Chapter Text
“Are ye fuckin' serious?” Simon says when Mark breaks the news, and his heart drops to his stomach.
It’s weird. He'd sought Simon's validation constantly as a lad, always vying for his attention and valuing his opinion on music, films, and even who he palled around with. All throughout primary school…what Simon Williamson said went, and Mark would always follow blindly into some scheme or another.
Going into secondary school had changed things between them - or maybe it was them that'd changed, growing up and into themselves as they navigated the shift in social circles that came with it. At the start of the year, both boys had played football with the other lads at lunch but Simon had quickly grown bored. Coaxed Mark into skipping five-a-side to smoke behind the bikesheds, a small task at first but then requiring more and more effort as he'd become friends with Franco and Matty, and the power Simon had over him waned.
There had been twinges of guilt at first, when Mark had started saying no and would catch glimpses of his best mate sloping off alone from the football pitch, but he'd always been good at compartmentalising feelings until they became cold and dead. Eventually Simon stopped asking, and Mark was privately relieved when his obsession with girls began to occupy lunchtimes instead.
It was easier to spot him against a wall - talking lowly to a girl in an older year group or, more often than not, doing more than just talking with that smart mouth - than heading past the field alone, because Mark knew he only fit into one of those scenarios and it softened any self-resentment their distance had caused. He never mentioned remarks his new mates made about Simon when they hung out after school or on weekends because his silence was something that did weigh on him, guilt playing drums on his ribcage when Franco called Simon "that Tully fag".
It was the drugs that had brought them closer together again, their discovery of the joys of gange and the subsequent excitement as they rushed to try everything…well, anything else they could get their hands on. But their dynamic wasn't the same, Mark had his own style by then, self confidence and independent opinions, and there was maybe some resentment on Simon's part for making other friends. Even though he himself would choose any girl over Mark, blowing him off time and time again. It was just different when it was for another lad.
And then heroin. That first shared shot had cemented their bond, for better or for worse. Mark had felt at the time that he and Simon were trapped in some self-destructive whirlpool, hurtling towards the point of no return, and for a long time skag had seemed like that point.
They'd always been borderline cynics, life had hardened that wide-eyed, passionate dreamer boy that Mark had sat beside in P3 into a bitter crook - and Simon would have said the same about him - but heroin had made them selfish and crueler than ever before. Their mutual antagonism, once a performance for others, had at some point become a real rift, resentment on both ends, and Simon's opinion was null and unvalued again.
Fear of the toxic co-dependent riptide that had dragged them down to heroin in the first place played on Mark's mind when he left his best friend asleep on the floor of a shitty hotel room in London. He was prepared to never see that blonde head again, to force the image of Simon's more-hurt-than-angry expression from his mind and move on, with a large part of him hoping the other man would hold some sort of grudging admiration for the ballsy act.
But when Simon turns to him and says “Are ye fuckin’ serious?” and his stomach just drops, it hits Mark that at some point between walking into the Port Sunshine that evening and establishing their current flat-sharing situation, he's started to care what Simon thinks again. Maybe it's because he's all Mark has left, maybe it's because the man he sits beside on the couch is not the exact same one he left on that hotel room floor, he doesn't know. All he knows is that he does care now, and he's not sure when it started but it did.
“Aye,” he manages, gut churning at Simon's expression of hurt and irritation. “Ah'm sorry, ah didnae realise when ah booked–”
“Rentboy,” Simon says. He looks up and the fucker is smiling. “Ah'm pulling yer leg. Ah dinnae gie a shite aboot…ye ken ah'm no’ shy aboot getting ma kit oaf. Ah awready huv a pair, but we'll huv tae make sure Ben does.”
He already has a pair. Of course he does, the fucking exhibitionist.
A sudden, hysterical burst of laughter shakes itself from Mark’s chest and then Simon's laughing too, arm around him as their shoulders shake. That feeling stirs again and he forces it down - waiting for the impending snide remark and shove away - a dig at his size that will be visible in speedos, or at his sexuality for booking a holiday where they have to fucking wear them…he waits, but it doesn't come.
Later, Mark lies awake well past midnight thinking about that physical contact, his smile…his laugh…but he doesn't let his hand past his waistband. If Simon's not going to draw that line in the sand for him, he's have to do it himself. He can do restraint, he can. He pops his headphones on sticks on Hunky Dory and forces himself to think of French women and tits in bikinis until it goes down enough so he can finally sleep.
Amanda wakes up from a late afternoon nap to five missed calls from her parents, and she doesn't need to check the calendar to know what it's about. It's a Wednesday and Ben had come home only the previous weekend, so he must've used the generous half-hour his expensive boarding school allowed him to use the phone for to call his maternal grandparents. He’ll have told them about the upcoming…trip with his father, then. She pinches her temple, sliding her legs off the chaise longue and padding into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea.
Her parents. God, she'd known they'd have to be told eventually - she'd honestly intended to do it herself in person, but at every opportunity she'd put it off and put it off and put it off, prolonging the anxious anticipation of parents’ inevitable poor reaction.
They'd call her crazy, and maybe she was, for letting their only grandson leave the country with her ex-husband and his…friend. A year ago– hell, six months ago, she would've said no without a second thought. She would have hit that red button with great satisfaction without giving the smooth-talking prick the chance to change her mind.
