him romantically back, or whether it’d remain the best and most important friendship he had. The shape the love took was besides the point, the crux of it was that it was there and it was constant and steady and it’s presence held him together even when he felt like he was dissolving into sea foam. It kept him here, even when he wanted to leave, because he’d gladly suffer to save her pain. He huffed,

“Paige broke up with me for exactly the same thing.”

Bertie picked up her mug of tea from where she’d abandoned it to go cold ages ago, “well, here’s to being single hey?”

The clunked mugs together, the sound bright over the hum of the heater. James shook his head, half smiling and hopped off the worktop to help Bertie move the lithography stone out of the polishing sink and off to the side to dry.

June 2022

James almost dropped his glass as Dad spluttered through a hacking cough, thumping himself in the chest as if he could bludgeon his body into behaving. James shot a glance over to Titch across the kitchen table, both frowning at each other. It was far from the first time Dad had been left breathless and red faced by a coughing fit. It was getting harder to ignore the rattle and wheeze in his breathing as well, particularly when the weather was bad. James took too big a sip of water, swallowing it down with an audible gulp. It wasn’t rocket science, to figure out what the root cause of the issue was. The more pertinent question was whether it was worth bringing it up. Titch set his cutlery down,

“Dad, maybe it’d be better fer you to cut back on the-”

Dad rolled his eyes, “don’t start that again.”

Titch’s hands curled into fists on the tabletop, “I ent sayin’ you ‘ave ta stop, just maybe it’d be better-”

“I think I know what’s best for me better than you do,” Dad’s jaw jutted forward and his moustache ends prickled.

Titch caught James’ eye, a tumbling hole opened beneath James’ intestines and they lurched into the darkness. He wet his lips. The blood in his fingertips fizzed and none of it seemed to be reaching his brain. They had to try together though, for once he should at least try to be a better brother even if he’d only make a mess of it as usual,

“That’s,” James took a deep breath, “that’s not what we mean-”

“We?”

“Well, yeah, I. . .” he glanced at his brother, “I agree with Titch, and I think we’d both like you to, y’know,” he flapped his hands lamely.

“Since when did the pair of you start fretting like mother hens? I’m not going to keel over and I don’t care for the suggestion that I might.” Dad pushed his chair back from the table, grating it over the tiles.

He stood up, picking up his glass of cider and evidently both dinner and the conversation were over. James got up from the table, walking over to fill the kettle and flick it on as Dad left the kitchen. His footsteps in the hallway disappearing as he must have gone into the sitting room. Titch sighed, taking his glasses off and rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. The kettle rumbled to itself and James winced at every clink and rustle he made getting two mugs out and putting tea bags in them. He heard the scrape of Titch’s chair and glanced over his shoulder. His brother was crouching by the dog bed, smoothing the fur along Tater’s back as her tail thumped and jostled the cats. Parnsip yawned, stretched, and slunk out of the bed to retreat to the safety of the top of the dresser. Carrot seemed blissfully unaware that he was being gently battered at all. Titch’s shoulders sagged, more than gravity could account for dragging them down. He ran a hand through his hair, it stuck up in yellowy-blonde shards,

“”E ent ever going ta change,” Titch petted Tater’s ears.

James got the milk out of the fridge, “but he’s not stupid, he must know it’s the smoking that’s making him cough like that.”

“O’ course ‘e does,” Titch shifted so he was sitting on the floor next to the dog bed, back towards the Aga, “’e just. . . oh, I don’t know, but ‘e ent going ta stop no matter what we say.”

James chewed his lip, staring hard at his own hands as he stirred the tea, “do you. . . do you think he, umm, doesn’t care that it might. . . y’know. . .”

He couldn’t make the words string along any further, whatever would have come next fell off the conversational thread like beads from a broken necklace. What he meant was did Dad not care that the cigarettes were probably killing him? Did he not care that he was going to die? James’ teeth and spine ached, pressing too big against his skin and muscles. The itch threaded it’s fingers up his throat and wrenched him on to the next question. Did Dad want to leave sometimes too? Is that where James got it from? He squeezed his hand into a fist, forcing it to remember how the joints worked and picked up the mugs of tea. He walked over to Titch and handed him one and then folded himself down to sit on the floor as well. Carrot got out of the bed and came to flop gracelessly in James’ lap. He didn’t look at his brother, just the spill of orange cat covering his legs.

“I. . .” Titch sighed, so long that James could more or less hear the point where his lungs went passed being empty, “I ‘ope not. I really, really ‘ope not.”

The choked, barren, desert of Titch’s voice sanded James’ bones down to sawdust. Titch had always been strong in every sense, even now James was a solid four inches taller than him Titch could still easily lift him. Besides that, Titch had coped with running the farm right alongside Dad since before he’d even gone to uni. Even when they were both still just kids, Titch had been there for James in ways that hadn’t really registered until they were adults and it was far, far passed overdue that James repaid him. There was something in his brother, at the core of him, that was just sturdier than James could ever hope to be. Titch was like the apple trees in the orchard, hardwood, whereas James was only softwood pine. Some way it would be to repay him, for James to do something that made Titch, unbreakable Titch, sound so thin and reedy at just the concept of it. James clamped his jaw tight enough to make his teeth creak inside his head. The itch still wallowed in his throat and he couldn’t swallow it down though.

Chapter Text

December 2022

“Yeah, so the things about Rackham is that he was basically one the main artists during, like, the golden age for book illustration in Britain.”

James nodded, he honestly had no idea who Rackham was besides an artist and he’d only learnt that about five minutes ago when Bertie had started talking about him. Not that it mattered, not when Bertie’s smile had the same beautiful, sweeping curve as the beach as Weston-super-Mare. Not when her voice rose and fell with joy the same way the Quantock hills did. Not when listening to her made James’ lungs feel too big for his chest and his blood hum with helium. He was driving them both to Bridgewater, the back of the Landy full of a mix of vegetables and Bertie’s art. The veg was going to their usual buyers and the art to a gallery that was holding an exhibition of local artists. James had promised her a lift, seeing as he was going that way anyway. Or, more accurately, she’d asked and he’d said he was going that way anyway and then hadn’t even given Titch or Dad a choice about who was doing the delivery round that day.

They went to the gallery first, pulling up outside and James fetched the first of Bertie’s prints out the back of the Landy and brought it with them as they went in. Both owners met them by the door, one of them discussed with Bertie exactly where her pieces would hang and double checked the content of the little blurb about her that’d be displayed nearby. James just kept on carrying the artworks out of the Land Rover and into the gallery, the other owner helping him. They carefully stacked the wrapped framed lithographs in the exhibition room, ready to be hung up when the positioning was decided on. After the final piece was brought in James floated by the door like a lost balloon, waiting for Bertie to be done. His eyes followed the swift-like movement of her hands as she spoke. His spine warmed as he traced the heart-shaped contours of her face with his gaze. The gallery owner who’d helped carry the prints in stood next to him, hugging her cardigan around herself,

“You must be very proud of her,” she nodded towards Bertie.

“Oh, umm yeah,” James blinked, his brain spluttering into functioning, “she’s worked really hard for this and, y’know, it’s nice to see that pay off,”

“And how long have you?” The gallery owner gestured between him and Bertie.

James tilted his head, the gesture hadn’t exactly explained much, “oh, umm, since school.”

“That’s sweet,” the owner smiled at him, “you don’t often hear about childhood sweethearts these days,”

James’ insides hurtled in at least four separate directions, “oh, no, I mean. . . umm, we’re not. . . I just meant we’ve known each other since school, we’re not, umm, we’re not together. . .”

“Oh God, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed,” she put a hand briefly on his shoulder, “shame though, you’d make a very attractive couple.”

James’ cheeks and ears burned like neon signs down a dark alley, everyone in a mile radius must have been able to see the glow. She’d thought he and Bertie were a couple. Had believed it was possible that they’d been a couple since they were teenagers. His head swam, full of sunlight and the taste of honey mead. It stayed with him, even as they left and Bertie came with him on the veg delivery round. It buzzed sweetly, sang his bones into jelly, and curled cat-ish behind his sternum. He tried to catch it, to smother it, to do something, anything to stop it’s joyous canter carrying him away. He couldn’t. It rose it’s whisky-smooth head again later that evening when he was sprawled on the sofa, not really paying attention to the TV as he Googled possible birthday presents for Bertie. It reminded him of the name of the illustrators she’d talked about on the drive to Bridgewater. Before too long he’d found the Folio Society copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham. He didn’t think, just bought it.

On the 20^th he walked down to the studio, he’d texted earlier to find out where Bertie would be. She had the door shut so he knocked, but didn’t wait for her to open in and just went in. She was sitting at the worktop, sketch book open and a spill of pencils across the surface next to her. She looked up at him, her cheeks turning appley as she smiled,

“Well fancy seeing you here,” she hopped off her stool and came over to hug him.

He squeezed her with one arm, his other hand holding the wrapped up book. Her thick woollen jumper, a soft heathery purple and burnt orange fair isle one, prickled gently under his palm. He sunk under the glorious cinnamon, ginger and orange smell of her hair. They let go, moving a little apart but not far. He handed over her present, she felt the weight of it in her hand then looked up at him,

“A book?”

“Open it and see.”

She did, slowly peeling off all the sellotape and unfolding the wrapping. She jerked in a deep breath, running her fingers over deep blue hardback cover and it’s silvery embossing as she breathed out again slowly,

“Oh Jimmy,” she looked up at him, her eyes so wide and more gold and green than anything else in the light, “it’s beautiful.” She opened the cover, flicking through the pages and stopping at all the illustrations.

James rubbed the back of his neck, “well, you said you like the guy’s art and. . .”

Bertie set the book gently down on the worktop, then stood up on tiptoe to brush a featherlight kiss against his cheek, “thank you.”

Perfect, soft licks of pink spread over her nose and cheeks. Her hair fell looping and wheat-gold over her shoulders and the thud of James’ heart in his bones spelled out how badly he wanted to run his hands through it. The skin on his cheek that her lips had touched fizzed star-dust bright and all the air dissolved around him. He’d been hers forever, since long before he’d even realised, long before he’d even thought to look, so this wasn’t that, it wasn’t him realising he belonged to her. This was the stepping out of the undergrowth into the light of knowing that he’d always be hers. No matter what happened, or what path theirs lives took, even if they parted ways at some point and never spoke to each other again he’d still be hers. He almost reached out to touch her, to keep her close to him and ask her to turn more of him into nebulae, but his hand faltered. He was hers. She was all of his dawns, and full moons, and joy. He was dust. He was dust but did she. . . did she want him anyway? How could he ever make himself worth her wanting him?

He smiled, it ached through him, “happy birthday Allsort.”

May 2023

He pulled into the Hoss-stinger carpark to drop off that week’s delivery for Daisy. Both Johnny and Bertie were out the front of the pub along with Elis, Bertie’s Step-Dad, in a little huddle. A couple of long-ish ladders were propped against the front of the building and Johnny’s tool box had disgorged itself over one of the pub garden tables like a vomity drunk on a Friday night. James parked up the Landy and hopped out, leaving the crates of vegetables in the back for now and walking over to see what was happening. Johnny nodded to him,

“Mornin’,” he grinned and jerked a thumb at the pub’s frontage, “she’s lookin’ foiner than a new minted penny ent she.”

James looked up, the pub signs had been changed, updated with new designs that he’d seen unfinished a while back in Bertie’s studio. There were two; one smaller portrait rectangle that hung off a bracket perpendicular to the pub wall, and one larger, longer landscape one attached directly to the wall with the pub’s name on it. It was all in a slightly softened colour palette taken from southern hawker dragonflies; velvetty black, and a gradient of greens and blues running from acid-lime to vibrant sky. The style was the chunky, almost graphic sort that she used when she did linocuts rather than the finer Art Nouveau style of her lithography, all terms she had exasperatedly reminded James of again and again. The image was a trio of bullrush tops, with a single southern hawker resting on one of them. The long, rectangular signboard was very minimalist, just the Hoss-stinger’s name painted in beautifully neat signwriting using the same colour scheme as the hanging sign. Whatever she did, whatever she touched just breathed. Unerringly, Bertie always managed to put more into the world. The universe was larger, greater, better purely by virtue of her being in it and somehow bringing spring with her wherever she went. He carried an inky love letter to her abilities on his own skin and even though the sight of it was so familiar now, he’d still brush his fingers against it sometimes as if it might bring him the ghost of her.

He looked down from the signs to Bertie, she’d pinned her fringe out of the way and the tail end of a flush from the physical exertion of hanging the signs splayed over her round cheeks. She grinned at him, and no caffeine rush could hurl life through him quite like that did. She glanced back up at the signage,

“Not too bad hey Jimmy?”

“Stunning,” he hadn’t moved his gaze away from her.

Johnny and Elis were packing up the tools, grumbling back and forth about the impoliteness of screws that’d scattered every which way. James kept his hands in the pockets, clamped his elbows to his sides, his arms bare threads away from mutinying and sweeping Bertie in a whirling hug. He swallowed. The early morning light was a pale approximation of the warmth and shine that she wore. She was golden, the best and purest example of it there ever was or would be. More precious than it. Worth more than he should be allowed to touch. So he didn’t. And although he could drown the urge to hold her, the only way he could ever not look at her was if he went blind.

“Nader margh’ll have your eyes out if you keep staring like that.”

James’ skeleton made a bid for freedom from his skin, “Old Lady Margaery.” It was out of his mouth before he’d even begun to get his heart rate back under control, she smacked him round the back of his head, “ow, fuck.”

Margaery snorted, “you make it too easy lad.”

Lord knows when she’d joined them, she was eerily stealthy for a stout woman wearing welly boots. Margeary stared up at the new signs, nodding silently. Bertie smoothed down the front of her dungarees, looking between James and Margeary,

“What, umm, what do you think Lady Margaery?” she twisted her fingers together.

Margaery pulled a humbug out of her pocket and started to unwrap it, “very fine, though it’s no surprise, you’ve always had a way with paint.” She popped the humbug into her mouth.

Bertie’s smile grew wings and her whole face flew. James almost choked on his own breathing, she was burning him from the inside out and good God he’d thank her for it. He could barely keep his head above the tide of the way the daylight clung to the lines and curves of her, his lungs begged him to succumb and drown in it. Something small and hard smacked into his cheekbone,

“Ah, shit,” he rubbed the stinging spot, looking down to see a humbug lying by his feet.

Bertie was unwrapping one of her own, the plastic wrapper crinkling, eyebrows pressed together sympathetically even as she fought not to smile by biting her lip. Margaery had no such qualms and chortled to herself,

“It wouldn’t have hit you if you’d been paying attention and not so busy being all spoony,” James’ face turned scalding hot, “Goodland men,” Margaery rolled her eyes as she carried on, “a pack of fools the lot of you.”

Margaery huffed, shook her head, and strode off towards the village green and her wood. James chewed his bottom lip, every inch of visible skin from his neck to his hairline felt luminescent. He shuffled his weight a little, glancing briefly at Bertie, she blinked at him and her cheeks were rosy-bright in the sunshine.

“Umm-”

“Well-” they spoke at the same time, each one stopping in unison too.

He made an awkward flapping motion, “you go first. . .”

“Oh no, I, umm, I mean I wasn’t going to say anything important. . .” she brushed some hair behind her ear but it fell out again.

James bit the inside of his cheek, he wanted to fix it for her, “oh, right, yeah. . . well, I was. . . I was just going to say I should probably take the veg delivery in to Daisy. . .”

“Oh yeah,” Bertie nodded jerkily, “yeah sorry for holding you up-”

“No, no it’s fine,” he cut in, too quickly and too bright. He wet his lips, “see you around, yeah?”

“Of course,” she smiled, then pointed at the floor “don’t forget your humbug.”

He laughed, breathy and through his nose, and bent to pick it up.

August 2023

He wanted to crawl under the growing tables, lie down and never have to get up again. The August sun ripped through the glass of the greenhouses and through his skin as if it were razor blades. Sweat ran down his back and neck and face. He’d stripped out of his t-shirt ages ago and it would generally considered socially unacceptable for him to take his shorts off too. Dad wasn’t in any better of a state, if anything he was worse. His face was slick-wet with perspiration and a vicious sunburn had turned the back of his neck the same colour as his hair. Or at least the same colour as his hair had been, it was reaching the tipping point of being more grey than red now. The lines in his skin ran like riverbeds across his face. A metallic, hollow whisper in James’ guts pointed out how old Dad looked. He was only fifty-nine. James dropped his head back, staring out of the glass panes in the ceiling, scorching the thoughts out of himself.