Yet when she got that email, outlining the request in its specifics…the dates, the accommodation, travel plans, insurance…and answers to questions Simon had easily predicted her asking, she had hesitated and she wasn't sure why.
Amanda puts the kettle on and fumbles in the kitchen drawers for a packet of cigarettes that Charlotte had thrown out months ago. “You can't say you've quit if you keep a pack for ‘emergencies’, love. Your mind hasn't quit along with your body, and you're just waiting for an excuse to start again.” Amanda slams the drawer shut. She's right, of course, but that doesn't help her frustration right now.
She clicks the kettle on again absent-mindedly, forgetting that it's already boiled. It's embarrassing, she reflects, to still be scared of your parents in your thirties. Perhaps she should see the doctor about going on some sort of anxiety pill. They'd made her gain weight before but it wasn't like she had anyone who'd notice or complain now, besides her mother.
Simon David Williamson. She didn't know what to make of him, never had. Amanda had long since accepted that the shy, witty young man she’d met in NA and fallen in love was just another facade worn by ‘Sick Boy’, and everything she thought she knew about him was a lie or some sort of twisted half-truth. She should have known, genuinely nice men were never that good in bed.
After their marriage had dissolved, after she had ended their marriage, Amanda had spent a lot of time trying to unravel his tangle of lies and align the image of the man she had married in her head with the scheming, sleazy bastard he had turned out to be. It had stung, yes, and her parents’ apathetic ‘I told you so’ esque comments had resulted in them joining Simon in his exclusion from her son's life.
She pours the hot water into the kettle, still thinking back. She'd forgiven them swiftly enough, admittedly primarily for financial reasons, but she had never intended on speaking to that Scottish prick again if she could help it.
All his excited talk of fatherhood, his tears at her nervous announcement of a positive test and at Ben's arrival in the maternity ward, were all put down to his talent for playing the role to manipulate her in the months after when she waited and waited for calls and letters that didn't come. He didn't even try to fight for visits, nevermind custody, just fucked off back to whatever Scottish slum he came from and didn't enquire after his son once.
The first time she had ever seen him, he had stood and said “my name is Simon David Williamson and I am an addict,” and they might have been the only wholly honest words that had ever left his lips in her company. Simon was an addict, a council flat junkie, just another drug-addicted scumbag who would never change - not for himself, not for those around him. She never got confirmation that he was using again, but she knew when those letters never came.
She takes down a single rose patterned cup from the press. The set of four had been a wedding gift but she only ever used this one. It felt like a little act of pettiness, minute but satisfying, to use the dainty, ornate cup for casual daily use. She smiles to herself at the thought as it recurrs, and then pours the tea.
Amanda had never expected him to contact her again. His complete lack of emotional connection to both her and Ben had been quite evident at the end of their relationship, and she'd done her best to avoid any talk of him after - baulking at the memories with the betrayal still fresh years on. But he had– well, his lawyer had.
Diane Coulston. Amanda had seen her in court after, she was smart and confident, and rather attractive. Young, too, and she'd found herself wondering whether this gorgeous intellectual woman had also been taken in by Simon's charm. He looked well in his suit, hair freshly bleached and cut, and he was - according to the test results shown in court, clean now. Amanda imagined she'd fist it in her hands later – or maybe she had already before the case had even been heard in court.
There was a man beside Simon on the bench too. While her attention was focused on Diane and the actual proceedings of the case, Amanda got a proper look at him once or twice during breaks; average height, short red hair and a strong jaw. Certainly not a relative and Simon ‘didn't do’ friends, so she had wondered as she watched him hang off Simon's shoulder, leaning in to whisper sporadically.
A few weeks later, Amanda's representative sent her the document from social service detailing his living situation and the question was answered. The man was one Mark Renton, and he lived with Simon in his two-bed flat and worked with him in his public house...the Port Sunshine?
Two years together and she'd never heard of this man, and then suddenly he was living with her ex-husband and named in the documents outlining his request for visitation rights to her son. Charlotte, wine-drunk on a Friday night, had suggested through a fit of giggles that they might be lovers. As amusing as the thought was, she highly doubted it.
She takes out a packet of rich tea biscuits from the press and helps herself to five, dipping the first in tea before taking a bite. It felt like an indulgence, another comfort denied during childhood by her mother in the name of ladylike-ness, to eat them this way. She had yet to meet him properly, Mark Renton, but Ben had taken to him immediately and she felt like she had from his incessant stream of chatter.
Mark this, Mark that. Mark said he'd take me to a Hibs game - Mark used to DJ - Mark showed me this song…on and on and on. Ben was slow to trust Simon at first but he admired his ‘housemate’ straight off the bat. Amanda wondered if the favouritism was obvious, whether it would create tension between the two of them or Simon would understand that it was easier to warm to the man who hadn't provided half his DNA and then disappeared for basically his whole life.
She was deliberating inviting them over at Christmas, just to see exactly what sort of father the ‘reformed’ Simon David Williamson was to her son. She'd seen pictures and heard stories, of course, but it was hard to reconcile the man she hated - the selfish, cheating bastard who hadn't so much as enquired after his own son once in eight years - with the man Ben proudly described after visits.
Maybe it was an act, another face worn for his own benefit. Who knew? Only time would tell.
The phone rings again as Amanda finishes her second biscuit. She takes it off the hook. Her parents can wait. Charlotte's coming over later, maybe they can talk through what she's going to say to them, practice justifying the decision she isn't confident she was correct in making.