His hands moved so slowly, treacle-ish and throbbing from all the blood flooding into his capillaries as his body desperately tried to cool itself down. He’d barely gotten anything done even though they’d been in here for two hours already, the will to move, and think, and be ebbing away like a receding tide. The muddy sand of his ineffectualness exposed to the stripping light. His cracks and deficiencies widening with every drop of sweat trickling off his skin. Dad, despite the wheeze in his breaths, was working much quicker and more methodically. Titch was tackling a different greenhouse entirely by himself because he could be trusted with something like that. Not like James who’s hands fumbled regardless of what he touched. Football, the farm, being in love.

An unholy clattering wrenched him down from the ledge of his own thinking. Water pissed out of one of the hydroponic channels, herbs scattered over the floor from where they’d been knocked out of their holders, Dad listed like a sinking ship against the growing table. His eyes rolled sightlessly around, his face was sickly purple-red. James threw himself over to Dad, trying to get a hold of him and then immediately pulling his hands away from the sheer heat dripping off Dad’s body. Stumbling, trembling hands pushed fitfully at James,

“Wh. . . what’re you. . . get,” Dad’s face twisted and bunched in stormy frown, “get off,” he slurred like he’d been drinking since breakfast.

James ignored Dad’s boneless fighting and heaved him up, one of Dad’s arms over James’ shoulders and James’ arm around Dad’s waist. He hauled them both out of the greenhouse, awkwardly bracing Dad’s weight against his side as he struggled to slide the door open. Why had they shut it, why hadn’t the left it open. He’d known it was too hot. Idiot. Idiot boy. Fucking up, again. James’ lungs stumbled the same as Dad’s shuffling footsteps. Thousands of tiny birds stuck in James’ throat, their wings clattering between his vocal cords. His jaw shivered, teeth clacking together,

“Titch,” he hollered, Dad’s weight pulling down on his shoulder, “come on, let’s get get to the house.” He spoke softer, the words unwilling to move passed his lips.

Dad stumbled, leaning heavier on James’ shoulder, “don’t. . . don’t be daft, there’s nothing wrong,” it all ran together, the syllables slipping slantwise.

There was. The coiling ropes in James’ intestines pulsed cold and pulled tighter around his organs. God he hoped Titch had heard him. Dad wasn’t sweating at all anymore, his skin was dry and fever-hot. He resisted as James moved them towards the farmhouse, wobbling like a foal and trying to pry himself out of James’ hold. Dad’s arm over James’ shoulders jerked and flopped fish-like and James had to hold on to it and grip firmer around Dad’s waist as he wriggled and made to pull away,

“St. . . stop being a. . . a . . .” the sentence slurred, “let. . . let me go.”

James kept trying to move forwards as they pin-balled against each other, “please, Dad, just. . . please.”

James’ heartbeat was too loud, drumming a frenetic, off-tempo hurtle that bled through his skin. He could see the house, knew it was barely a minute away, but it dwindled into the far distance in lurching steps. He could feel the sheer heat radiating off Dad, hotter than baked sand under bare feet. He kept trying, kept shuffling one foot in front of the other, dragging the unwilling weight of Dad along with him. Then the awful thrashing eased. The next step was lighter, easier. James looked across Dad and blinked in the glare of the sunshine off Titch’s halo-gold, rumpled hair. His brother had tucked himself under Dad’s other arm, lending his Atlas-ian strength to the endeavour. Titch glanced over at him, eyebrows knitted tight together,

“What ‘appened?”

James panted, “I, umm, I don’t know he just-”

“Nothing,” Dad somehow added extra letters in to the word, “there’s. . . no. . . nothing wrong.” He fought his sons again, flailing and battering.

James gritted his teeth as Dad’s quavering feet slammed down on his toes, “he just collapsed, sort of and. . . I don’t know, is it,” he chewed the words out, “it is heatstroke?”

“Moight be,” Titch bit his lip, “we ‘ave ta get ‘im insoide an’ cooler.”

Shuddering, opposed step by opposed step they managed it, wrestling Dad into lying down on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor and raiding the freezer for anything and everything they could press against his skin. James frayed, his edges loose and hands shaking. Titch’s face was pale despite his summer tan, but he spoke clear and low, telling James what to do. With a martyr’s patience he spoke to Dad the same way, answering all the delirious, petulant jabs with calm explanations. James’ body was wrung out, crumpled as if he were a discarded rag. All the elastic in his tendons was shot and none of him would move properly anymore. Dad was only fifty-nine. This shouldn’t happen, and yet, with his absent-presence James had let it.

Chapter Text

November 2023

He’d sort of wished he could dislike Derek, but even after only a handful of weeks James knew that if he did, it’d say more about him than it ever did about Derek. As if Derek’s being here at all didn’t say enough about James. He wasn’t blind, he knew Titch and Dad had taken on extra help because they needed someone to mitigate his lukewarm efforts. Sure he did things, whatever he was down on the rota to do, but he was more or less a punchcard operated automaton. The instruction card went in, the cogs inside him clicked over the holes and read them, his hands and feet moved until the instructions were complete. Then he stopped. Just hung limp and vacant until the next card was loaded. He couldn’t even reliably get himself out of bed on time. He wasn’t sleeping in, he was awake, but just lying there unable to work out how to move his limbs for endless minutes.

He shuffled into the office. Titch was sat at his desk with Tater at his feet and Derek leaning over his shoulder to look at the computer screen. Their heads were so close together, hovering scant centimetres apart, both of them tilted slightly towards the other. James looked away, turning to the corkboard with the rota on. His neck prickled hot and he shifted his weight from foot to foot a little. They were so near to one another, so unconscious of it, that dull guilt ticked behind his sternum for walking in on them. He stared unfocussed at Titch’s neat handwriting on the rota, fumbling to even load the punchcard he needed for the day as the letters in the words jumbled about. His stuttering cogs ticked their usual refrain; is this it, is this all I get, is it just this forever? Although he knew he couldn’t let himself cave into the want to just leave he at least wished he could just skip to being old so he didn’t have to drag himself through so much of this.

“You oright there?” Titch , “is there somethin’ wrong with the rota?”

James tried to make himself see the words, “what? Oh, no, just. . .”

“Yer, umm,” Titch spoke haltingly, gently, leaving room for his help to be rejected, “yer down ta make a start on prunin’ the apple trees.”

James nodded, he still had his back to the pair of them, still felt the hum of guilt that he was interrupting their easiness. He ran a hand through his hair then hooked it around the back of his neck and squeezed. He just wasn’t good at this. Not like they were. He closed his eyes for a moment, rattling his brain into something vaguely approximating working order. It coughed, stuttered, juddered and then finally started to run like an arthritic old motor engine. He turned around, Titch and Derek were still so close to each other, their hands resting on top of the desk almost touching but not quite. Both of them were looking at him, Titch’s eyebrows faintly furrowed and Derek’s a little raised as his eyes flicked between the brothers.

James nodded again, bordering on robotic, “cool, thanks, I’ll. . . I’ll go do that.”

It was better outside, less stiflingly like he was intruding into a space he wasn’t fit to be in. All the apple trees were bare now, their gnarly twigs poking the wet-cement sky. He went from tree to tree, checking the branches and boughs to see what needed trimming and where. The rough drag of his hands over the bark seeped into his bones, braille that his brain couldn’t read but comforted him anyway. A bevy of rooks heckled at him, jostling amongst the tree tops and watching him first from one eye and then the other. He waited for them to more or less all be sitting in the same tree before sliding his phone out of his pocket and taking a picture. He sent it to Bertie.

Allsort:

Running for re-election are you?

??

Allsort:

A group of rooks is a parliament

They’re really cool birds, they’re super clever and social and they mate for life which is sweet

Although slightly depressing that a bird is better at having a significant other than me :/

maybe you havent met the rite birdguy yet

hell turn up one day

give you shiny stuff

Allsort:

TBH would probably work on me XD

gess I no what to get you for your berthday then

He’d typed it and sent it before he’d really thought it through. He leaned heavily against the trunk of one of the apples, his heart hucking itself into his ribs with reckless abandon. He’d just written out what he’d thought; that if she liked shiny things then that’d make sense as a birthday present. But it sounded like he was. . . was what? Bird-proposing to her? Dull, crawling warmth crept into his face. His lungs were floaty and his hands fizzed a bit. Maybe he was actually a rook, because if he was completely honest with himself he might not have ever been together with Bertie but he’d been hers for as long as he could remember. He wanted to keep being hers until there wasn’t anything left of him to belong to her. He bit his lip. Not that there was much of him worth giving in the first place. His phone buzzed and he scrambled to read her message.

Allsort:

Oooh, birthday shiny thing

I’m going to be the belle of the bird-ball

tin foil is shiny

just saying

Allsort:

If my present isn’t a tin foil hat then I don’t want it

He snorted. Whatever else he got her he was absolutely going to make her a tin foil hat as well. She’d not said no though, to him giving her something shiny after he’d all but implied her future boyfriend would turn up and do just that. The breathless leap of his heartbeat juggled his organs around. She’d not said no.

December 2023

No one held a wassail around here anymore, there hadn’t been one for years, and despite the fact that as kids and teens they’d gone with Dad to the Catford’s one every year before the one they’d held here, Dad had become pretty disparaging of the tradition since. The closest they’d come to anything remotely like it these days was divvying out some of the cider they’d made to the farm workers and a few close family friends. It always happened before Christmas, and always early in the morning, as if Dad was trying to make it as deliberately distinct from a wassail as he possibly could. James helped Titch and Derek lug some crates of bottles out of the outbuilding they used for a make-shift cider house. They set them down in the farmyard, the concrete matching the colour of the winter sky beneath the liberal blotching of mud covering it. Dad was chatting with Johnny, a cigarette wedged in the corner of his mouth, hashing out what going rate they’d agree on for the cider this year. It was a weird, backwards haggling process with Johnny trying to raise the price and Dad trying to lower it. Johnny was the only person Dad even begrudgingly allowed to pay because the cider went down to the Hoss-stinger to be used for the mulled cider they sold this time of year.

Titch set down the last of the crates Johnny was taking, “oright Bertie?”

James yanked his head round to look over his shoulder. Bertie was coming across the farmyard, an empty bag in one hand and the other shoved deep into the pocket of her bomber jacket. She had an orchery yellow tartan scarf and a wooly hat on and she’d tucked her trousers into her wellies. She waved at them, the empty bag flapping in the air like a limp flag. Derek waved back, standing next to Titch, their arms almost touching. They were always close to each other, were rota’d to work together nearly exclusively, seemed to turn towards each other like sunflowers following the light. Bertie joined their lose collection around the cider crates,

“So, what are we in for this year?”

Titch grinned, “a treat I reckon, I ‘ad an assistant with a natural talent fer cider makin’ this toime around.” He elbowed Derek lightly, turning the sunshine of his smile up at the taller man.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Derek rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks a bit pink and the corners of his mouth turned up.

They gently argued back and forth a bit more, something about having a good teacher followed by something else about being a quick study. Bertie caught James’ eye, raising an eyebrow and tilting her head towards the pair of them. James raised both his eyebrows back and Bertie nodded knowingly. A hacking wheezing splutter interrupted everything, rattling loudly around the confines of the farmyard. Dad was coughing into one of his hands, the other thumping himself in chest. Titch glanced at James, eyebrows lowered and lips pulled tight. Johnny clapped Dad on the back as well,

“You oright there Arthur?”

Dad wafted him away, “all fine, just that time of year I suppose. Lads,” he looked over at his sons, “load up Johnny’s car will you.”

“We’ve got it,” Titch gestured at himself and Derek and they started hefting the crates again.

James sighed, short and quiet. Here he was again, a spare part for a completely different flatpack furniture set than the one that was actually here. Bertie poked him in the side,

“Come on, help me nick all the best bottles while they’re not looking,” she winked at him, jostling them both towards the open outbuilding door.

He snorted, “fine, fine, you weird little criminally minded goblin.”

She cackled and he pulled her into a quick side-on hug. She fit so horribly, wonderfully well against him, the top of her head level with his nose and her shoulders just at the perfect height to sling his arm around. So perfect it cut, turning his insides into lace. He did help her pick a half dozen bottles, but seeing as neither actually knew which were the “best” ones they fell into a stupid games of choosing based on vibes. Pulling out bottles and arbitrarily announcing what vibe it felt like it had. Bottles that felt good or kind or artistic or like they’d hold your hair back while you were eating soup made it into the bag. Bottles that felt sleazy or crusty or like they’d play music with no headphones on a train didn’t. Once Bertie had a bagful they slipped out of the outbuilding again and given it seemed like no one would notice he wasn’t there, James offered to walk Bertie back as far as the gate to the field next to the wood. They paused once they got there, looking across the damp, muddy stretch of land.

“Can I have a sanity check on something,” Bertie leaned her forearms on the top of the gate, “Titch and Derek, like, are they low-key together or something?”

James rested side-on against it, keeping his hands buried in his pockets and out of the cold, “I don’t think so.”

“But they’re clearly into each other right?” She frowned a little, “I’ve never seen Titch like that with anyone before.”

She wasn’t wrong, Titch around Derek was a different Titch to when he was around anyone else. With the vast majority of the world Titch was a good man, salt of the Earth, and as closed as collapsed mine shaft. Or every so often, he was the Titch who disappeared some evenings and never said where he was going or what he was going to do. The one who came back in the dead of night or early the next morning ragged at the edges and a little wild eyed. When Derek was there his brother was more of a spring thaw. Things that’d be buried under yards and yards of snow slowly crept out, bandy-legged and wobbly in the sunshine. With Derek, James sometimes managed to catch glimpses of how Titch used to be when they were kids. Which was really all the proof necessary, because for all James was a first-class act at mishandling love, he knew what being near the person you loved did to you. He knew the awful, ecstatic pull that lapped at rough edges and soaked away scorched shadows. He nodded,

“Me neither, but still I. . . I don’t think they’re together.”

“Well, it’s easy, I suppose, to get in your own head about it,” she shrugged, pink-nosed from the chill, “when. . . when you’ve got feelings for someone. All that sort of constant back and forth in your mind over what everything means, and if. . . and if they’re just being kind or if it’s more than that.” She started fiddling with the ends of her scarf, “and if you’re friends with them it just makes everything harder, makes the idea of fucking it all up even scarier.”

It went beyond scary, being in love with your best friend. He existed in a perpetual state of hopeful terror that she’d see it, see him. It felt impossible to hide, and he wanted nothing more than to be a completely open book with her. Still, the harrowing plummet of the idea that she’d read him and be appalled had him writing himself in code. Everything was there, stark on the page, just crafted out of strokes that obscured the meaning. For the best really, because he was barely a plot line, and certainly no protagonist, just a side character mentioned once and then left behind. Even if she did read him, he’d hardly be enough to merit her attention. But the fever dream that she would, would see how he felt and, with the grace of a saint, feel the same haunted him like a poltergeist. He’d tried to drown it so many, many times. But the awful, beautiful thing about hope was that it just wouldn’t stay dead.

He looked up, breathing his ghosts out into the sky, “Do you. . . would. . . if you were them would you just, I don’t know, say something? Get it out in the open just so you knew for sure?”

Bertie didn’t say anything, but he kept looking at the sky just above the tops of the trees in the wood. He couldn’t look at her, not now. Not when the screeching pressure in his joints would drown him if he met her eyes. He couldn’t even tell what kind of answer he was praying for, but either way he was on his emotional knees and begging. If she said she would then he’d know that the reason she’d never said anything was because she didn’t want him, and he could let himself fall into perfect oblivion. If she said she wouldn’t then the dreadful hope would swallow him whole. She was picking his poison, the exact flavour of his destruction. She breathed in, long and slow, and then sighed it all out again,

“I’d like to say I would but,” she paused, the silence loud in the cold air, “I don’t think I’m brave enough.”

He looked at her. Oh God. Her fringe poked out from under her hat, the strands drifting in the breeze, and her cheeks and nose were red-pink from the cold and silvery winter sun made the green in her eyes brighter. She held his gaze steadily but her teeth dug into her bottom lip just ever so slightly. He could see the slightly uneven draw of her breathing in the faint clouds that formed in the air every time she exhaled. He didn’t feel like he was breathing at all. Bertie continued, swallowing roughly before speaking,

“Would you?”

He flicked his eyes down to his feet, “no, I don’t think I would.”

As if he didn’t know that he wouldn’t. That he couldn’t. All his organs were stone cold and even greyer than the sky. She was the only hearth he wanted and he wanted so badly to throw himself down in front of her and melt. She was silent again and he risked glancing up. She had her face turned to the sky, her eyebrows pulled together the way they do before someone starts to cry. She blinked, shook her head and sighed,

“Well, guess we can’t really blame them then can we.” She bent down to pick but the bag of bottles next to her feet, “I should probably get these home.”

“Text me what you think of the cider when you’ve tried it because we both know Titch will ask.” He unlatched the gate, swinging it open for her.

She chuckled, a little hollow echo buried in it, “just like we both know it’ll be great and he needs to stop worrying.” She waved at him, “see you round Jimmy.”

He watched her walk across the field and into the wood, taking the short cross country way back to her family home. His bones were too big inside him, they pressed on his skin and it hurt like toothache. Did she? Did she feel like he did? He thunked his forehead onto the top rail of the gate. Did it even matter when she deserved more than he could ever hope to be. Could he make himself into what she deserved? He’d do it for her, he’d be better, be more, be worth something.

Chapter Text

August 2024

He didn’t know anything was wrong until he heard the ambulance siren caterwauling up the lane. Loud, strident, shattering. He dropped everything, letting the secateurs and the aubergine he was holding thud to the greenhouse floor, and ran out to the farmyard. Frogs crawled up his throat and bounced around manically inside his skull. The paramedics piled out of the ambulance, methodical haste sharpening everything they did. James’ phone went off like a detonation in his pocket, Titch’s name splashed across the screen. He answered,

“What-”

“It’s Dad, nearside field,” his brother’s voice was breathy, short, uneven like the sea.

“Okay, be there as quick as I can.” He hung up, beckoning the paramedics with frantic jerks, “this way.” Not again. Not again, not again, not again.

He ran, simply trusting that they’d follow him. Passed the greenhouses, shoving the gate into the field open and stumbling into it. He couldn’t see anything, just the near-skeletal ranks of the oilseed ready to be harvested. He bellowed Titch’s name. Hurling it out into the swaying mass. His brother’s head and shoulders appeared, half way up the field, both arms waving above his head. James and the paramedics clattered through the plants, flattening them heedlessly. The destruction behind them pocket change compared to what they were heading towards. It was motion sickness-quick after that. The paramedics did their thing as he and Titch stood uselessly aside. Titch went in the ambulance to the hospital, bleached paper white and shivering beside Dad. James followed in the Landy, his heart stopping at every traffic light.

He arrived to a hollowed out Titch, sitting in A&E, vacant to the world around him. One of the paramedics took James aside and broke the news. His knees went. The paramedic had to catch him and gently lower him into a seat. His eyes burned. His lungs fell still. He saw things but none of it meant anything. Gone. Dad was gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Everyone always, always, always leaves. In stop motion he turned to look at Titch. The outside of his brother was there, the inside wasn’t. Clunkily, shakily, he groped in his pocket and pulled out his phone. He did the only thing he could think to do. He called Derek first, then Bertie. Then he forced himself to stand up, shuffling forwards until he could slump down next to Titch. They blinked at each other, and for the first time in a decade he held his brother’s hand.

Lord knows how he drove them home but he did. It’d taken a while for them to leave the hospital after speaking with the ambulance team, A&E doctor, and the family support team. Because the death was sudden and unexpected there’d have to be a routine coroner’s report done and someone had kindly talked them through what all the next steps were. They’d been allowed to see Dad in the hospital mortuary, had stood side by side in the awful stillness holding hands again. Some sort of echoing pang vibrated through him as they drove up the lane. He pulled in to the farmyard and saw Bertie sitting on the wall between the yard and the farmhouse garden. The vibrations rang louder. Pulled him to her like a dowsing rod to water. She stood up and walked over whilst they were heaving themselves, leaden, out of the Land Rover. She didn’t say anything, just pulled them both into a tight hug, one arm around each. Neither he nor Titch minded as she steered them into the farmhouse, settling them in the living and then bringing them tea. She put the TV on, purely for the background noise, and the blissful lack of silence washed over James.

Someone knocked on the door what might have been seconds or hours or years later, James couldn’t tell. Bertie glanced out the window, then over her shoulder at Titch,

“It’s Derek, do you want to go let him in or should I?”

“I’ll. . . I’ll go,” Titch pulled himself off the sofa like unsticking velcro and drifted with absent purpose out the room.

James heard the front door open and sagged even further into the sofa cushions. Titch was in the safest set of hands now. He had Derek to prop him up, hold him together. Whatever they were to each other, it was better that they were in the same place. One of the hands James trusted beyond even blind faith to keep him from cracking brushed some hair off his forehead. Bertie cupped his jaw, running her thumb over his cheek. He closed his eyes, the warmth of her palm almost too hot, too alive, compared to the frost bitten state of his insides.

“Lie down,” she spoke softly, “it’ll do you good to rest.”

He didn’t want the feel of her hand to go, but he trusted in her tide so he shuffled himself until he was lying on the sofa, back against the cushions of the backrest. Bertie waited until he was settled and then lay down with him, facing him so she could tuck an arm around his waist. The top of her head came up to around his nose. Their legs had to twine together to both fit. He wrapped an arm around her. Her hand smoothed up and down his back. He swallowed, thick and lumpy and painful. His eyes burned again and the world turned wavery until he closed his eyes and tucked his head down so the orange, cinnamon, ginger of her drowned him. His ribcage rattled. Once. Twice. Then he broke.

“Shhhh,” she kept rubbing his back as he sobbed silently, “it’s okay, it’s alright, cry as much as you need.”

He pulled her closer, let himself sink and clung to her as his only anchor. She held him, spoke gentle nonsense, brushed tears off his face. The only things that made sense were the places where they touched. All the rest of the world was sideways, back to front, and mirrored. Any map that he might have had had faded so much the lines were all gone and he only had the creases left to navigate by. Eventually all the water in him ran out, and he was left snotty nosed and hiccoughing in breaths. Bertie wiped the dregs of the tear tracks from his cheeks, he leaned into the brush of her fingertips,

“Do. . . can. . . are,” he wet his lips, “are you working tonight? Can you stay?”

She shook her her, “I called Johnny, said there was a family emergency and I couldn’t come in.”

“But, we’re not family,” he blinked, trying to follow the logic.

“You’re as important as family,” she squeezed him tighter, “we need to get you something to drink otherwise you’re going to have the mother of all headaches soon.”

She prised them both off the sofa and he trailed after her into the kitchen. Derek was there, cutting onions, and Titch was sat at the table with Tater in his lap. The kettle was already on to boil and Bertie assumed tea making responsibilities. She and Derek smiled at each other, falling into an easy back and forth as they moved around the kitchen. James flopped into a chair next to Titch, reaching out to pet Tater. Parsnip got up from the bed by the Aga and came to twine around his ankles. Titch caught his eye and James had terrible feeling he looked just as watered down and burnt out as his brother,

“Oright pal?”

James opened his mouth, nothing happened, he swallowed and tried again, “I. . . I have no idea.”

Titch nodded, smiling even as his lips quivered and eyebrows collapsed in, “me neither.”

Both Bertie and Derek stayed with them all evening. Bertie ended up sleeping over in the spare room and Derek only left to go back to the cottage once he’d made sure everyone else was either already in or firmly on the way to bed. James lay awake as the dark knitted time into something incomprehensible. From his atoms outwards all he wanted to do was go across the hall, tap on the spare room door and curl up besides Bertie. To be as close to her again as he had been on the sofa. But the cavernous, skew-wiff, blankness had turned his limbs to glaciers, and all he could do was lie there. He wasn’t enough yet, not yet.

They got through the funeral, somehow, and now all that was left was desperately trying to understand that the hell Dad’s will was about. The solicitor had talked him and Titch through it but they’d both left the office with less of an idea about what was going on the before they’d gone in. The farm was to be split into equal halves, one for each brother, and they had to work their halves separately. James stared wide-eyed and blank down the length of one of the greenhouses, one of his greenhouses now. He knew this, he knew what to do because he’d been doing it for years, but everything stretched out around him like an elastic, tumbling, breathless cacophony. Too much, too big, too alone, too loudly underscored by the hissing insistence that he should be able to do this, that he should know where to start, that he shouldn’t need to go and check things with someone. He could taste the air as it ran too quickly between his lips, in and out and in and out and in and out. Over and over and over again utterly unable to catch his own breath and cram some oxygen into his lungs. None of his thoughts would stay still, they just juddered around over the terrifying expanse of his mind. Why had Dad done this? Why had he given half of everything to the useless son? What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t do this. He should be able to but he couldn’t. Not like Titch could.

His tongue burned bitter, metallic and acid in his mouth. Titch. The literal golden boy, who’d been slowly turning dull from the edges inwards ever since July when James had found him small and pale and crying on his bedroom floor at the crack of dawn. Titch who was still trying despite everything, was still making it work somehow, his greenhouses a riot of growth and bounty. James pressed his fingernails into his palms, swallowing roughly, the sticky bitterness coating his mouth wouldn’t leave though. He bellowed, shapeless noise bursting between his teeth like a detonation, seized a double fitful of plants from the growing channel next to him and hurled them across the greenhouse. They clattered wetly over the floor. James’ knees gave out and he slumped into a crouch, burying his hands in his hair and pulling and pulling and pulling.

“Why can’t I fucking do this?” Viper-sharp and whisper quiet.

He wasn’t enough. Not for Bertie, not for Dad and the farm, not to measure up to his brother. He wasn’t enough, and he either needed to figure out how to be or finally take the plunge and just leave.

September 2024

He drove into the village in the BMW, pulling into the Hoss-stinger carpark and not exactly bothering to make sure he’d stayed within the lines for the space. Bertie’s studio door was propped open and he could see her working the lithography press through it. She’d piled her hair into a gloriously dishevelled bun, bits and pieces falling out and brushing her shoulders or framing her face. Her oversized shirt’s sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and she’d managed to find a pair of jeans embroidered with little flowers. She moved precisely, turning the handle on the press to transfer the ink from the stone to the paper. God he loved to watch her work. Loved to see her turn pigments and stone and paper into something alive.

He swallowed, his pulse loud in his throat and fingertips, and got out of the car. He straightened his Raybans, smoothed down the front of his Ralph Lauren shirt and walked over. She looked up, paused mid press, and raised an eyebrow at him. She didn’t smile, didn’t take her hands off the press handle, didn’t say anything. He stopped short, stranded on the tarmac of the carpark. She gave him a full once over, head to toe and back again. He looked good, he knew he did because he’d spent an awfully long time this morning working out what to wear. She was meant to be impressed. Meant to see how far he’d come, how much better he was. She sighed, finally moving out of the studio to meet him outside,

“What’re you so dressed up for?”

He ran a hand through his hair, “just thought that the man who made a massive deal with the biggest vegetable buyer in New York should look the part y’know.”

“Oh, so that’s what you were going for. . .”

The thrumming in his throat got louder, his palms started sweating. Bertie had squashed her lips all to one side, the sort of face you made when you’d stepped in something you didn’t like the look of. James’ stomach muscles clenched, he mangled out a laugh,

“Yeah, well. . . umm. . .” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the car, “have you seen the new car, it’s a BMW.”

“Everyones seen the BMW James, you won’t bloody shut up about it.” She rolled her eyes, “or the Rolex.”

He held his hands out in supplication, “it’s a good watch. . .”

“Your Grandad’s watch is nicer.” She shook her head, “what do you even think you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?” He blinked at her, eyebrows furrowing behind his sunglasses.

“I mean this,” she gestured at him, “dressing like a trust-fund prick, driving that stupid car, doing deals with people in New York,” she frowned, “dicking your own brother over.”

This wasn’t how it was meant to be going. Tiny, fluttering birds clogged his veins and organs. Sweat ran down his back and he was squinting from the sunshine even with the Raybans on. What did she mean? He was trying, he was making money and improving the farm. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. He was finally getting it right. He was worth something now. Worth her. So why was she looking at him as if he’d just set fire to her art. He clenched his teeth,

“I’m doing what Dad always wanted, I’m being involved with the farm.”

“No, being a fucking bellend is what you’re doing,” Bertie wrinkled her nose at him, eyes glassy, hard and flat, “just piss off James, I don’t want to talk to you.”

James. She’d called him James. When had she last called him by his name? Not since they were teenagers so, God, it must have been ten years or something stupid like that. It hit him. Hit harder and faster than a bolder dropped from a height. It splintered through his ribs and jarred his spine. His breaths stumbled over each other, scattering pell-mell on the floor like spilt marbles. He half reached out to her, hand hanging lost in the air,

“Allsort, please-”

“Nope,” she shoved her hands in her pockets, “you can come back when you’ve stopped being a thundering wank-badger.”

But he was better now. Wasn’t he? Successful and making something of himself, so shouldn’t she like this him better? But this him was James and old him was Jimmy and he would burn everything to the bare earth to be her Jimmy again. His palms itched and the air was concrete around him. He wet his lips, opened his mouth but all his words had gushed out of him like steam from a kettle, leaving him empty. Cold pangs crocheted his intestines together in fractal patterns. How did he undo this? How did you convince the sun to come back out when you’re the one who’d made it go away in the first place? She looked him up and down again, nose wrinkling, then sighed out an entire ocean tide. Shaking her head she turned around, heading back in to her studio and closing the door behind her. She didn’t slam it, just closed it normally, and the click of the catch hit him like a brick to the stomach.

It took a while to unpick things, to row back from as far up shit creek as he’d gotten himself. They fixed it eventually, he and Titch and Derek, with Margaery’s help. That was the easy part though, the tricky bit was living with knowing what he’d done. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, lip caught between his teeth and biting hard enough to hurt. He stared out over the field and towards Margaery’s wood, sitting in the grass with his back resting against the gate. He’d had to get out of the farmhouse for a while. Titch was doing a champion job of acting as if everything hadn’t gone completely cock-eyed between them, but being around his brother set cloying, clawing, bone-deep guilt rattling inside James. His stomach clanged heavily like a sock full of pennies every time he saw Titch and Derek together. Their joy was effervescent, flooding and caustic against his skin in a way that fed the guilt a handsome feast. They’d be better off without him. It itched inside him. So he’d come to the place that eased the itch the most, to sit with the person who eased it the most. Bertie was beside him, twining grass and wildflowers into a wreath,

“Why don’t you talk to him about it? He’s your brother, he’ll understand.”

He leant his head against the bars of the gate, fingers twisting into the grass, “I. . . I just wanted to be someone who was better. . .”

“Jimmy,” her fingers brushed against his chin, softly turning him to face her, “there is nothing better than what you already are.”

He couldn’t have not met her eyes even if he’d wanted to. As it was, he was more than happy to map out all the tiny bits of green and gold in the brown. The way the colours starred out from her irises like tiny nebulae pulled matching clouds into his diaphragm. His breaths were heady and light and if he didn’t know better he’d swear he was blind drunk. The breeze moved the wayward strands of her hair and he let himself brush them softly out of her face and tuck them behind her ear. She’d stopped carefully gripping his chin and her hand just lay along his jawline as her thumb ran back and forth over his cheek. The nearly silent sound of it brushing against his beard whispering under the birdsong.

“But-”

She cut him off, “no, no buts. You’ve always, always been more than enough and,” she exhaled shakily, “I’m so sorry you ever felt like you weren’t.”

“I could’ve. . . I should’ve. . . I wish I’d talked to you about it.” His eyebrows pulled together, “I just couldn’t work out how.”

Bertie sighed, “in the words of Larkin, ‘they fuck you up your Mum and Dad, they don’t mean to but they do’, honestly, it’s a miracle that you and Titch have turned out as functional as you have.”

“Doesn’t feel like we’re very functional,” he huffed, nose wrinkling to match his crumpled eyebrows.

She lowered her hand, instead wrapping an arm around him and pulling him against her side. He slumped, his head falling to rest on her shoulder. Breathing was never easier than when the air tasted like oranges, cinnamon and ginger. She leant her cheek against the top of his head,

“Now listen here you beautiful loon, after everything you’ve been through; your Mum, breaking your leg, stuff with your Dad, Chloé, grieving, the stupid will, even with all of that you kept going. Even though so many things hurt, you’re still here anyway.”

“Sometimes I. . . I didn’t want to be,” he whispered it into her shoulder.

She bundled him into a python-tight hug, welding them together and holding on as if he might evaporate. He tangled his fingers into her jumper, pressed his face into her shoulder, let her cling to him just as tight as he was to her. His spine was raw from top to bottom, saying those words out loud nigh on flaying him from inside out. The birds and insects and breeze painted noises around them. The dusty, dry smell of the grass sat underneath Bertie’s spice and citrus like a bass line. The sun was bath water warm. He had stayed, despite the itch and the ache, and now he held his anchor as the press of her arms around him seeped beneath his skin. She murmured next to his ear,

“Thank you, thank you for staying.”

“You make it seem possible.”

Chapter Text

October 2024

The dust had settled, more or less, after what’d happened in September but it was still spread liberally all over the floor, things still needing to be cleared away properly. He and Titch had gone to the lawyer in Taunton and begun working on unpicking the will so that the farm would go back to being one single thing. James was essentially transferring his half to Titch, he still retained a stake in things at Titch’s insistence, but the primary ownership would be his brother’s. It was nothing short of a liberation, the lifting of a responsibility that’d been grinding against his shoulders for years. He was still working on the farm, trying his best to be a bit more present but productively rather than whatever had gotten in to him before. But it wasn’t the only thing in his life anymore, he’d joined a local football team again, he couldn’t play a full ninety minute match yet but nonetheless his leg was in the best state it’d been for years.

The farmhouse breathed properly again as well, the oppressive fug that’d been building in it lifting slowly. Partly it was the fact that he and Titch had started the process of going through all of Dad’s things, figuring out what exactly he’d been holding on to for all this time. It was slow going, done with shaking hands and Derek on standby to ply them with cups of tea and the occasional tissue. The bits of pieces from their childhood chucked up stories and recollections about things they’d both forgotten. Mostly they were good, not always, but even with stumbling words it chased the chill out of his bones to talk about the bad stuff. Titch looked younger, sloughing off bitten raw lips and creased brows in favour of the gilt-brightness and cobalty-blue James remembered from when he was a teenager. It’d taken a good few weeks for Titch to not hastily slip out of Derek’s hold or pull his head off Derek’s shoulder when James came across them cuddling, but they even kissed despite him being in the room sometimes now.

He let himself into the little orchard, the grass starting to get damp again with the evening pulling in. He could already see Titch over by the hives, checking the colony sizes and whether any of them needed supplemental food. James took a breath, swallowing and trying to get a handle on the octopus tentacles of worry flailing in his stomach. It’d taken him this long to puzzle together something even resembling his feelings and fit words to them. Very little of it was completely ironed out, the crinkles of mountainous proportions in some places, but when he’d spoken to Bertie about it she’d said that maybe the conversation had to happen first before anything got any smoother. He ran a hand over his beard, took another breath and walked over to his brother. The setting sun glanced low off the trees, drawing etch-a-sketch shadows over the grass. Titch looked over his shoulder as he clocked the sound of James’ footsteps,

“Oright pal?”

James fiddled with the cuffs of his jumper, “I, umm, I. . . can we have a chat?”

“O’ course,” Titch dusted his hands off and then jerked his head towards the fence.

James nodded, the two of them leaning with their backs against the wood and their elbows on the top rail. He pressed his lips together, jaw tight and throat thick. Titch waited, gently silent and simply watching the shadows move as the wind tangled the apple branches about. James closed his eyes, he’d gone over this so many times in his head, aligning the words to at least give him a start. The octopus tentacles were getting the better of him though, cloying into his vocal cords and gumming them together. His shoulders rose up, hunching around his ears and his spine curled down. Sweat prickled on the back of his neck and made him shiver as the wind wicked it away and stole his body heat. Titch’s shoulder pressed against his. James breathed out slowly, and the wind seemed to drop even though he could still hear it softly rattling the apple trees. He opened his eyes,

“I’m. . . I’m sorry. . .not just for, y’know, the recent stuff but,” he wet his lips, “for everything before that too, I’ve been a shit brother for years and made things so much more difficult for you and. . .” his throat was so clunky and raspy-dry, “you always looked out for me, when we were younger and now, and I’ve never even gotten close to paying you back for it.”

Titch shook his head, “you don’t ‘ave ta, it ent. . . it’s not. . .” he huffed out a lungful of air, “I wish I’d done a better job o’ lookin’ out fer you.”

“That’s not your fault, things. . .” James’ words cantered out of him, running on faster and faster along with his breathing, “things just got, I don’t know, weird after. . . after my leg and I. . . I didn’t know what I was supposed to do and you,” his voice crackled, “you weren’t here because you were at Harper and that was much more important and I didn’t want to bother you.” He sniffed, “and Bertie made things okay but then she went too and” the air was completely still around them but the apple boughs were swaying more and more drunkenly, “I just tried to keep going but sometimes it felt like there wasn’t any point because. . . because I just fuck everything up and maybe everyone would have been better off without me and I. . . I don’t I know I just. . . I wanted to leave, not like go somewhere else I mean I wanted to leave leave and just. . . just not be anymore. . .” he spat the words out, splattering them wet and muddy into the world.

Titch wrenched him into an avalanche of a hug, “I love you, I always ‘ave, an’ I’m so, so proud o’ you.”

“W-,” James dropped his head onto his brother’s shoulder, it shook a little, “why? What for?”

Titch’s fingers clasped at James’ jumper “fer stayin’, fer keepin’ going fer so long even. . . even though it were ‘ard an’ . . . an’ you didn’t want ta.”

“I love you too, I. . . I missed you, and I’m so sorry, I’m sorry I wanted to go.” It was so quiet, every syllable frightened to make sound.

“I know, I,” Titch sniffed and swallowed, “I missed you too pal, I’m sorry, I should never ‘ave left you ta get through that by yerself.”

“No, no you were there, you were always there when I really needed you.” James’ ribs juddered, his lungs working at breakneck pace but no air seeming to enter his body, “I. . I miss Dad.”

Titch keened softly, all rough edges and broken gasps amid the sound, a tumbling rush of wind whipped their hair and clothes around, “so fuckin’ much, it. . . I . . . wh-what do we do now, now ‘e’s not. . . ‘e’s not ‘ere?”

“D’you. . . d’you remember when he used to make us hot chocolate when we were little?” James leaned back a little, scrubbing a hand across his eyes.

“An’ we’d go an’ sit in the orchard an’ look at the stars.”

“Can we. . . can we do that?”

Titch nodded, his face tacky with partially dried tears and smeared with blotchy patches. The sun was more below the horizon than it was above it by now, the sky blending from pinky red through a bruise-like whirl of colours merging into blackish-blue. James shivered a little, muscles quivering as all tone and tension left them in an instant, like a lightbulb blowing. It wasn’t unpleasant, somewhere similar to climbing into a hot bath, all the knots inside his organs and blood vessels beginning to undo. He wasn’t there yet, was still wading through boggy, sliding mud, but the firmer ground was at least in sight and there were people who could throw a life line out to him now, if he slipped under again.

January 2025

“Hey mate, how’re things?” Jordan’s voice sounded more or less the same as it had years ago, a little deeper perhaps.

“Not bad, just, y’know keeping on.” James adjusted his phone against his ear, perching on the bonnet of the Landy.

It was parked up in the big barn, he was trying to track down the source of an odd rattling sound somewhere in it’s guts. The barn doors were open, and he watched snow falling wetly onto the slushy concrete of the farmyard. His breath wafted as clouds in the air. Jordan had gotten back in touch a couple of days ago. He’d done well for himself after the academy, had been signed by Rovers and played for them for a couple of years before transferring to Plymouth Argyle and then Sheffield Wednesday. They’d drifted in the years after James’ accident, the sad slide caused by the distance between Bristol and the village. But there’d been a little fizz of fond nostalgia when James had gotten Jordan’s initial message.

Jordan chuckled, “how is the farming life?”

“Better when the bloody Land Rover works,” James groaned, no real force behind the words, “you still up north?”

“For the moment, although looking to move back closer to home.”

James nodded, then remembered that didn’t work over the phone, “nice, it’ll be good to see you again. Any particular reason for wanting to move?”

“Yeah actually,” Jordan’s voice lilted over a smile, “my girlfriend is pregnant, but her family is in Brazil, so we want to be a bit nearer my parents so they can, y’know, do the grandparent thing.”

“Congrats, that’s fantastic,” God they were old enough to be having kids on purpose now.

“Well, thing is,” Jordan paused, the line rustling as he moved a little, “I was chatting to some people to see if there was going to be anything coming up down south and, umm, something cropped up that made me think of you.”

James’ stomach fell in the opposite direction to the snow out in the farmyard, “yeah?”

“Uh-huh, so Rovers are recruiting a new coach and, I mean I thought about it but we both know coaching wasn’t ever really my thing, but you were always really solid at it and yeah. . .”

For all Jordan could play, he’d never really had the patience for coaching. His whole body ran purely on instinct and perfectly honed muscle memory when he was on the pitch, and he’d never really been able to articulate to someone else the feeling or technique he was trying to explain. James’d always joked that it was because Jordan’s head was entirely empty during a game and so there wasn’t anything to explain anyway. James had found it easier to talk people through what they needed to do, for him playing had come with this hyperawareness that seemed to catalogue his team mates’ and oppositions’ actions, building plans around them even as he was hoofing it up the pitch. It translated better into coaching than Jordan’s gut feeling kind of play style. Neither of them had ever been able to work out whether it was pure luck or not that their almost opposing ways of doing things meant they’d worked so well together as players.

“I. . . I don’t know, I’ve been out of it for years Jordan. . .”

“Do it.” Emphatic, just two words and weighted with surety, “Just go for it, trust me, they’ll want you.”

“You can’t know-” James’ stomach was joined by his lungs and heart in it’s careening hurtle into the sky.

“I can because when I was talking to them I might have mentioned you and yeah, seriously, do it.”

He took a long breath, flexing his free hand to try and get some warmth back into his fingers, “okay, I. . . I will.”

“Perfect,” The smiling lilt was back in Jordan’s voice.

They moved on after that, chatting about life in general for a while before hanging up with an agreement to meet up soon. Afterwards Jordan must have said something to someone because a couple of days later James got a call from the Rovers’ head coach.

March 2025

im back

just got here

Allsort:

Meet you at the gate?

I can be there in ten minutes

yes

Allsort:

Perfect :)

I’ve missed you

missed you to

He got there first and climbed up the gate to sit on the top of it. Maybe it would have been polite to have spent a bit more time with Titch and Derek before heading out to meet Bertie but they’d both said they had some work to finish up with. He chose not to ruminate too much on Derek only saying that after he’d noticed James checking his phone reflexively every couple of minutes. Spring was inching in, treating them to a surprisingly warm day, so he closed his eyes and soaked up the feeling of being able to be outside in a t-shirt again. He kept his eyes shut until he heard her coming, the low swish of the grass from each footstep. She had a pinafore type dress that was patterned with pastel coloured moths and greenery on over a dusty, pale purple t-shirt. He loved the way she dressed. Loved that he could pick her out of a crowd from a mile away like she was the world’s worst Where’s Wally. Her kaleidoscopic wardrobe putting her joy quite literally on her sleeve. She clambered up beside him, knocking her shoulder into his,

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

He snorted, “that makes me sound like I’m terrible to look at.”

He was lighter than he’d ever been and yet never more firmly grounded now Bertie was next to him. She was both updraft and anchor to him and it’s all he wanted. Being away from her came with this constant sense that he was disintegrating, tiny bits of him peeling off and drifting away to whether she was. Being whole meant being with her, or at the very least knowing that being without her was only ever temporary.

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything but. . .” she smirked at him, before giving in to giggles, “nah, you’re very nice to look at, pleasingly red.”

His heart jumped skyward like a kite, “pleasingly red, what the fuck does that mean?”

“Just, y’know, being ginger suits you,” she rested her head on his shoulder, “anyway, how’s life in Bristol?”

“It’s good, could be better though.” He teetered on the edge of something, words lodged hot and clunky in his windpipe.

“Oh yeah, how come?”

“I don’t like being that far away from you.” It was the God honest truth, and he couldn’t keep in down any longer, “it feels weird, I miss you.”

She looked up at him, head tilted slightly and her eyes moving around his face looking for something, “it’s not. . . it’s not that far y’know, we can visit each other.”

“That’s not. . . I mean, I. . .” he met her gaze, the perfectly familiar autumnal jigsaw of colours, his pulse battered against his skin, “Allsort please, I. . . I don’t know how to say it.”

“It’s okay, you. . . you don’t have to, I. . . I understand.”

“I do, I mean, I want to. . . I’ve wanted to for years.”

He huffed, exploding all the air out of his lungs, all the words ramming against his tongue and teeth and yet still not able to make it out. He ran a hand through his hair then went to drop it back down to the top of the gate. Bertie reached out though, across him, to take hold of his left wrist and stop him lowering his arm. Instead she gently tugged it out straight, then skated her fingers up his arm, pushing his t-shirt sleeve up a bit. A shaky shiver ran up the full length of his spine, fluttering his eyes shut when it rippled across his skull. She traced the lines of his tattoo with her fingertips, whisper soft, as if his skin was made of gold leaf and prayers. Bertie ran her teeth over her bottom lip,

“I’ve always loved that you did this, I think it’s the most incredible thing anyone has ever done for me.” Her cheeks blossomed sunset pink, “I. . . I didn’t tell you at the time, I should’ve but I didn’t, I drew it for a project all about mark making and how much you can convey with the most fundamental elements of art. They told us we could use anything for our subject matter as long as it was something that we loved.”

The brush of her skin on his was painting rivers in his stomach, “as soon as I saw the photo you sent I knew I. . .” he swallowed, “that I wanted it as a tattoo, so I could always have it. . . on my left arm so it was on the same side as my heart. . .”

“Oh Jimmy,” she lowered her hand so it rested on his thigh, “God we’ve been idiots haven’t we? Did we really know all the way back then?”

James dropped his arm, putting his hand over her, then huffed out a laugh, “seems to be a bit of a family trait; meeting the perfect person for you but not realising you have for literal years. Although, Titch has a better excuse, he and Derek were on different landmasses for some of it.”

“Seems to have worked out pretty well for both of you in the end,” she twined their fingers together.

“It’s worked out way more than just pretty bloody well,” the way her hand sat so comfortably in his was turning his skeleton to fireworks, “we’re both punching well above our weight with you and Derek.”

Bertie chuckled, rolling her eyes, “you disgusting flirt you, please carry on.”

He bit his lip, not really stopping his spreading smile at all, “well, who could resist a woman who owns a pair of stupid licorice allsort trousers.”

“This seems less like flirting and more like calling me out for how I dress.”

“Allsort, if you start dressing any other way I will disown you.”

“So you’re saying I should actually be buying even more stupid pairs of trousers.” She wiggled her eyebrows art him.

“Yes,” he snorted, bumping his elbow into hers, “a different moronic pair for every day of the week.”

She dropped her head back, laughing to the sky and lifting it like larksong, “Oh heaven help me, I really do love you.”

“I love you too,” he cupped her face with one hand, “I’m so sorry it’s taken so long to say it.”

He leaned in and so did she. Then he was kissing her and she was kissing him back. There wasn’t any air anymore. Everything was just star dust and bright light and bird song and her. Sure, it was awkward, they were sitting side by side, twisting oddly at the waist to get the right angle, and being sat on the top of a gate came with the not unlikely chance of falling off. Still, still, her lips moved against his and her hand rested on his chest, the fingers curling into the fabric of his t-shirt. All he could smell was the ginger, orange, cinnamon smell that screamed Bertie with a magnificent violence only outdone by the clamour of his heart. They had to stop, catch their breaths, but they stayed close together, forehead to forehead. She slid her hand down from his chest, slipping an arm around his waist and somehow managing to pull him even closer. He swallowed, eyes closing and teeth digging into his bottom lip. They’d been this close before. He’d held her before. But not with everything so clearly laid out for her to see. She kissed the tip of his nose,

“It’s okay Jimmy, you’re worth the wait.”